THEY have dominated New Zealand’s music charts for more than a decade but never cracked it overseas. Proud Kiwi JASON COLLIE quizzes The Feelers’ drummer Hamish Gee to see if any locals should turn up to Monday’s gig

THERE’S a very good chance if you’re any sort of rugby fan you will know The Feelers’ tunes without realising it.

Let’s be honest. New Zealand is a tiny country and its musical output has hardly registered outside Australiasia.

The Naked and Famous and The Datsuns have made waves in recent years but the bands whose tunes tug at the heart of any proud Kiwi are largely unknown by you good people.

We ex-pats usually hear them early watching telly on a Saturday morning when a try by the All Blacks or one of New Zealand’s Super rugby teams is accompanied by a booming clip of one of those staples.

The Feelers are firmly entrenched in that playlist so the odd English rugby fan in the audience at the O2 Academy may break out in cold sweats from the memories of numerous defeats by their classic love song Venus or rockers Pressure Man and Space Cadet on Monday night.

Drummer Hamish Gee, a gregarious voice down the line from his home in Auckland six days ago, is under no illusion their latest tour of the UK, which kicks off in Oxford, will be largely preaching to a Kiwi audience rather than a load of (in his words) “pommies”.

The Feelers burst onto the scene with their debut album Supersystem in 1998 and Gee said: “We come to the UK regularly and we could be a bit optimistic to think of cracking the UK market but we always get a room full of Kiwis.

“We are quite happy in New Zealand – we’re in our 30s, got families and we’re homeowners and music is a full time job for us there, which is rare.

“I don’t think we are lazy and if something was to happen in the UK, we would move over in a heartbeat to be honest. “But it would be a risk when we have monopolised radio play in New Zealand, have our summer tours so it makes sense to concentrate there.

“But on this tour I’m hoping people will come along to check us out.

“We put on a pretty energetic show, four million Kiwis can’t be wrong and Poms and Kiwis are like-minded people.

“The worst case scenario is we have a really great time playing to ex-pat New Zealanders and best is we get a following in the UK.”

While unknown here, The Feelers – a straight up rock band specialising in big, anthemic tunes – they have a following in the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. A bemused Gee said: “It’s really surreal playing in some unpronounceable town in eastern Europe and there’s a couple of thousand people.

“I’m not sure how it’s happened. If I knew the formula I would be very wealthy.”

Flush from their initial success, The Feelers tried their hand in the US but didn’t make much headway.

“We should have gone to the UK first because it’s a more European-orientated sound,” he reflects. “We were put off travelling out of our comfort zone by the response in the US.

“You’d get someone blowing smoke up your a*** and then never hear from them again or honest people saying they liked us but we’d have to move to New York where there would be hundreds of bands sounding just like we did.”

Previous tours have concentrated – not illogically given their ex-pat following – on London. This one takes in Oxford, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff, as well as the capital.

You can’t be Kiwi icons without a deep love for the All Blacks and already the tour schedule has been tweaked to allow them to play Cardiff the same night the rugby team play Wales.

“We were originally down to play in Bristol that night but we are all big rugby fans and so we did a wee swapsie on the dates. Our bass player Matt Short is pretty good chums with (All Black star) Dan Carter so we might do a swapsie on tickets with them.”

He laughs when it is pointed out the date change made good business sense as any Bristol-based Kiwi would be the other side of the Severn bridge that night anyway.

  • The Feelers play Oxford’s O2 Academy in Cowley Road on Monday at 7pm.
  • Tickets are £11.25 and are available at ticketweb.co.uk