Deepgrooves - Free Bass live

Deepgrooves was also home to a few jazzy acts, like The New Loungehead (featuring Dan Sperber, Godfrey de Grut, Chip Matthews, Isaac Tucker and Mathias Sudholter), and Free Bass.

This is from Simon Grigg's blog. He posted this with a track for download back in May 2009 (still there too), to coincide with the Box/Celebre reunion night, Take Me Back.

Cause Celebre, 1994. Photo: Simon Grigg

"Freebass were important for a number of reasons, but not least because it was one of the early vehicles for the Haines brothers, Joel and Nathan. Nathan’s next band was The Enforcers, who went on to record the globally released Shift Left ..the only NZ recorded album ever to appear on Verve.

I remember the night fairly well. Chris Sinclair had miked up the room and he and Mark Tierney taped it struggling against all sorts of adversity. They had to battle with odd acoustics, inebriated folks repeatedly tripping over cables and staff who really didn’t care who or what they were, they had to get that case of Mac’s Gold to the back bar without delay.

But it worked out pretty well, it was a landmark album at the time and, as I recall, sold pretty well. Released on Mark Tierney and Kane Massey’s quite crucial Deepgrooves label, it’s long been unavailable and quite sought after. My (signed) copy had walked somewhere in the past 19 years so I was forced to buy a new copy this week. I sourced it on EBay, from Sydney."

Deepgrooves, 1993

The reason this Deepgrooves release stands out from nearly all the others I've profiled, is it's back in circulation (since Simon wrote that post, I assume). You can buy the MP3s here from Amplifier.co.nz.

Coming next - more jazzy bizznizz