May 4, 2025 • 22 mins
Buzz Moller is a New Zealand musician and actor, originally from Upper Hutt. He went to Upper Hutt High School, Rathkeale College and later studied at the University of Auckland. He met longtime collaborator Andrew “Mac” Macaskill, and the pair formed the beginnings of the band Voom after jamming at the Sweetwaters Festival in the early '80s. Since then, Buzz has led the band through decades of indie magic, releasing cult-fave albums like Now I Am Me and Hello, Are You There?—the latter named one of NZ’s 100 Essential Albums.
Fronting Voom, Buzz has delivered everything from long pauses, lineup changes, and surprise comebacks—yet Buzz’s ear for melody and heart-on-sleeve songwriting has kept Voom beloved by fans and fellow artists alike.
Outside of music, Buzz made three appearances in the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, playing Cletis, Tyron, and Zachariah. Whether he’s singing about love, loneliness, or the strange beauty of everyday life, there’s always a spark of something real—and unmistakably his.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk sed B.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Joe, good Day, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cown
my guest tonight. He's got a solid layer of fans
all across the country and they're delighted that he and
his band are putting out a new album and doing
a tour. Welcome indie rock legend Buzz Moller from Boom
Muzzbollermus Butler always start the show off a spoonerism.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Con Jallen, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's fantastic that you're here, and fantastic that outcomes another album.
You're churning them out. It's not only been what twenty
years since you.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Last Yeah, when you were talking to Delaney, he said
that there wasn't today and it was someone else. That
was the guy from Out in the Bush.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And oh Derek lind Yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
And he was saying that the gap between his albums
is getting longer and longer as he gets older.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, he also said they're getting better and better, so
yours getting better and better, and.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
I was thinking, cray of the gaps between my albums
get longer and longer. It's gonna be about thirty years
before the next one.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So that is your Why has it taken so long?
Is it just that you don't care about your music
well career?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, that because I mean you're still performing and you're
writing stuff, and people still like the stuff that you're doing.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So it could be a long and complicated answer, or
I could just say something flippant.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
No, I'm not doing anything till not until about for
another and a half hour or so. But let's go
with the flippant.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yeah, I just got busy having kids, Okay, I got
I got involved in real life. Well, and I would
like to say it's it's a pleasure. I didn't realize
that we were going to be live tonight. I thought
possibly it could be pre recorded.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
But it's real.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
This is real life.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yes, and I thought maybe you had been replaced by
AI or something else, but you're.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Not your authentic, real, one hundred genuine John Cown.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yeah, they won't be able to call it real life
anymore if they if they swapp it.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So you've you've just got distracted raising a cropper kids.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, between me and Janie we had four.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And you know, I'm a plaster or so I'm out
there sort of earning my dollar by dollar. Yeah, you know,
making pokey outside corners on concrete buildings.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And now I've heard some plasters say they're particularly proud
of the fact that they can do their outside corners.
You know, I just imagine for a minute, folks, when
you considered it an internal corner, you know that would
be that'd be tricky, But the outside one may have
even trickier.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Where it sticks out towards you.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yes, when you're jip stopping, you have a metal corner
that you put on called a slim lane, and you
stop that on the outside. You build it completely out
of concrete with a piece of board straight edge.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well there you go, voom fans tuning in to listen
to what buzz Mode has got to say, and here
he is talking about the secrets of sticking out corners.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
It can be the name of a block, my memoir or.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Now, you've got a tour coming up to and a
bit later on in the show, I'll be giving the
tour dates. As you're playing around the country, your album
is going to be released on May sixteenth, and uh,
let's listen to one of the tracks from your new album.
(04:08):
Really is a musician. That's fantastic, that's trouble. And there's
how many album how many tracks on your album fourteen fourteen,
and they're all as good as that.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah, they're all quite different from that. They're sort of
like an eclectic collection of songs that were done at
different times. It's not like a Ramones album where every
song sounds the same and you just put it on
a party. But every Voom album seems to be full
(04:42):
of eclectic songs that were made over a bumbling decade
of different scenarios and situations.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But then again, there is a woominess and that seems
to be the funny element to it. It sounds like
you're enjoying your music.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
I think that is probably true, and that's probably related
to the fact that maybe we haven't put out an
album for twenty years. Is is that we only.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Do it we enjoy.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It's not a job, it's a hobby. We only do
it for fun.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
It's driven by motivation rather than discipline, if you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm motivation rather than discipline. I know exactly what you mean, so.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
When you feel like it, yeah, I guess it's like
for ten years I was a teacher teaching songwriting, and
I used to talk a lot about discipline and you
know how important it was, but I never actually managed
to apply it myself.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well. But then again, you did have the motivation because
you just did it by habit. And I've heard you
describe how you do your songwriting, and you've done it
in a couple of different ways. I was quite intrigued
that one of the first ways you used to do
it was just come home and just start singing.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, well Boom, which is the only band that
I've been in, really, I started that in ninety two
when I was thirty years and before that, in my twenties,
I didn't do any music properly or any sort of
public performance or anything. But I used to do it
(06:19):
every day since I was a little boy, and I'd
make up songs all the time, and I only ever
did it as a sort of a like a release
or like a diary, or just something that made me
feel good. It was just a funny little thing that
I did ever since I was little was just make
up tunes, make up songs, sing them in my head,
(06:41):
keep them to myself.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Did you record them?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yes, some of them I recorded.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
I was always mucking around with old cassette decks and
stuff like that. And in my twenties I was a sharebroker.
I used to come down Queen Street and my suit
and trade shares on the stock exchange and stuff. I
was a trader. At night, I'd go home and I'd
sing for an hour into my cassette player. I don't
(07:07):
know why I used to do it. I just make
up songs all the time. And I had this cassette
of about a box of about three hundred cassettes in
it of stuff just me singing, wailing away, you know,
of stream of consciousness type thing, not finished songs, just singing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But that must have given you such a lot of experience.
It's like an it works away every day.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
So yeah, yeah, it was almost like an ass Spurgers
type stimming activity. I was just doing it because it
was pleasurable, diving off into my imagination and singing about
any old thing that came to mind. And I'd done
it for years and years, and then eventually I had
(07:50):
some friends who said you've got to you've got to
form a band and come and so I ate a
couple of friends who bullied me into playing a gig
with a band and putting a band together, and that's
when that all started.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And when you were writing music with the band, how
did you write music with them? Because you are people
just talk about what a wonderful songwriter you are, and
if people browse through your back catalog of songs, you'll
they'll be blind away, first of all by just the
earworms there, those catchy little phrases and things like that,
(08:24):
but also the lyrics that grab hold of you. So
you're you're incredibly proficient and well known as a songwriter.
And yet how did you write them with your band?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Improvise them?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So Mac, who will turn up and see what happened.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Mac, who was my mate who we started off the
band together. He came back and said, let's put a
band together. And I've got all these ideas like I
love the Pixies and he you know, he, and I said,
nah bug and all that. It's just like improvising, go
jam and I'll make you know, like what first thing
that comes into mind, you know, And because that's all
(09:00):
I've been doing. My whole entire life is just improvising
by myself. So that's all I knew how to do.
So I could write a song on the fly. And
I had this very strong sort of philosophy that if
you weren't making it up on the spot, it wasn't real, right,
(09:20):
And if you were playing, if you were writing a
song which you then later on performed, when you were
performing it later on, it wasn't It wasn't real because
you were acting it, re enacting it or whatever. So
unless you were making it up on the fly, it
wasn't truly real.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So that was a strongly held philosophy. Was it the
right philosophy?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, I mean, what would Elvis Presley say about that?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
That's very interesting that you say Elvis, because it was
Elvis that changed my mind on that. I was obsessed
with improvising. And I saw him on TV once singing
a song that was obviously pre written, and he hadn't
even written it, so he was singing someone else's song,
and I was so moved by his performance of it
because I could feel he really meant it as he
(10:06):
was singing it. It was like that changed my opinion
on it, It's like emotion can be real in a
re enacted performance. I guess a great actor can do
that as well.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Right, I knew you must have changed your philosophy, because otherwise,
how could you teach songwriting for ten years? Otherwise it would
just be the kids, the people's students turn up on
the first lesson and you say, just make it up.
We made money for the schourse. And now, if you've
just joined us, my guest tonight is Buzz Moler from Voom,
(10:40):
and we're talking more about his life and his career
and the things that he talks at, the things that
he thinks about, and his music. After the break, this
is Real Life on News Talk ZB. Welcome back to
real life. I'm John Cown talking with Buzz Mola from
Voom and a much younger Buzz Mola recorded that song Beth,
(11:00):
probably back in the nineteen nineties. Beth, and there's a
story there.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
There's definitely a story there. Yeah, that was my girlfriend
at the time, was called Beth. She's actually the mother
of my daughter, Grace, who's now twenty three.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That song I dreamed it and I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I have a crazy brain for dreaming. I just have
all these crazy epiphany type dreams, and you know, I
would wake up and that song had been going around
and round in my head all night, and I was
like worn out by the morning with this melody and
I knew what it was about, and I just ran
downstairs and recorded it. And it was basically about, you know,
(11:42):
apologizing to Beth for not going to Australia because she
had gone off there and I was supposed to go
and join her, but I was doing the kid show
on BFM, and I had this band which was starting
up and stuff, and I never I went over for
lots of visits, but I never actually moved over there.
And then it came to the time where she started
singing another guy and I was like, ah, you know, anyway,
(12:05):
I had that song and I played it to my
friend Mac and he says, so, what's it about, And
I said, well, it's obvious I'm apologizing to Beth, you
know whatever. I'm not planning on putting it out with
the band. I just want to play it to her
down the phone. And he said, well, I didn't know
(12:26):
that's what it was about. You're talking about the moon
and the lake and something like that, and I was
like ah, and he said, why don't you just write
exactly what you mean? And so I went back down
there and I, you know, racked my brain and wrote
exactly literally what I meant, which was quite awkward because generally,
(12:46):
you know, boys that tend to sing and I don't know,
like analogies or safe words or something like that. But
I just wrote it very very literally what I meant.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And the lyrics actually say when you went to Australia
and I said I'd come over.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I worked very hard on them, you know. And then
I played it to her down the phone and she
cried when I played it to her, and I was
like yes, And that was my only goal for that song.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So that song was just a personal apology. It was
somehow it leaked onto an album.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
It's leaked onto an album through a guy called Trevor
Ricky who used to own a record label called Pagan
and Antenna Records, and we were signed to him, and
he asked me for a new song to put on
the radio, and I gave him a song and it
was on a cassette and he was listening to it
before he took it up to the radio. Station, and
(13:37):
a friend of his, Johnny Fleury, was around there and
the cassette played and then and he thought, yep, cool.
And then the cassette carried on playing and flipped over,
as cassettes did back then, and on the back of
the cassette was that recording of the best song, which
I hadn't intended him to.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It was just your personal apology.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Yeah, And they both sat there in silence listening to it,
and they go, we're taking that one up to the radio,
and they took it up without telling me. And then
a friend of mine a few weeks later, Techno, he
came up to me on the street and goes, oh,
loving the new song will be a and I was going, yeah, cool,
and then he started singing those lyrics about Australia and stuff.
Was going, what do you mean, how did you How
do you know that song?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You know?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
And he said, oh, it's number one on ber Fam
and blah blah blah, and I just had this crushing
moment of embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
No one's meant to hear that. That's so embarrassing. That's
my real feelings.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It isn't amazing how some songs, probably artists push and
promote and try and get out there in front of people,
and this one that sneaks out somehow drops out of
your pocket and it's the airwaves and becomes a hit.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, and I was so embarrassed by it.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Hey, there's so much we can talk about. One of
the things I'm interested in is you're a musician, you're
a plasterer. But if you give your family tree a
good hard shake, everything that seems to drop out seems
to be engineers and architects and professionals and things. You
grew up in this little beliefist of suburbs and upper Heart. Yeah,
and so your family doesn't normally turn out musicians and plasters,
(15:03):
does it.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
No, There was no musicians in my family and no plasterers.
So a total black sheep in that regard.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Dad was an engineer, yeah, and he was.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
A very clever kind of technical guy. And his father
was a doctor. And on my mom's side, they're all farmers,
you know, who could fly planes and you know, pull
tractors apart and all that sort of stuff, and very
sort of capable technical people.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So you say you're a black sheep, and well, but
you did it? Be calm? I a professional career A hidiot.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, I was good at maths and science and all
that sort of stuff, and I did a I was
going to go to med school for a while. And
then I decided that if I was going to be
an artist of any sort, I needed to have money.
So I decided to do it be calm. I don't
know what I was thinking. I did a bit calm
and but but slowly over time I just started doing
(16:04):
more and more music. It's just something I just can't
stop doing automatically. I just make up songs all day
in my head. I can remember as a little kid
making up tunes, you know, walking home from school.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You've talked about your head a bit. You've talked about
how you have dreams, that talked about epiphanies. You've talked
about your inspiration and things like this. Do you reckon
your brain works a bit differently?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Possibly?
Speaker 4 (16:31):
When I was little, I used to rock and roll
and my mother was worried about it. She took me
to a psychologist and he said he's aspergers, or they
didn't have aspergers about they're called autistic or whatever. And
she goes, no, he's not, and she took him away
all in a big huff and I used to have
these trances. So you know, if I rubbed my hand
(16:53):
on a wall, that rubbing sound, I could flip into
this trance where I was in a different universe with
different sounds and speeds and tapes.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And you were talking about that. You use the word
stimming when you were talking about the scene. And that's
the sort of a thing that people on the spectrum
talk about. Yeah, it's I mean, it's great that people
have insights into themselves now that sort of sort of
see it as being within the just part of the spectrum,
the white, the bouquet of and do you see that
(17:24):
has been fertilizing something creative within you.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
I don't know, I guess. I guess all brain types
are useful in a in a gene pool, and you know,
like all body types are useful in a rugby team.
All brain types are useful in a gene pool.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Use my body type would be in a rugby team.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
But anyway, carry Yeah, you could you could pack in some.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The orange boys.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
With rugby ball. So I don't know, Yeah, I guess.
You know, people say that Einstein was on the spectrum,
you know, and he obviously had some amazing talents, but
it meant that he was maybe not able to organize
himself by himself, or put his socks on properly in
(18:14):
the morning or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So when it comes to things like finishing a song
and getting some sort of out, that's hard. That's hard
for you.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Yeah, I'm good at I'm good at improvising a new
one and then a new one and then a new one,
but finishing it. I remember John Lennon saying the only
reason he finished songs was ambition. He you know, because
if he didn't finish them, he couldn't put them on
the radio, he couldn't.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Get to the top of the pops.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
It was only ambition that drove him to be organized
to finish it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Hey, well, in that you had these options, you know,
you could see medicine, you can see commerce, you could
see these things like that. What does success look like
for you?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
What?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
How do you when do you get your biggest buzz?
When do you when do you think, yeah, that was
really worth doing.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
When I feel like I'm doing what the universe wants
me to do as opposed to what humans civilization at
the moment wants me to do.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Universe that sounds fot that sounds spiritual.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Well, you know, like if you're doing if you're following
your natural talents or your natural tendencies or the things
that give you dopamine or the things that you're naturally
talented at. If you're following in that direction, you're kind
of in sync with how the universe made you. So
it's obviously made you attract to certain things or good
(19:35):
at certain things, like the gifts that you've been given,
and it's your job to sort of give them back
to the world in your lifetime. So you should be
doing those things.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And so you're a very fortunate person and that you've
discovered that for yourself, making music and being able to
plaster sticky out corners.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I'm happy there, I am. That's me.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
There a lot of people that would envy that because.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
A good name for a band.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Maybe, but yeah, so if that's what success looks like,
have the actual fun of playing. Do you enjoy getting
in front of a crowd and getting a crowd buzzing
with you?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I love it. Yeah, there's nothing like that. You know.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
It's it's almost like a spiritual type of gathering where
we all connect.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It's like when a whole room is singing a song
with you. It feels like it's not an egotistical thing.
It's more like you're you're with You're with everybody.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay. That gives you your biggest buzz? What centers you
and stills you when you're feeling stressed, when things are
getting on top of you. What brings you back to
the center of buzz Moller?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Well, my family.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah, have a great family, a great partner, kids, lovely
house and everything.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That's very cool.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
It's very easy for me to just like go into
my own head and dream away in my imagination.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
That's always a very calm.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And find yourself inside you there.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I can escape very easily.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Hey, it's I'd love to talk to you longer. I'm
looking forward to talking to you after the show. Actually,
But if people are wanting to catch Voom, you can
see them at There's Something Good is Happening to Auckland
Friday twenty third, twenty fourth and Raglan thirtieth and Littleton
thirty first in Wellington and you can buy tickets from
(21:45):
Under the Radar dot co dot nz, ormoshtexs dot co
dot nz. I've been talking to Buzzmoller from Voom and
it's been a great, great fun doing so looking forward
to being back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
For more from News Talk sed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on Irradio.
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk sed B.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Joe, good Day, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cown
my guest tonight. He's got a solid layer of fans
all across the country and they're delighted that he and
his band are putting out a new album and doing
a tour. Welcome indie rock legend Buzz Moller from Boom
Muzzbollermus Butler always start the show off a spoonerism.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Con Jallen, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's fantastic that you're here, and fantastic that outcomes another album.
You're churning them out. It's not only been what twenty
years since you.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
Last Yeah, when you were talking to Delaney, he said
that there wasn't today and it was someone else. That
was the guy from Out in the Bush.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And oh Derek lind Yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
And he was saying that the gap between his albums
is getting longer and longer as he gets older.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, he also said they're getting better and better, so
yours getting better and better, and.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
I was thinking, cray of the gaps between my albums
get longer and longer. It's gonna be about thirty years
before the next one.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So that is your Why has it taken so long?
Is it just that you don't care about your music
well career?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, that because I mean you're still performing and you're
writing stuff, and people still like the stuff that you're doing.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So it could be a long and complicated answer, or
I could just say something flippant.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
No, I'm not doing anything till not until about for
another and a half hour or so. But let's go
with the flippant.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yeah, I just got busy having kids, Okay, I got
I got involved in real life. Well, and I would
like to say it's it's a pleasure. I didn't realize
that we were going to be live tonight. I thought
possibly it could be pre recorded.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
But it's real.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
This is real life.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yes, and I thought maybe you had been replaced by
AI or something else, but you're.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Not your authentic, real, one hundred genuine John Cown.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yeah, they won't be able to call it real life
anymore if they if they swapp it.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So you've you've just got distracted raising a cropper kids.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, between me and Janie we had four.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And you know, I'm a plaster or so I'm out
there sort of earning my dollar by dollar. Yeah, you know,
making pokey outside corners on concrete buildings.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And now I've heard some plasters say they're particularly proud
of the fact that they can do their outside corners.
You know, I just imagine for a minute, folks, when
you considered it an internal corner, you know that would
be that'd be tricky, But the outside one may have
even trickier.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Where it sticks out towards you.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yes, when you're jip stopping, you have a metal corner
that you put on called a slim lane, and you
stop that on the outside. You build it completely out
of concrete with a piece of board straight edge.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well there you go, voom fans tuning in to listen
to what buzz Mode has got to say, and here
he is talking about the secrets of sticking out corners.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
It can be the name of a block, my memoir or.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Now, you've got a tour coming up to and a
bit later on in the show, I'll be giving the
tour dates. As you're playing around the country, your album
is going to be released on May sixteenth, and uh,
let's listen to one of the tracks from your new album.
(04:08):
Really is a musician. That's fantastic, that's trouble. And there's
how many album how many tracks on your album fourteen fourteen,
and they're all as good as that.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah, they're all quite different from that. They're sort of
like an eclectic collection of songs that were done at
different times. It's not like a Ramones album where every
song sounds the same and you just put it on
a party. But every Voom album seems to be full
(04:42):
of eclectic songs that were made over a bumbling decade
of different scenarios and situations.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But then again, there is a woominess and that seems
to be the funny element to it. It sounds like
you're enjoying your music.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
I think that is probably true, and that's probably related
to the fact that maybe we haven't put out an
album for twenty years. Is is that we only.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Do it we enjoy.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It's not a job, it's a hobby. We only do
it for fun.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
It's driven by motivation rather than discipline, if you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm motivation rather than discipline. I know exactly what you mean, so.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
When you feel like it, yeah, I guess it's like
for ten years I was a teacher teaching songwriting, and
I used to talk a lot about discipline and you
know how important it was, but I never actually managed
to apply it myself.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well. But then again, you did have the motivation because
you just did it by habit. And I've heard you
describe how you do your songwriting, and you've done it
in a couple of different ways. I was quite intrigued
that one of the first ways you used to do
it was just come home and just start singing.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, well Boom, which is the only band that
I've been in, really, I started that in ninety two
when I was thirty years and before that, in my twenties,
I didn't do any music properly or any sort of
public performance or anything. But I used to do it
(06:19):
every day since I was a little boy, and I'd
make up songs all the time, and I only ever
did it as a sort of a like a release
or like a diary, or just something that made me
feel good. It was just a funny little thing that
I did ever since I was little was just make
up tunes, make up songs, sing them in my head,
(06:41):
keep them to myself.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Did you record them?
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yes, some of them I recorded.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
I was always mucking around with old cassette decks and
stuff like that. And in my twenties I was a sharebroker.
I used to come down Queen Street and my suit
and trade shares on the stock exchange and stuff. I
was a trader. At night, I'd go home and I'd
sing for an hour into my cassette player. I don't
(07:07):
know why I used to do it. I just make
up songs all the time. And I had this cassette
of about a box of about three hundred cassettes in
it of stuff just me singing, wailing away, you know,
of stream of consciousness type thing, not finished songs, just singing.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But that must have given you such a lot of experience.
It's like an it works away every day.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
So yeah, yeah, it was almost like an ass Spurgers
type stimming activity. I was just doing it because it
was pleasurable, diving off into my imagination and singing about
any old thing that came to mind. And I'd done
it for years and years, and then eventually I had
(07:50):
some friends who said you've got to you've got to
form a band and come and so I ate a
couple of friends who bullied me into playing a gig
with a band and putting a band together, and that's
when that all started.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And when you were writing music with the band, how
did you write music with them? Because you are people
just talk about what a wonderful songwriter you are, and
if people browse through your back catalog of songs, you'll
they'll be blind away, first of all by just the
earworms there, those catchy little phrases and things like that,
(08:24):
but also the lyrics that grab hold of you. So
you're you're incredibly proficient and well known as a songwriter.
And yet how did you write them with your band?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Improvise them?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So Mac, who will turn up and see what happened.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Mac, who was my mate who we started off the
band together. He came back and said, let's put a
band together. And I've got all these ideas like I
love the Pixies and he you know, he, and I said,
nah bug and all that. It's just like improvising, go
jam and I'll make you know, like what first thing
that comes into mind, you know, And because that's all
(09:00):
I've been doing. My whole entire life is just improvising
by myself. So that's all I knew how to do.
So I could write a song on the fly. And
I had this very strong sort of philosophy that if
you weren't making it up on the spot, it wasn't real, right,
(09:20):
And if you were playing, if you were writing a
song which you then later on performed, when you were
performing it later on, it wasn't It wasn't real because
you were acting it, re enacting it or whatever. So
unless you were making it up on the fly, it
wasn't truly real.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
So that was a strongly held philosophy. Was it the
right philosophy?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well, I mean, what would Elvis Presley say about that?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
That's very interesting that you say Elvis, because it was
Elvis that changed my mind on that. I was obsessed
with improvising. And I saw him on TV once singing
a song that was obviously pre written, and he hadn't
even written it, so he was singing someone else's song,
and I was so moved by his performance of it
because I could feel he really meant it as he
(10:06):
was singing it. It was like that changed my opinion
on it, It's like emotion can be real in a
re enacted performance. I guess a great actor can do
that as well.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Right, I knew you must have changed your philosophy, because otherwise,
how could you teach songwriting for ten years? Otherwise it would
just be the kids, the people's students turn up on
the first lesson and you say, just make it up.
We made money for the schourse. And now, if you've
just joined us, my guest tonight is Buzz Moler from Voom,
(10:40):
and we're talking more about his life and his career
and the things that he talks at, the things that
he thinks about, and his music. After the break, this
is Real Life on News Talk ZB. Welcome back to
real life. I'm John Cown talking with Buzz Mola from
Voom and a much younger Buzz Mola recorded that song Beth,
(11:00):
probably back in the nineteen nineties. Beth, and there's a
story there.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
There's definitely a story there. Yeah, that was my girlfriend
at the time, was called Beth. She's actually the mother
of my daughter, Grace, who's now twenty three.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That song I dreamed it and I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I have a crazy brain for dreaming. I just have
all these crazy epiphany type dreams, and you know, I
would wake up and that song had been going around
and round in my head all night, and I was
like worn out by the morning with this melody and
I knew what it was about, and I just ran
downstairs and recorded it. And it was basically about, you know,
(11:42):
apologizing to Beth for not going to Australia because she
had gone off there and I was supposed to go
and join her, but I was doing the kid show
on BFM, and I had this band which was starting
up and stuff, and I never I went over for
lots of visits, but I never actually moved over there.
And then it came to the time where she started
singing another guy and I was like, ah, you know, anyway,
(12:05):
I had that song and I played it to my
friend Mac and he says, so, what's it about, And
I said, well, it's obvious I'm apologizing to Beth, you
know whatever. I'm not planning on putting it out with
the band. I just want to play it to her
down the phone. And he said, well, I didn't know
(12:26):
that's what it was about. You're talking about the moon
and the lake and something like that, and I was
like ah, and he said, why don't you just write
exactly what you mean? And so I went back down
there and I, you know, racked my brain and wrote
exactly literally what I meant, which was quite awkward because generally,
(12:46):
you know, boys that tend to sing and I don't know,
like analogies or safe words or something like that. But
I just wrote it very very literally what I meant.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And the lyrics actually say when you went to Australia
and I said I'd come over.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I worked very hard on them, you know. And then
I played it to her down the phone and she
cried when I played it to her, and I was
like yes, And that was my only goal for that song.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
So that song was just a personal apology. It was
somehow it leaked onto an album.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
It's leaked onto an album through a guy called Trevor
Ricky who used to own a record label called Pagan
and Antenna Records, and we were signed to him, and
he asked me for a new song to put on
the radio, and I gave him a song and it
was on a cassette and he was listening to it
before he took it up to the radio. Station, and
(13:37):
a friend of his, Johnny Fleury, was around there and
the cassette played and then and he thought, yep, cool.
And then the cassette carried on playing and flipped over,
as cassettes did back then, and on the back of
the cassette was that recording of the best song, which
I hadn't intended him to.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It was just your personal apology.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Yeah, And they both sat there in silence listening to it,
and they go, we're taking that one up to the radio,
and they took it up without telling me. And then
a friend of mine a few weeks later, Techno, he
came up to me on the street and goes, oh,
loving the new song will be a and I was going, yeah, cool,
and then he started singing those lyrics about Australia and stuff.
Was going, what do you mean, how did you How
do you know that song?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
You know?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
And he said, oh, it's number one on ber Fam
and blah blah blah, and I just had this crushing
moment of embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
No one's meant to hear that. That's so embarrassing. That's
my real feelings.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It isn't amazing how some songs, probably artists push and
promote and try and get out there in front of people,
and this one that sneaks out somehow drops out of
your pocket and it's the airwaves and becomes a hit.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yeah, and I was so embarrassed by it.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Hey, there's so much we can talk about. One of
the things I'm interested in is you're a musician, you're
a plasterer. But if you give your family tree a
good hard shake, everything that seems to drop out seems
to be engineers and architects and professionals and things. You
grew up in this little beliefist of suburbs and upper Heart. Yeah,
and so your family doesn't normally turn out musicians and plasters,
(15:03):
does it.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
No, There was no musicians in my family and no plasterers.
So a total black sheep in that regard.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Dad was an engineer, yeah, and he was.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
A very clever kind of technical guy. And his father
was a doctor. And on my mom's side, they're all farmers,
you know, who could fly planes and you know, pull
tractors apart and all that sort of stuff, and very
sort of capable technical people.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So you say you're a black sheep, and well, but
you did it? Be calm? I a professional career A hidiot.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, I was good at maths and science and all
that sort of stuff, and I did a I was
going to go to med school for a while. And
then I decided that if I was going to be
an artist of any sort, I needed to have money.
So I decided to do it be calm. I don't
know what I was thinking. I did a bit calm
and but but slowly over time I just started doing
(16:04):
more and more music. It's just something I just can't
stop doing automatically. I just make up songs all day
in my head. I can remember as a little kid
making up tunes, you know, walking home from school.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You've talked about your head a bit. You've talked about
how you have dreams, that talked about epiphanies. You've talked
about your inspiration and things like this. Do you reckon
your brain works a bit differently?
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Possibly?
Speaker 4 (16:31):
When I was little, I used to rock and roll
and my mother was worried about it. She took me
to a psychologist and he said he's aspergers, or they
didn't have aspergers about they're called autistic or whatever. And
she goes, no, he's not, and she took him away
all in a big huff and I used to have
these trances. So you know, if I rubbed my hand
(16:53):
on a wall, that rubbing sound, I could flip into
this trance where I was in a different universe with
different sounds and speeds and tapes.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And you were talking about that. You use the word
stimming when you were talking about the scene. And that's
the sort of a thing that people on the spectrum
talk about. Yeah, it's I mean, it's great that people
have insights into themselves now that sort of sort of
see it as being within the just part of the spectrum,
the white, the bouquet of and do you see that
(17:24):
has been fertilizing something creative within you.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
I don't know, I guess. I guess all brain types
are useful in a in a gene pool, and you know,
like all body types are useful in a rugby team.
All brain types are useful in a gene pool.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Use my body type would be in a rugby team.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
But anyway, carry Yeah, you could you could pack in some.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
The orange boys.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
With rugby ball. So I don't know, Yeah, I guess.
You know, people say that Einstein was on the spectrum,
you know, and he obviously had some amazing talents, but
it meant that he was maybe not able to organize
himself by himself, or put his socks on properly in
(18:14):
the morning or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So when it comes to things like finishing a song
and getting some sort of out, that's hard. That's hard
for you.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Yeah, I'm good at I'm good at improvising a new
one and then a new one and then a new one,
but finishing it. I remember John Lennon saying the only
reason he finished songs was ambition. He you know, because
if he didn't finish them, he couldn't put them on
the radio, he couldn't.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Get to the top of the pops.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
It was only ambition that drove him to be organized
to finish it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Hey, well, in that you had these options, you know,
you could see medicine, you can see commerce, you could
see these things like that. What does success look like
for you?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
What?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
How do you when do you get your biggest buzz?
When do you when do you think, yeah, that was
really worth doing.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
When I feel like I'm doing what the universe wants
me to do as opposed to what humans civilization at
the moment wants me to do.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Universe that sounds fot that sounds spiritual.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Well, you know, like if you're doing if you're following
your natural talents or your natural tendencies or the things
that give you dopamine or the things that you're naturally
talented at. If you're following in that direction, you're kind
of in sync with how the universe made you. So
it's obviously made you attract to certain things or good
(19:35):
at certain things, like the gifts that you've been given,
and it's your job to sort of give them back
to the world in your lifetime. So you should be
doing those things.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And so you're a very fortunate person and that you've
discovered that for yourself, making music and being able to
plaster sticky out corners.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I'm happy there, I am. That's me.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
There a lot of people that would envy that because.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
A good name for a band.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Maybe, but yeah, so if that's what success looks like,
have the actual fun of playing. Do you enjoy getting
in front of a crowd and getting a crowd buzzing
with you?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
I love it. Yeah, there's nothing like that. You know.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
It's it's almost like a spiritual type of gathering where
we all connect.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It's like when a whole room is singing a song
with you. It feels like it's not an egotistical thing.
It's more like you're you're with You're with everybody.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Okay. That gives you your biggest buzz? What centers you
and stills you when you're feeling stressed, when things are
getting on top of you. What brings you back to
the center of buzz Moller?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Well, my family.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah, have a great family, a great partner, kids, lovely
house and everything.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That's very cool.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
It's very easy for me to just like go into
my own head and dream away in my imagination.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
That's always a very calm.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And find yourself inside you there.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah, I can escape very easily.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Hey, it's I'd love to talk to you longer. I'm
looking forward to talking to you after the show. Actually,
But if people are wanting to catch Voom, you can
see them at There's Something Good is Happening to Auckland
Friday twenty third, twenty fourth and Raglan thirtieth and Littleton
thirty first in Wellington and you can buy tickets from
(21:45):
Under the Radar dot co dot nz, ormoshtexs dot co
dot nz. I've been talking to Buzzmoller from Voom and
it's been a great, great fun doing so looking forward
to being back with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
For more from News Talk sed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on Irradio.
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