The Aranui Tavern at 317 Pages Road was a working-class pub in Christchurch’s eastern suburbs that became one of the city’s most significant live music rooms from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. Bon Marché and The Newz held a three-year residency from 1978 to 1981, nurturing emerging acts including Pop Mechanix and the Dance Exponents — whose own Aranui residency led directly to their Mushroom Records signing in 1982.
The Christchurch scene of 1980-82 is pretty legendary, and rightly so. This was most fertile period of rock’n’roll in the city since the beat-boom days of Chants R’n’B circa 1966. There were some very good Christchurch punk bands (notably the… Read More »Christchurch in the 80’s [By David Swift]
Biography jordan luck’s insistent pub band – born out of the south island port town of timaru and forged through beer and indulgence, there was never ever an exponents song that couldn’t be sung in a drunken haze with a… Read More »The Exponents
Note: This is a work in progress and will have additional content added both in the Map (i.e. venue images) or in the body of this post (i.e. a list of the venues in questioned, grouped by status etc). Feel… Read More »Christchurch Venue Map