Man on The Verge of A Nervous Breakdown - by Roger Shepherd — The Clean

The name says it all. Ballon D’essai or a “balloon trial”, which is a fancy French way of saying “floating an idea”. This is exactly what happened back in 1980 in Christchurch with a young band. Ballon D’essai were a beginner band of arty schoolboys taking up the music thing to see how it would fly and to where.

This Sporting Life were the necessary disrupting outsiders that helped mix and mess things up. They made Show Me to the Bellrope and helped to make Flying Nun a more interesting musical place.