Dear Softies!

Firstly an important notice. MY PRIVATE E-MAIL ADDRESS HAS BEEN ERASED! So any of you who have sent me messages over the last two or three months should perhaps try to send them again. The worst of it is that I've lost all my e-mail addresses so I'd love it if my friends could re-contact just so I can get some of those back in the file.

For those who have correspondended lately and received no reply - I'm sorry! Nothing personal, just too much on my plate. It's good though - I've been busy! The Chills have played six times this year and each gig shows the band becoming more and more exciting. I'm enjoying this band perhaps more than any other in our entire history. I hope you all get the chance to see us a.s.a.p. but especially once we have all the intended new material in the set. At present I am still a little stumped with all the new technology I now own but friend and sound engineer Bryan Spittle is going to help me when I go to Christcurch soon for some intensive education on the world of digital sound recording. I believe that you're going to be thrilled with the new material and I apologise again for the delay in getting the next album [working title is still 'Silver Bullets' with, perhaps, a bonus album of the darker material called 'Shadow Ballads'] to you all.
Frankly I am having problems with post-Hep C energy levels which are rising, certainly, but not yet really up to all the day to day tasks and business requirements AND thus freeing myself up to finally get onto those 1400 "song-seeds". I am looking at possibilities for employing an office person, part time even, to take some of the weight off the shoulders of my poor hard-working mother in particular! Without her considerable office skills and ideas on organisation the whole situation would be fairly hopeless. But we're getting through thanks to her and a few others like the wonderful Andy Holt in England who runs the very attractive softbomb.com official Chills web-site! And I am determined that this special line-up of The Chills will get back to the States, U.K., Europe - and further afield if we can. The sad world of quality rock music needs bands like ourselves!

Anyway - the documentary on 21 years of the Flying Nun recording label was screened here on Sunday July 7th at virtually prime-time on a major television channel! And it was actually quite good!! It's called "Heavenly Pop Hits" and The Chills and myself were well-covered while many important bands (like Snapper for example) were not mentioned at all. But I hope those of you overseas get to track down copies as it really is a pretty fair look at the label's history and, therefor, a good tale of the fight to bring non-mainstream arts into larger public acceptance. It was great to see some of the rare footage that obviously still exists in the TVNZ archives.I turned 39 on July 2nd and that wasn't too bad. I am determined that I'll have a LOT more to celebrate by the time I'm partying at my 40th next year.

On June the 27th I joined most of the regular cast for the 4th setting of the "Baxter" show - this time at the 'Fuel Arts Festival' in Hamilton. It went well and we had great fun. It's kind of like an extended family getting together each time. One of the other performers, David Eggleton, has just released a collection of his spoken poetry with musical backings recorded by various New Zealand artists (including some others from the "Baxter" show) and I am very pleased with my contribution to the project, the track "Drifting Cone". The album is called 'Versifier' and has been released through Yellow Eye Records [EYE018] - I assume they have a web-site. I played at the album launch a couple of weeks ago and that went well apart from having to give up on a version of "Submarine Bells" because the tiny keyboard I hadn't rehearsed on (silly me!) was just too awkward. Also worth mentioning is the bizarre but fun cover-version of "Heavenly Pop Hit" by N.Z. band Garageland on the Flying Nun Records 21st Anniversary double C.D. 'Under The Influence'. The song has been re-interpreted as a semi-surf instrumental and it certainly seems to separate listeners very quickly into loving it or hating it. Some have even seen it as insulting but I think it's just fun. [Flying Nun Records - FNCD021. www.flyingnun.co.nz]. Apart from the "Versifier" C.D. launch gig mentioned above The Chills are to play just a few songs at an Hepititus C awareness gig at Refuel in Dunedin on September 7th since two of us know what that hideous ailment feels like and realise the need to bring it out into the open.

Also I haven't told you that I'm a published writer now! There is an industry magazine, phanMAIL, from Christchurch which is put on by Phantom (who promote gigs and everything) and the owner, Jim Wilson, has decided to include writings by N.Z. song-writers etc, but writing different types of material than they usually do. So their February edition included my first short story called 'Sat-Arena And The Ghost Vans". It's a semi-futuristic tale about an orbiting entertainment venue and snuff movies and it is deliberately quite disturbing. People tend to look at me funny after they've read it. I'm just sending Phantom my second short story called 'A War Of Nerves or The Tale Of The Phantom Body' which is an odd take on a late 19th Century horror story. I'll talk with Andy about getting these onto the softbomb.com site, if you're interested.

That's enough for now except to say that any record labels with serious offers could speed up this whole process by throwing some money at my project. I'm unsigned at present and will stick to the cottage industry approach unless I get a sensible offer from a label who realises that the rules have changed - we don't need them anymore! But they can certainly make things easier AND that sort of distribution is hard to achieve with just your Mum and a few friends. So, seriously, I am looking for a new label who want music of the quality I can guarantee and the long-term committment needed from both the artist and label to get this music out there to all those people that WE all know would like it - if they could only hear it. Take care all you wonderful people. The world is getting colder and we must maintain warm hearts!

Love from Martin Phillipps, The Chills, Dunedin, New Zealand. July 2002.