The night the Mint Chicks imploded.
On March 12, 2010, something happened on a small stage next to a pizza parlour. But what?
Her first taste of the trouble she’d signed up for came on an art gallery rooftop. Four flights up a building across the road from the now-defunct Kings Arms music venue, a who’s who of the local music industry had gathered, including media and members of several prominent local rock acts. It was early 2010, so the jeans were black and skinny, the T-shirts crisp and white. Punters clinked drinks, enjoyed expansive views across the city, swapped gossip and waited for the show to start. “I was a bit star-struck,” remembers Annabel Youens. “It was so cool.”
Youens, a tech entrepreneur from Canada, was responsible for the event. She’d been building to this moment for a full year, hiring staff, setting up a website and building a company designed to chart a new way forward. Back then, everyone still relied on MP3s to listen to music. Youens wanted to take advantage of that. “Napster was huge. Record labels were suing music fans for illegal downloading. There were no streaming services yet,” she remembers. “We were like, ‘There’s got to be a way to get fans really involved and help support musicians through this social media thing.’”
MusicHype was her answer. With her partner Jeff Mitchell, Youens had built a digital platform to connect fans with artists, allowing them to join their journey. To help launch it, MusicHype chased, then signed, a big name local rock act. The Mint Chicks were an award-winning band, but they came with baggage in the form of fiery siblings Kody and Ruban Nielson. Their tumultuous history and combustible live shows were feared and revered: they’d kidnapped a Rip It Up journalist and taken a chainsaw to the advertising hoardings at the Big Day Out. At one infamous show, Kody refused to play but turned up in disguise and heckled Ruban from the crowd. At another, they wore ski masks, sprayed the crowd in champagne and covered Lil Wayne.
On top of a Newton rooftop in Tāmaki Makaurau, Youens didn’t know any of this. “One of the guys on our team was like, ‘They’re really cool. This will be great,” she says. “I was like, ‘Awesome.’” MusicHype signed The Mint Chicks for a hefty fee, then booked them to play their launch show. Dozens of people showed up to find out what Youens’ fledgling digital music business was all about, hooked in by a free performance from The Mint Chicks. It began as many of their shows did: electric and manic, their energy getting more unhinged as the sun lowered in the sky.
Then, as things often did, the show took a turn. Kody began to climb a tall chain link fence designed to protect punters from falling four floors onto the street below. “Kody … started trying to balance on it,” says Youens. Her voice shakes at the memory. “He was … trying to climb across the top. I was like, ‘Oh my god! What if he falls?’ [I had] flashes of, ‘Do we have insurance? What is going on?’ My heart was in my mouth … I’m glad he didn’t die falling off this chain link fence.” It was Youens’ first taste of the unpredictable chaos of The Mint Chicks. It wasn’t her last.
‘What’s a rider? I knew nothing about the music industry.’
MusicHype began around a kitchen table in Newtown, Pōneke. “It was really exciting,” remembers Annabel Youens. She was 27 at the time she and Mitchell started the company. This was their big swing, a chance to start a proper tech brand. “It was a real start-up,” she says. “I was working in music, getting to do creative things, thinking outside the box.” Ideas flourished. Her team grew. Soon, they had a beta website that explained how MusicHype worked. “We’re a site for music fans to help you hook all your music websites together,” the homepage explained. “We love music!”
It worked as a next-level MySpace combined with a record label: artists could sell music and merch, while fans could interact with their favourite acts, remix songs, watch music videos and enter competitions. You could upload your own music too: MusicHype offered a $500 prize for the best entries. With no experience in the music industry, Youens relied on experts to help her navigate the complicated world of labels and publishing rights. “I remember being like, ‘What’s a rider?’” she says. “I knew nothing about the music industry. We learned [a lot] in a short amount of time.”
Signing The Mint Chicks was a huge deal. By 2010, Ruban, Kody, bassist Michael Logie and drummer Paul Roper had released the award-winning albums Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! and Screens through Flying Nun and Warner Music. Logie had become a part-time member, and the remaining trio had decamped to Portland. Splitting from the major label system to join the relatively unknown and untested MusicHype service sparked fiery headlines. “Mint Chicks dump Warner for Wellington-based start-up,” read one.
In interviews and press releases, Youens and Ruban stoked the flames. “The major labels are slow moving, risk-averse dinosaurs, and increasingly irrelevant,” Ruban told Stuff at the time. Youens agreed. “The major labels are a drag on the industry, pushing CDs which are a dead medium, hoovering cash away from bands, turning fans into criminals and creating friction between artists and their customers. We are fixing the industry by cutting labels out of the food chain.”
Ruban was fully invested in charting this new way forward. He took an active role in MusicHype, becoming a familiar face around their Newtown office. In an interview from this time, Ruban encouraged other bands to ditch their labels and sign up just like The Mint Chicks had. “Being in early is exciting. It’s all being invented right now,” he said. “Everybody’s making up what it’s going to be. We’re all inventing what the music world’s going to be like in the future.”
Youens didn’t ask questions about The Mint Chicks’ history or pester Ruban about his relationship with Kody. Instead, the pair focused on dreaming up future plans together. “It was probably good I didn’t know who they were because Ruban and I could just be normal people with each other,” she says. Youens only met Kody once, when he accompanied Ruban on a brief visit. “He didn’t say anything the whole time he was there,” she says. “He was the silent partner … I knew they’d had some ups and downs.” She worried about their drummer, Roper: “I thought, ‘That's a lot to be in the middle of.’”
One day, during these sessions, Ruban told Youens he wanted to do something no other artist had done before. “Ruban had custom-designed this USB stick,” she says. “We had never heard of anyone doing that.” Shaped like an alien figure in a dress, the small 1GB drive contained the new EP from The Mint Chicks, a four-song collection that included the electric single, ‘Bad Buzz’. Youens was impressed. “Ruban was like, ‘I’ve got some art we could probably use.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ He showed it to me and I was like, ‘This is amazing!’” They printed 1000 copies then asked fans to submit music videos. One still exists on YouTube.
Youens looks back on this time fondly. MusicHype was just a start-up so money wasn’t the focus. “We didn’t have any expectations that we were going to be rolling in dough,” she says. “We were proving the model worked.” So they ran with the best concepts they could come up with. “Ruban was a dream to work with,” she says. “[We] would sit at our kitchen table and discuss ideas. We had such a nice team. They were so fun and so smart.” Now based on Vancouver Island, it’s an attitude Youens still has about her working life today. “If I love the people I’m working with, I’m happy.”
This period, Youens admits, was the calm before the storm. Things were about to blow up in a way that neither she, nor Ruban, could ever have predicted.
‘What is even happening to my life right now?’
Up on that Newtown rooftop, Kody descended from the wire mesh fence unscathed. Concerned but undeterred, Youens ploughed ahead. A few months after MusicHype’s soft-launch concert, she decided it was time to unveil her company with a bigger flourish. To really kick off the business and score the widespread coverage they desired, she and Ruban planned something even grander, an event that would get everyone talking: a full, free concert by The Mint Chicks.
A date was set: March 12, 2010. A venue was chosen: the Bacco Room, a private function space neighbouring the Italian restaurant Toto’s, then based on Nelson Street in Tāmaki Makaurau’s central city. The Pixies were also playing that night at Vector (now Spark) Arena, so a midnight start time was chosen. It was then that Youens had another brain wave: the show could be livestreamed through MusicHype’s website. Livestreaming technology was new, but it fit with their tech-forward approach. Tickets to watch the online show cost $5.
Invites were sent to every big name in Youens’ contact book. The show was promoted on social media, with free tickets given away at the record store Real Groovy. With the show doubling as a launch party for the Bad Buzz EP, and an unofficial after-party for anyone going to The Pixies, people fought hard for those tickets. “We told people, ‘Come and get them,’” says Youens. “It was a frenzy.” She can’t remember the capacity of the Bacco Room, and the venue no longer exists, but whatever that number was, it was rammed.
It was there, just after midnight, that chaos would unfold. Those that had crammed into the Bacco Room would see something so unique it has entered the history books among the most controversial shows ever performed in Aotearoa. Soon, a bouncer would step in to protect Youens. The livestream would be cut short. A punch would be thrown, and a drum kit destroyed. A slogan would be shouted from the stage so quotable it’s still repeated today. In the days that followed, critics would try to assess what happened that night. Was it genuine, or staged? Youens would spend the rest of the night struggling to sleep as she wondered, “What is even happening to my life right now?”
That night created a trail of carnage that would result in secretive meetings, band members fleeing the country, and a PR machine attempting to salvage a fledgling tech start-up. In the months and years that followed, Youens’ business would survive, then thrive, leading her and Mitchell to where they are today. The Mint Chicks, however, would not. On their Bad Buzz EP is another song called, ‘Say Goodbye’. The opening line, sung by Kody, is, “It's the end of what I thought we’d be.” It couldn’t be more fitting.
Ruban and Kody didn’t want to contribute to this story. A spokesperson told me: “The band isn't available for this but we appreciate the opportunity.”
Kia ora!
I loved putting this piece together too much to put it out as one story, so I’ve split it into two. I’ll have the second part for you soon, including interviews with those who were right there as the Bacco Room show unfolded. In the meantime, do you remember this? Is it ringing any bells? Were you there? Did you see it happen? I was working at Stuff at the time and remember receiving an invite. I desperately wanted to attend, but my son was born just a few days earlier. I have a vague recollection of attempting to watch the $5 livestream at home with a baby in my arms. As Youens says, it was the early days of livestreaming technology. I couldn’t get it to work, and the video no longer seems to exist. So, alas, I’m relying on others to help tell this story. If you were there, or have any memories of it, I’d love to hear from you…
-Chris
First time I've ever read a piece of journalism with a cliffhanger ending haha :D
Awesome stuff, Chris; can't wait to read part two!