New Zealand Tour Blog – Part 3 – A Grand and Unlikely Discovery

South I head to the town of smelly sulphur – Otherwise known as Rotorua

I play a show organised by the wonderful Rogue Stage.

An audience member captured some of the show here:

Anyway after I played I got chatting to someone who`s an old family friend from the UK. Her name’s Margaret and although the last time I met her was when I was still in nappies she remembered me well.

She moved to NZ some years back and once she saw the inlay to my Vinyl LP (which has a picture of my Father inside it) she told me she had footage of an old Rugby match from 1965. It has my Dad playing in it.

Now the thing is my Father passed sometime back when I was very young. I`ve made a bit of a mission within recent years to try and find out more about him; and so to be on the other side of the planet almost as far from home as I can get. And to discover a video of him from nearly 50 years ago.

This almost melted my tiny mind.

Myself and My Father Terence O`Connor (Circa fall 1980)

But that`s the journey I`m on and it`s things like this that re-enforce it aswell as it being a worthy path to walk.

Following the show in Rotorua I Headed south to play a bunch of shows in Mount Maunganui & Hawkes Bay.

Brewers Bar Setlist

The shows were totally across the board from busy to empty to crazy to subdued.

Some were relaxed and other seemed very intense.

Sideline Bar Setlist – Notice the Smashing Pumpkins Cover 2nd to last.

From there I would return North for a couple more shows in Rotorua and at the night Market (which is actually an afternoon market)

Belgiun Bar Setlist – Rare performance of ‘One Schizophrenic’. A member of the audience at this show would go on to make a music video to the song.

You can watch that here 🙂

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