The mighty Powerstation is on Netflix now?!

Auckland's best concert venue is going global thanks a brutal new Netflix documentary.

Well, I never thought I’d see this.

Right now, on the world’s biggest streaming service, you can watch an Australian rap group nearly unravel in front of a sold out crowd at a small Auckland music venue.

I’m talking, of course, about the Powerstation.

Nestled at the top of Mt Eden road, it’s a black building with two levels and great views from almost every vantage point in the venue.

It holds about 1000 people and has a long, occasionally bizarre history, including, for a short time, being turned into a camp disco club.

The Powerstation is awesome, easily my favourite Auckland venue. I’d choose to see any artist there, especially a rowdy hip-hop collective on the rise.

Which is exactly what this Netflix doco is all about.

Called Against All Odds, it follows Onefour, an Australian drill group that seems to find trouble everywhere it goes.

In 2019, Onefour had lined up the Powerstation as part of their first headlining tour across Australasia.

It’s an understatement to say that tour did not go to plan.

By the time Onefour landed in Auckland on December 5, 2019, four of their five Australian shows had been cancelled over police concerns about the group’s violent past.

Even worse, three out of five members were in jail thanks to a vicious Sydney hotel brawl, with rappers YP, Celly, and Lekks receiving sentences of between four and 10 years.

The two remaining members, J Emz and Spenny, vowed to push on. But they faced more trouble at Auckland International Airport when J Emz was denied entry over prior convictions.

There was one man left standing. Spenny was on his own. The Powerstation was sold out, and none of his band mates were with him.

What would you do?

Sydney drill group Onefour.

What happened next is the climax of Against All Odds, a fiery, compelling, and at times ugly 82-minute doco about Onefour’s troubled beginnings, their meteoric rise, and the constant drama surrounding them.

Be warned: the film’s opening 20-minutes contain a lot of violence.

It doesn’t glorify it, but it doesn’t gloss over the fact that Onefour’s five members grew up in the Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt surrounded by some pretty brutal stuff.

(Watching this reminded me of our own immensely talented yet extremely troubled rap group Red Eye Society, whose turbulent history I profiled for the Herald on Sunday in 2017.)

It’s when Spenny gets to the Powerstation that this doco really takes flight. The footage is something to behold – the frothing crowd crushes forward and raps along with every word, even though only one of the group’s five members is on stage.

I have seen some wild shit go down in the Powerstation, from Odd Future’s incendiary 2012 performance after being banned at the Big Day Out, to someone face-planting on the floor after flying off the upper deck during a Lil Yachty show.

I broke my nose at a Shihad show there. It required two surgeries to fix it. No regrets.

You’re always guaranteed a good time there. As Beastwars singer Matt Hyde told me when I ranked the Powerstation the city’s best venue for Metro: “You know where you stand with a band when they play The Powerstation. You're either going to see them on the way up, or on the way down. There's no in-between."

Onefour were clearly on the way up, and it’s a concert I always regretted missing. The Netflix footage shows my regrets were correct: this was a had-to-be-there gig, one that those in attendance will probably tell their grandkids about. (What happened afterwards wasn’t quite as memorable, according to The Daily Mail.)

Now, thanks to this beautiful and brutal Netflix documentary, I’m right there experiencing it.

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The week ahead…

• Speaking of the Powerstation, Scottish noise-rockers Mogwai today confirm a return to New Zealand with an Auckland show on March 1. They’ll also play Wellington’s Opera House on February 29. Tickets are on sale from Friday. (Pack your earplugs; Mogwai is LOUD.)

• Tickets for Sampha’s Powerstation show a few days earlier, on February 23, are on general release. I keep banging on about this but honestly, this is one you don’t want to miss. Grab one here.

• Live and Incubus are joining forces for a show that couldn’t be more 90s if it tried. They’ll bring hits like ‘Nice to Know You’ and ‘Lightning Crashes’ to Christchurch’s Wolfbrook Arena on April 2, and Auckland’s Trusts Arena on April 4. (I’m told pre-sale demand has been huge.) General release is at 9am today: Christchurch is on Ticketek; Auckland is on Ticket Fairy.

• Hold fire on picking up an extremely expensive Limp Bizkit ticket; promoters told me they’re attempting to open up Spark Arena a little more so they can fit another few thousand in (more about this on Wednesday.)

• Recently I listed every upcoming summer music festival and nearly got to 70. Well, I found more: now we’re at 75. I’ll keep updating that list here.

• With Onefour, Milli Vanilli, Talking Heads and the Taylor Swift concert film, we’re blessed with some great music docos right now. On Wednesday, Netflix unveils one about Robbie Williams and it has great reviews: The Telegraph ($) calls it “explosive”. The big questions: will it feature Simon Sweetman? Or Robin Reynolds?

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