Iggy has his Kiwi band

Media release
Thursday 29 October 2009

Iggy has his Kiwi band

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The auditions have closed and Iggy Pop has his brand new band.

More than 200 New Zealand musicians auditioned for the chance to lay down Iggy’s renowned solo track ‘The Passenger’ online and under the direction of the Godfather of Punk.

It’s all part of a promotion from telecommunications company Orcon for its next generation broadband.

Now the band has been chosen and it assembles on Friday (Oct. 30) to hook up with Iggy in Miami live via Orcon Broadband. They’re spending the day under the maestro’s expert guidance laying down a brand new version of 'The Passenger'.

Iggy’s new band comprises four musicians from Wellington, two from Auckland and one each from Warkworth in Rodney District and Paraparaumu.

The group comprises:
Tia Beaufort (Pukerua Bay, Wellington) & Stephanie Engelbrecht (Evans Bay, Wellington), drums
Charley Davenport (Paraparaumu), cello
Ben Jurisich (Warkworth) & Sam Logan (Karori, Wellington), guitars
Takumi Motokawa (Brooklyn, Wellington), xylophone
Daniel Tate (Onehunga, Auckland), bass
Miho Wada (Remuera, Auckland), flute

The recording session is being streamed live at www.facebook.com/Orcon from around 1pm (NZST) and the finished track is being turned in to a television ad for the company. It will be available for viewing from November 17.

Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett says he’s amazed at the quality and number of musicians who jumped at the chance to audition for the band.

“Iggy obviously has huge pulling power in the global music community. We were expecting around 50 New Zealand musos to audition but in the end we had more than 200.

“It was a pretty tough job screening them down to eight but with Iggy’s help I think we have unearthed some awesome talent.

Mr Bartlett says it looks like it is going to be a pretty incredible re-make of 'The Passenger' and not just a re-hash of the original.

“We are really excited about what is going to come out of this.”

On Friday, the New Zealand band members connect to Iggy’s Miami studio via the Internet with everyone in the band laying down their tracks and Iggy singing the vocals.

The studio is going to capture all the audio and visual feeds and create a unique musical and video rendition of ‘The Passenger’. The music and footage is then going to be used to create commercials and a full music video.

“The internet is enabling Kiwis to do incredible things each day and this helps us prove that,” Mr Bartlett says.

• The Iggy Pop ‘Together Incredible’ auditions were viewed online more than 65,000 times on Facebook and the site attracted close to 4,000 fans.

ENDS

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