Hallelujah Picassos - Rewind the Hateman book - Amplifier

town to go and buy a copy of Drinking With
Judas – the second album from Hallelujah
Picassos.
Sure, label mates Shihad and Head Like A
Hole had it in the rock & roll stakes, Second
Child were ok, and no disrespect to him now,
but as a 13 year old musical snob, Bryan Bell
was just a bit too Eddie Vedder for my tastes,
so there were no Dead Flowers posters on my
wall.
But the Picassos? They were like nothing
else. Even their name, it represented things
I didn’t know, didn’t understand. In their
photos they seemed wild, dangerous, and
their music was this incredible melting pot of
influences that I was only just beginning to
understand.
Simply put, they sounded like nothing else
in the world. And on that day, they became
my favourite band in the world. It was this
album that sent my New Zealand music
obsession into overdrive and I decided,
almost then and there, to implement what
was my “by the time I’m 25” dream. To be a
DJ on bFM.
By the late ’93/early ’94 my lack of passion
for school had gotten worse and now my
friends were a bunch of misfits who hung
around Albert Park, at Real Groovy Records
and Corner Records on Lorne Street and
so within a few months I began what was,
I guess, the first day of the rest of my life.
After doing bum jobs at bFM for a couple of
weeks, the Programme Director at the time,
Graeme Hill, gave me a graveyard shift with
another young man whom I’d met the second
day I worked there.
His name was Steven Moylon Hassen and he
was to become such a big part of my life for
the rest of my teenage years, it marked the
beginning of a very crazy adventure that I
was about to embark on – but I didn’t know
that yet. Steve and I bonded over many things,
namely wayward adventures, and of course
music, especially Kiwi music.
He was the only guy I’d ever met that really
shared the same passion for music that I had,
and he really knew music. From the moment
we met we were inseparable and of course,
my whole entire career in radio and television
started out with him.
The one thing that Steve and I bonded on the
most though was The Picassos, we both loved
them – The Picassos were our favourite band
and if memory serves me right, the first day I
met Steve he was wearing a Picassos tee – and
I remember being pissed cause I didn’t wear
mine that day, so I felt like he had the upper
hand in the “I love the Picassos” face-off.
So, that fateful graveyard shift rolled round,
and although we were both nervous as (I think
it was more because we doing the show after
Andrew Black, who for a 14 year old was just
really, really intimidating) – The first song we
played had to be the Picassos, and the song
we choose? – the greatest medley of all time –
Hitskin/Show No Grief/Half Breed Hysteria.
It’s funny now when I think back, that it was
the first track I ever played on radio.
‘Drinking With Judas’ is such a monumental
release for me and it represents such a major
beginning in my life, tunes like Rewind,
production-wise still stand the test of time
today, and whereas there were other Kiwi acts
with Jamaican influences at the time, it was the
sonics of dub and the riddims of dancehall that
in my mind the Picassos got and understood,
and it was genuine what came through in
their music rather than the obvious ‘spliff and
Rastaman vibration’-type stuff that I didn’t
really identify with.
I loved basslines and rhythms, and still to
this day, ‘Rewind’ is such an amazing piece of
production. Bobbylon sounds like nothing else