WAIKATO TIMES 30TH AUGUST 2008: A Weather eye - Jeff Neems talks to Matthew Bannister about his time with Flying Nun band Sneaky Feelings, and finds out why merely being able to release an album has kept the musician happy.

Matthew Bannister has worked under many musical monikers, but reckons he's always been doing the same kind of thing.

Bannister now lecturing in media art at Wintec, in Hamilton, was part of notable Flying Nun act Sneaky Feelings, its successor The Dribbling Darts Of Love, and has also recorded as One Man Bannister. This week, he releases his latest effort - Aroha Ave - with his latest musical incarnation, The Weather.

"I've mostly done pretty much the same thing throughout my career, but just under a series of different names really" he says.

"Ive been around for 25 years, and inevidently you end up playing in different bands".

When Sneaky Feelings broke up in 1990, he formed The Dribbling Darts Of Love. "Some of the people I played with then are some of the people I play with now with The Weather ... like Alice (Bulmer), my wife."

While many fans would have loved its peculiarity, Bannister says members of The Dribbling Darts... "at some point pronouced it to be an unsuitable name."

"They thought it was too stupid," Bannister adds.

"So we chose The Weather (for this band) because it's really boring and a name no one can object to.

"We can always look for some help from the elements," he observes dryly.

Bannister says his music is "kind of pop music, really - it's based around songs, and lyrics".

The Beatles, he believes, "are still the obvious influence", although having been so instrumental in the rise of underground and independent New Zealand music, Bannister believes it might be more accurate to term it "alternative pop, imagining a pop music that is a little bit different to pop music today".

He accepts his being part of an underground music scene with Sneaky Feelings, but says the band was "also trying to be overground - we didn't really subscribe to the idea that it's best to be obscure and weird".

"There was always tension about that in the underground movement, about selling out and stuff. We never felt selling out was a problem but other people did."

Bannister, for the record, never brought into the idea that selling out was a bad thing: "I always felt the fundamental function of music was to bring people together, not alenate them.

"I always had in mind a potentially wider audience, because that was one of the good things about pop music in the first place."

Which is not to say he has hopes of a mega-selling album or single.

"I think that's pretty unlikely these days," Bannister says. "Being in the industry at that kind of level these days takes a full time commitment, and a lot of managers, and industry movers ... I'm not really that interested in getting that seriously into it again."

He's happy now just to be able to release an album, and says he "does it as a hobby, as much as anything".

"I regard success now as putting a record out, and having it acknowledged."

Good reviews, a few sales, people turning up to live shows and comments on the website seem to satisfy him as well.

Bannister says his perspective on music has been "tempered by adult realism, and enjoying the process of music making, and not leading to worldwide fame".

Once you stop worrying about prospects for global market domination and fortune, Bannister believes, the process becomes more enjoyable.

Fame and fortune might have been something to strive for when he was 20, but now - at 45 - he's not bothered.

His role at Wintec mean't the institution chipped in to help him release Aroha Ave, through Auckland independent firm Powertool Records. In fact, it was Powertool boss Andrew Maitai who approached Bannister about releasing some of his recordings, and Bannister admits he'd "been without a label for years, and wasn't really motivated to do it myself".

"I suppose I was waiting for someone who was willing. I didn't want to chase record companies around, and try and get them to do things they didn't want to do. I just wanted someone to collaborate with, really.

It allows him to do exactly what he wants, "and that's quite good".

"Now, I am just not too worried about what people are going to think of it."