Matthew Bannister (musician)


Matthew Bannister is a Scottish-born New Zealand musician, journalist, and academic. Originally from Dunblane in Scotland he moved to New Zealand with his family when he was 17.

Musical career

After a stint as a teenager in the late '70's playing rhythm guitar in working men's clubs and other unlicensed venues with Gavin Keen, Graeme Dooley and Spike Quinn in 60's covers band Feedback. In 1980, while he was a student at the University of Otago in Dunedin, he co-founded the band Sneaky Feelings, for which he was vocalist, lead guitarist, and songwriter. After the band dissolved in 1989, Bannister formed Dribbling Darts and worked as a journalist and reviewer. Both bands had music released on the Flying Nun record label. He has also worked briefly with The Mutton Birds. He released a solo album, Moth, in 2007 as One Man Bannister. In 2008 he released an album with The Weather called Aroha Ave, and in 2011 a self-titled album with The Changing Same.

''Positively George Street''

In the mid-1990s, Bannister began writing a memoir about his experiences as a musician in the 1980s Dunedin scene. Partly, this was a response to concerns he had over being "written out" of New Zealand's indie music history: "I published a book... about Sneaky Feelings because I felt we were being written out of the label's history and indeed out of indie history, for example our non-appearance in various articles about Flying Nun, in indie discographies, and in local... rock polls". This book, Positively George Street, was published in 1999.

Academic career

In 1998, Bannister returned to full-time study as a PhD candidate in the Department of Film, TV and Media Studies at the University of Auckland, graduating in 2003. His thesis was entitled White Man's Soul: Pakeha masculinities in popular music of New Zealand / Aotearoa. A revised version of the thesis appeared as a book, White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Guitar Rock, in the Ashgate Popular Music and Folk Series in 2006.
He now works at the Waikato Institute of Technology as Theory/Post Graduate advisor in the School of Media Arts.

Personal life

Bannister's father was a botanist working at Otago University. Bannister is married to Dribbling Darts/The Weather bandmate Alice Bulmer.

Bands