Who is Bill Direen?
by Bill Meyer (first published in Popwatch magazine)

It depends on who you ask. Some say he's a willfully obscure footnote in New Zealand music history. Others say he's an unjustly ignored genius and consider his bands (generally called the Bilders) to be some of the best ever heard in his native land. He's a musician, a playwright, a dad, a college lecturer, a poet, a literary critic, a world traveller, and one hell of a song-writer.

Around the same time that the first Bilders records appeared another change in New Zealand's landscape occurred. Flying Nun was started by Roger Shepherd who was also a Bilders fan. The band won a battle of the bands contest and Shepherd agreed to put out the resulting album (Beati/en Hearts), recorded by the team of Chris Knox, Doug Hood and Terry King (the former two had recorded the Dunedin Double compilation and the Clean's Boodle Boodle Boodle).

Many New Zealanders view Split Seconds (his second album) as Direen's finest 12" achievement. It certainly covers all the stylistic bases of his early work with aplomb. The CD version includes several additional tracks.

In 1989 Bill came to America to sightsee, play and record. He turned up at CBGB's Canteen, playing a collection of mostly new songs unaccompanied save for Hamish Kilgour's drumming. The result was a cassette that included sixteen songs recorded in New York entitled Bill Direen and the Hat which featured contributions by Kilgour and some other expatriates. Once again Direen confounded expectations, this time by writing a moody and gentle song cycle.

In performance the new Bilders material balances taut, punky aggression with a theatrical presentation. After seeing him play at Chicago's Lounge Ax last August I'm pretty anxious to hear the CD.

In the meantime Bill's far from idle: "If I could just make music and write I'd be very happy."

Bill Direen by Chris Knox (Popwatch)
William Direen reviews poetry for the NZ Listener and is both taller and skinnier than me. I should hate him, but damn it, I can't bring myself to become even ... bitter... about his facility with words and notes and the way he can approximate all those dippy guitar chords that I don't even know the names of. No, really, I can't even loathe his fucking theatricality 'cos the shit's so damn good at it, and it's Beckett rather than Coward and who can complain about that!

You can find Bills hompages at http://william.direen.online.fr/books/

Available on Flying Nun Records:

Max Quitz - Bilders: CD. Retrospective Vol One. Flying Nun.1994. FNCD274
Beati/en Hearts - Bilders: CD. Retrospective Vol Two. Flying Nun. 1994 FNCD275
Split Seconds - Bilderine: CD. Retrospective Vol Three. Flying Nun. 1995 FNCD276
Pyx - Bilders: CD. Retrospective Vol Four. Flying Nun. 1995 FNCD277