VOLT 2023: A Volition Archive

VOLT 2023: Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Alan Jansson: In the mid eighties I played in a band called Body Electric and we toured and did several gigs around New Zealand. It was always a dancefloor crowd that came to the gigs because they could relate to the drum machine and synths.  

The first public gig we played was support to Hunters & Collectors at Victoria University in Wellington. Body Electric’s first single Pulsing was in the NZ charts for about seven months, but it was in the studio where I found I was having the most fun even though the mixes didn’t sound great. My thinking was to eventually have a recording studio at home where I could do it myself, instead of the clock running and paying for something sub standard because we felt rushed and under pressure.

After having a major car crash while in the middle of a tour I decided from a hospital bed that I’m lucky to be on the right side of the grass and if I don’t get moving on my dream now I never will. If your dreams don’t scare you then they’re not big enough. That’s when I learnt the art of setting goals and really got things moving. 

Literally I came to realize that Wellington, where I lived, was where you got things together, and Auckland was where you got things done, so I made the move.

In Auckand I made contact with a gentleman called Doug Rogers. He loved Body Electric and offered us free recording time in his studio (Harlequin), which was a top 24 track facility. 

We started a new album, but here’s where everything took a turn for the better. He had three major projects on and needed a Fairlight CMI for two of the projects.

The budget was quite substantial and I loved what the Fairlight could do because it all came in one box and the original Page R sequencer was amazing plus they were designed and built in Australia… clever Aussies. I also had a Prophet-5 and Pro-One, plus 808 and DMX drum machines, but the Fairlight was something else and there was no duty, or as Trump would say no tariffs, if I imported it.

I set about borrowing the money with a guarantee of paying it back once I got paid from the projects which seemed to come in faster then I could manage.

VOLT 2023: How did your connection with Andy Penhallow and Volition come about?

Alan: At this time I meet Dave Buloug who was a really cool guy and we just clicked. He was from a band called Car Crash Set and we had pretty much the same interests in music and bands.

Dave and I did some writing together, and he was going to Sydney on a regular basis. He came around home and told me he had met a cool guy in Sydney named Andrew Penhallow, and a DJ he worked with, Robert Racic, was very interested in mixing one of our tracks, and next time I’m in Sydney I should pop in and see him and drop off some tracks. 

I was going to  Sydney on a regular basis so I did drop some tracks off to Andrew. On meeting him I was amazed to see Chris Read in the office with Andrew because when I was a real youngster I used to go into the record shops in Wellington where Chris worked, also as a youngster, and not only was he a really nice guy he also had incredible taste in music and could steer me in the right direction when it came to buying albums. So, as you can imagine, I felt really comfortable with Volition.

VOLT 2023: You co-wrote and produced the majority of tracks on the Second Nature/Volition “Proud” compilation. You must have put a lot of your time and energy into that. What can you tell us about that experience?

Alan: Andrew rang me one day and asked me about a tape I had dropped off. On the end of it was a couple of tracks from South Auckland bands I was working with. Andrew said it fitted in with an idea that he and Chris had about making an Urban Pacific street soul compilation.

I replied I’m not sure that it will sell very well and he pretty much said he wasn’t worried about that, let’s just get it out there .

That went on to become the Proud album, which when finished still lacked a single to take the whole album forward, so I went and convinced Sisters Underground to record  another song for the album as they were a personal favorite of mine and at the time only had one song on “Proud”. 

They came back with the lyrics for “In The Neighbourhood” and I quickly put the music together for it, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Andrew Penhallow asked me after the album came out if we could get Sisters and OMC (Otara Millionaires Club) to do the Boiler Room on the Big Day Out tour of Australia, which at the time I hadn’t heard of but was very keen to do it as it would get the album more recognition.

“Proud” for me had been a lot of hard work with many bands from different parts of Auckland, for example Sisters were out of Mangere, OMC were out of Otara, and Semi MC’s were from Manuera. I was working and co writing with them in my studio’s down time and Andrew, bless him, saw the potential in what I was doing and along with Chris (Read) he took it to another level.

As I wrote on Andrew’s eulogy, before “Proud” there wasn’t a Polynesian in South Auckland with a record deal. After “Proud” there wasn’t a Polynesian in South Auckland without one. 

VOLT 2023: Some time after “Proud” and the success of Sisters Underground you ended up working with Pauly Fuemana who had become the only remaining member of OMC after the group split. How did that collaboration come about? You must be hugely proud of the success of OMC.

Alan: OMC had disintegrated but Pauly was very keen to work with me again so we wrote eight songs the night before the first gig as they only had twenty minutes to play, and “How Bizarre” was one of those songs.

When we played Sydney Clinton Walker, at the time a journalist for Rolling Stone, did an article on the OMC and Sisters. Andrew had arranged for the interview and Pauly was keen to go because we were being taken out to lunch in a Darlinghurst Cafe. 

(Clinton) picked “How Bizarre” as being a major worldwide smash and that hit a nerve with me because I had come to the same conclusion. I think Pauly thought we were both crazy, but he went along with it.

The article ended up being the center pages of the Rolling Stone which definitely kickstarted OMC’s career. 

When I got back to NZ I went to EMI, who were distributor of “Proud”, to try and get a small budget to record “How Bizarre” but was told they weren’t that interested, and Andrew was very busy with Volition.

I decided I needed someone who could deal with Pauly on a personal level because he had become quite difficult and demanding. I think he had freaked Andrew out when he lost it in Melbourne with one of his band mates. Andrew had told me the whole hotel could hear him from the dining room and he was three floors up.

Fortunately a nightclub owner named Simon Grigg gave me some money to record anything I thought was promising because I had mixed an album for him, “Shift Left”, that had become jazz album of the year at the NZ Music Awards. (Editor’s note: “Shift Left” is a celebrated jazz album by New Zealand artist Nathan Haines, released in 1995 on Simon Grigg’s label huh! Records) 

Pauly used to worked as a barman at Simon’s club, so Simon had an understanding of Pauly’s whole family because on occasions they had played at his nightclub. 

The whole song “How Bizarre” was tidied up and recorded in about three hours, and when Roger Grierson, who was my publisher at the time, sent me to Melbourne to talk with some artists… I won’t mention any names… I played the track to Simon on cassette in the car on our way from the airport to the hotel and he just about went off the road! He pulled over and said, “This is going to be the biggest record of our careers, or we’re both mad.” I agreed with the first one. 

After our meeting in Melbourne Simon drove us to Sydney and went straight into the office of Adam Holt and Paul Dixon, the MD for Polygram, and told them we had something they should listen to. 

Fortunately Paul Dixon loved “How Bizarre” and could hear it straight away. Adam said it would go top 5, if not number 1. I agreed with the second one.

[Alan Jansson was interviewed via email. Thanks also to Simon Grigg for his assistance so far.]