Gong

Interview with artist and writer, Joanne McNeill/Jo Hardy on 24 June 2016 at Maungakaramea, Northland – Theresa Sjoquist

“There are tribal members who will come forward to continue championing the arts,” Joanne McNeill insisted.  “They’re all young, late twenties, early thirties. Peter Larsen is one who isn’t afraid to stick his neck out at all. He started Gong.”

Gong was initiated in Whangarei by poet and playwright, Peter Larsen, who made a splash in the community by writing a poem about Whangarei which was published in the newspaper and succeeded in getting a lot of backs up.

Having been bashed by young hoodlums while giving a public reading of the poem about the inveterate unprovoked violence of Whangarei, initially Larsen had come to the city to take up the position of Artistic Director for Northland Youth Theatre.

McNeill said, “He did a most marvellous job of the best production Youth Theatre ever did…The Odyssey, directed by Laurel Devenie. I did billboards for it, which is how I got involved and met him. Of all the plays I’ve seen in my life, this was the most tremendous. It was outdoors, and fantastic.”

Larsen began Gong in 2009 but McNeill had only been attending since 2013 when she first became aware of it. Gong attracted a tribe of young, generally arty people who tended to think on a different level.

“I’m the only grey-haired person that went anywhere near it…but they were very nice to me. Every full moon they called Gong which was an open-mike original performance night, and there’d be all sorts; musicians, poets, jugglers, terrible drag queens with fake tans, comedians, everything. If you performed an original and everyone liked it and it was cool, you’d get a free beer. If you didn’t do an original, or if it was a cover, or people thought it was crap, you’d get gonged off with the gong. I appreciate original work because it’s hard to do, but here was a venue for originals…in Whangarei.”

Gong was held at the Old Stone Butter Factory, a music venue and bar sited in an historic stone butter factory. McNeill said, “It’s built into the oldest, and most beautiful wall in the whole town, and it’s one of the few beautiful things to have escaped the vandalism that usually goes on where they pull down every old thing, and a hundred years later they put up a fake. This stone wall is the real thing.”

The first time McNeill attended a Gong event, she found herself staring at the gong itself and wondering how many gongs there could possibly be in a town. She knew Yvonne Rust QSM (https://www.theresasjoquist.com/?page_id=3193) had brought one back from China after a visit as part of a VIP delegation.

“It used to be at the Quarry Arts Centre, and when the phone rang or someone was required in the office…this was in the pre-digital era, old Uncle John, the Quarry caretaker, would wang the gong and yell out for whoever was to come to the phone. It got wanged for dinners at the Summer Do and other events as well.  I asked Peter, ‘Where’d you get that gong?’”

“Oh, it’s Yvonne’s gong from the Quarry.”

“He’d been going to the Quarry every full moon, borrowing the gong, taking it down to the Gong performance event, and then next day ceremoniously taking it back. Yvonne would have loved it.  An originals night…that was right up her alley.”

Larsen moved back to Auckland but came back to call the last Gong on 18 June 2016. Already in terrible pain from encroaching cancer for some two months at this stage, McNeill dosed herself from the small bottle of liquid morphine given her by the hospital, put her teeth in, and took her son Giles, who had only just arrived, along to experience Gong.

“He, happily, had brought his saxophone and guitar with him, and he’d never been to Gong, or met any of the people before because he lives in Wellington. Well, they made him open cold, with originals, to a crowd that had never heard him. He did a really good job. Later on, two dudes got up, one on electronic keyboards, and Joe Porter on electronic drums, and Peter Larsen on one of his beat poems. They were grooving away, kinda jazzy stuff, and Giles unpacked his sax, found a piece was missing, botched up a little piece in the dark,  took to the stage and just blew them away.  There was a fire-dance in front as well. I sat back thinking to myself that it just doesn’t get any better than this. Gong has been a wonderful thing for all the young performers in the town.”

Joanne McNeill died at North Haven Hospice in Whangarei on 29 July 2016.