Notes

The inside story of the rise and fall and rise again of New Zealand's iconic independent record label. Roger Shepherd was working in a Christchurch record shop when he realised that the bands he liked the most needed someone to make their records for them. Flying Nun was born, and rapidly became the home of nearly every new and original band in New Zealand in the 1980s and 90s. The records released by the label came to define a sound - sometimes dubbed the Dunedin sound - that is now part of the nation's musical psyche, and which garnered a cult following internationally. But running a record company is not for the faint hearted. In this long-awaited memoir of the Flying Nun years, Roger Shepherd describes the idealism and passion that drove the project in the first place, and the hard realities of the music industry and managing an ever-changing stable of creative artists. Filled with revealing anecdote and insight, this is the definitive insider history of the one of the most innovative and original record labels of the modern era.