Take Another Look

Gavin McLean and Jeff Thorp formed Circus Block Four after their previous group, The List, fell apart in 1983. McLean says that both Circus Block Four and The Tin Syndrome “came out of a group of Wellington Teachers College students, and the flourishing arts scene in Cuba St in the early 80s, which was like Greenwich Village. Because of the Summer City (city council arts) programme and the Employment Department seeding projects, everyone was an artist or starting a small business.”

The group started out strong, with a busy 1984, performing more than 50 gigs, including supports to international acts Icehouse and The Fixx

The group started out strong, with a busy 1984, performing more than 50 gigs, including supports to international acts Icehouse and The Fixx and a tour up to the Big Smoke. Their barbed song about city living, ‘In Stone And Steel’/’Dead Inside’, appeared late that year to a positive reception if little sales action. ‘In Stone In Steel’ wasn’t just a cool art-funk groove, according to McLean, who says, “At the time a lot of Wellington’s historic buildings were being pulled down, so it was a kind of protest song.”

One of the best-sounding bands of the mid-80s (courtesy of Marmalade studios and Ian Morris), Circus Block Four accentuated the polyrhythmic contributions of percussionist Dean Hutton to great effect – McLean says that Hutton’s “idea of putting a cymbal on a snare drum” helped to achieve this distinction – but in their short two-and-a-half year lifespan, the group never achieved commercial lift-off.

“We spent a while in EMI studios recording our album, but Jayrem weren’t that impressed,” says Jeff Thorp. It remains unreleased to this day.

“The CB4 album was actually great”, says McLean. But only one track, ‘The Tribe From Nowhere’, saw the light of day, on Jayrem’s Package To Sell compilation. Then the band imploded: “The band wasn’t up to the stresses of recording, Caroline left … we all had a bunch of personal issues going on,” says Thorp.

Afterwards, Thorp and McLean briefly played in a “drum machine” band, but shortly thereafter, they both moved to Australia, where they once again formed a group, Razorbrain. Razorbrain recorded a still-unreleased album for EMI, and got one song on the movie Muriel’s Wedding, ‘T-Shirt And Jeans'.

Gavin McLean became a high school teacher and second drummer Caroline Easther (who had already served time with The Spines and The Verlaines) went on to drum for The Chills, Let’s Planet and The Warratahs.