Introduction—Sonic Bibles and the Closing of the Canon

Abstract

On their night, the 3Ds were an as transcendent, redemptive experience as one could ever hope for. Any album doesn’t do justice to what occurred as these post-punk garage-pop maniacs sonically immolated themselves before a sweaty, drunk crowd (there was no other in Dunedin) seeking that simultaneous loss and gain of self that is central to rock ‘n’ roll. There were a number of such gigs that I could have wandered out of in a similar state and with a similar declaration at that time. Such glory it was to be young and in Dunedin at a time when bands from this small, university city at the bottom of the world were creating an underground “Dunedin sound” that found its way to influence generations of American college bands and circulate within the larger British and European indie-music scene. The big names were the Clean, the Chills, the StraightJacket Fits, the Verlaines, and the 3Ds; but often it was the gigs of smaller, lesser-known bands that burned their way into your soul. These were the Torquemadas—Dunedin students providing an antipodean answer to the Ramones—, Funhouse who channeled Iggy and the Stooges, the Orange who harmonized psychedelic pop, and Snapper’s dirty-fuzz riffing. Venturing up to Christchurch there was the sonic assault of Dolphin’s superpower pop and the concrete wall of sound of Bailter Space. But best of all these were local bands, made up of people who sold you records, who lived in flats two houses down, who drank and got drunk in various pubs and played great indie-pop and rock ‘n’ roll to an ever-expanding mess of students, hangers-on, and dropouts all looking for that which took them out of the mundane banality of everyday life and plugged them into something transitorily transcendent.

“The 3Ds came to me like Chinese whispers. Sweating and drunk, my friend Mike, who was studying theology, wandered out of an Orientation gig and declared them rock ‘n’ roll gods. I thought if anyone could recognize the divine, he could.”¹