Also known as: King Bee Koffee Kellar, Ram Jam Club
Location: Westpac Lane (formerly Hereford Lane), Central Christchurch
Current status: Demolished
Active: 1964–c.1968
History
Tucked into a basement off what was then Hereford Lane in central Christchurch, the venue that became the Stage Door was one of the most consequential music spaces in New Zealand’s 1960s underground. It opened in 1964 as the King Bee Koffee Kellar, founded by John O’Brien and Paul McGarry, advertising a diet of “Rhythm and Folk Blues” to a city hungry for something rawer and more alive than the church-hall dances and polished showbands that dominated the entertainment landscape. The King Bee was literally underground — a subterranean sweatbox beneath a commercial building on Hereford Street — with gutters around the edges to channel the overflow of an overcrowded, over-excited crowd.
The folk scene found one of its first regular homes at the King Bee, with Sunday sessions drawing earnest guitarists and singers. It was also here that the Band of Hope Jug Band made their first public appearance. But it was rhythm and blues that would come to define the space. When The Chants — art students Mike Rudd and Trevor Courtney, along with Peter Hansen and Jim Tomlin — won the 1964 Christchurch Battle of the Bands, they became the King Bee’s resident group, laying down the sonic groundwork for what would follow.
In August 1965, the venue changed hands. New management — Des Monaghan, Gordon “Spud” Murphy, and Tony Walmsley — took over and renamed it the Stage Door. The Chants, now calling themselves Chants R&B and sharpening their sound around the records of John Mayall, the Pretty Things, and the Graham Bond Organisation, continued as the resident group. With Martin Forrer replacing Peter Hansen on bass, the band played four-hour Friday and Saturday sessions plus Sunday afternoon dances, building a following among Christchurch’s long-hairs — a loose tribe of stylish teenagers who took their cues from the mod fashions arriving from London and the raucous blues of provincial England.
The Stage Door’s interior was notorious. Its walls and rafters were covered in graffiti scratched and painted by generations of regulars: “Clapton is God,” “Mayall is Jesus,” Dylan name-checks, and cryptic personal tags deep in the crossbeams. The venue was, as one regular later recalled, “the first total ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude real underground venue run by people our own age.” It had the sweaty, urban character of Liverpool’s Cavern Club or London’s Crawdaddy — an antipodean equivalent that punched above its weight in atmosphere if not in geography.
The club drew a sharp social boundary in Christchurch youth culture. Mods gathered at the Stage Door; surfers went to the Surfari Ballroom at Brighton Beach; rockers frequented The Plainsman. The tension was not merely cultural. Rockers and bikies regularly haunted Hereford Lane looking for trouble, making leaving the venue a genuine risk. Chants R&B’s Mike Rudd recalled the situation bluntly, and one Stage Door regular noted: “Often you couldn’t leave because the boys on their bikes were waiting at both ends of the alley for stray mods to venture out.”
The Stage Door also attracted musicians who were still finding their feet. Richard James Burgess, who would go on to an international career as producer and musician, described the venue as his favourite of the Christchurch clubs: “The Christchurch scene was incredibly active at that time with many clubs. My favourite was the more underground blues scene at the Stage Door where I eventually wound up playing.” A young Eddie Hansen — older brother of Peter Hansen — would visit the club and jump onstage whenever he got the chance to jam with the band.
In October 1966, Chants R&B recorded the second side of their self-titled album live at the Stage Door on a 3¾ ips machine — a rough, no-fi document of what a Hereford Lane night sounded like at its peak. The recording, later reissued under the title Stage Door Witchdoctors, captures the band at their most ferocious. The documentary Rumble & Bang (2011), directed by Simon Ogston and Jeff Smith, also drew on rare 16mm footage shot by Fred Goldring inside the venue in 1965, showing the band arriving, setting up, and playing in the basement that had become their clubhouse. Midge Marsden later said: “We were always envious of the fact that they did some wild shit.”
Chants R&B left Christchurch in November 1966 for Melbourne. Their sometime support act, Our Generation — a Who-influenced outfit led by Ken Wright — inherited the Stage Door residency. Before long, Our Generation renamed themselves Trust and Love and adopted a more psychedelic direction. Around the same time, the venue itself rebranded as the Ram Jam Club, advertising acts such as The Underdogs, The Next Move, and “Tea Rave” winners The Fred Henry. Tea Raves were a nationwide promotional event staged by the Tea Council to turn teenagers on to tea-drinking — an unlikely piece of corporate sponsorship in the city’s most underground venue.
The Ram Jam’s days were numbered. The Christchurch City Council took action over health and fire risk on the premises, and the venue closed. The mods who had made it their home drifted off to other cities or to marriage and jobs — the era was ending. By 2001, when writer Chris Bourke revisited the space for AudioCulture, it had been converted into a Gloria Jeans coffee franchise — “a sad ending to an energetic crossroads of amphetamine and alcohol-fuelled pogo-ing dance fiends.” In the 2011 earthquake sequence, the space was largely demolished along with the surrounding block of central Christchurch, though the raised concrete stage was reportedly still intact as late as that year.
The Christchurch scene was incredibly active at that time with many clubs. My favourite was the more underground blues scene at the Stage Door where I eventually wound up playing.
Richard James Burgess, AudioCulture