Chris Knox

ROCKHAPPENZ Public Collection

Chris Knox  —  punk rocker featuring in The Enemy, Tall Dwarfs, Toy Love .....

It's impossible to imagine New Zealand cultural life without Chris Knox's contribution.  What's hard about all this is that it's too easy to make this appreciation sound like an obituary - existing entirely in the past tense - when it's actually not like that.  Despite Chris Knox having had a stroke in 2009 - and no-one emerges from a serious stroke exactly the way they were before - Chris acknowledged his situation in a wordless interview conducted with him a year after the stroke saying  "I'm still in here — I'm still me, but .......".   Christopher Alexander Knox was born on September 2nd, 1952, is a New Zealand musician, cartoonist and movie reviewer who emerged during the 1970s punk rock era with his bands The Enemy and Toy Love.  After Toy Love disbanded in the early 1980s, Knox formed the duo Tall Dwarfs with guitarist Alec Bathgate.  The Tall Dwarfs delivered unpolished sound and provided intense live shows.  His 4-track tape machine was used to record most of the Flying Nun label's early singles.  He has also released a number of solo, self-produced albums which feature his Casiotone, and also an album Inaccuracies and Omissions under the pseudonym Friend, but naturally on the Flying Nun label.

Chris began his musical career in 1977 as a local version (not copy) of Iggy Pop, as lead vocalist, fronting New Zealand's punk rockers The Enemy, which formed in Dunedin.  He has played live in front of audiences all around New Zealand, winning a reputation for his sometimes confrontational style, and performed annually at Wellington's Bar Bodega.  He has also extensively toured internationally.  His swing through the US in 1995 included, among others, stops in Seattle to play the Crocodile Café.  His minimalist, DIY sound played well to ears then-focused on grunge, with its retro-punk stylings.  He is a long-time resident of Auckland, spending time as a newspaper columnist and film reviewer for Real Groove.

In 1986-1987, he edited and published three issues of a New Zealand comics anthology Jesus on a Stick.  Starting in 1987, his satirical comic strip Max Media appeared in The New Zealand Herald every week until 2009.  He has also been an occasional television film reviewer, hosted a Television New Zealand season of classic movies The Vault, and presented two seasons of arts series New Artland.  At the 2001 New Zealand Music Awards Knox's ballad Not Given Lightly (1990) was announced as New Zealand's thirteenth best song of all time, as voted by APRA members.  Chris Knox wrote it for John and Liesha's mother - his then partner Barbara - but this track never scaled commercial heights although it has belatedly generated some income for the songwriter through its use in TV advertising (including for Vogel's bread).

Chris launched his own label A Major Records in 2006 to release the album Chris Knox and the Nothing.  This was the first album Knox recorded in a professional studio, rather than in his trademark DIY style, since his time with Toy Love.  Knox's It's Love, from the 2000 album Beat, has been used in Share the Good, a Heineken Premium Light commercial directed by Todd Haynes and cinematographed by Edward Lachman.  In 2009 Knox was awarded a New Zealand Arts Foundation Arts Laureate Award.

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2016 (Cassette)