The years have not been kind to the musicians who formed the fabled scene that coalesced in Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1980s. Martin Phillipps, leader of the Chills, died last year. Hamish Kilgour, drummer and co-founder of the Clean, took his own life in November 2022. Andrew Brough, guitarist for the Straitjacket Fits, died in non-suspicious circumstances in 2020; David Wood, the same band’s bass player, succumbed to cancer in 2010. On and on it goes.
In 2019 Shayne Carter, leader of the Fits (as well as Dimmer, the DoubleHappys and more), published an excellent memoir. He called it Dead People I Have Known. Sections from it form the spine of a new documentary by New Zealand film-maker Margaret Gordon titled Life in One Chord, named after one of the Fits’ early songs.
