Let's start the way so many clubs start their meetings: with a little housekeeping.

Last week I bemoaned the lack of news about New Zealand shows by English folk-punk singer/songwriter Frank Turner. They were, of course, announced the next day; tickets went on sale Monday.

Turner will be joined by Australian songwriter Emily Barker.

She's great and, as of writing this there were still tickets available via: Destroyalllines.com

OK. More housekeeping. Last Sunday I took in a most enjoyable band at Jack Dusty's, 80s covers outfit Max Headroom, a six-piece with dual male and female singers.

Although the eighties would be about my least favourite decade of music, the band sounded great as they powered through hits by Abba, Peter Gabriel and icons of the era.

Anyone needing music for an eighties-themed event, look no further!

But that wasn't the housekeeping.

I ran into an older musician by the name of Garry Mitchell and had a very entertaining conversation.

He told me that, having read the fabled thousandth column a couple of weeks back [see Blogs on SunLive], he'd found a book by Chuck Palahniuk, whom I'd recommended as someone whose writing has taught me a lot.

Minimalism

Chuck Palahniuk writes very insightful non-fiction; I particularly like his book about the art of writing, Consider This.

He started as a follower of the school of minimalism – whose proponents include Bret Easton Ellis and Amy Hempel - a very strictly disciplined style of writing which comes with a bunch of rules. Think I'm kidding? No abstracts, so no adverbs like ‘irritably' or ‘sadly'; no measurements, so no feet, yards, degrees, or years old; and on and on. Oh, and in minimalism, clichés are called ‘received text'. They're not allowed either, meaning I couldn't use the phrase ‘a little housekeeping'.

However, and this is possibly a however I should have emphasised, and why I owe Garry an apology, Palahniuk mainly writes fiction, and not fiction I would recommend to anyone I don't know well. His are strange and challenging and often unpleasant books.

Fame arrived when a film was made of his novel Fight Club; that's about as straight as he gets.

Moving on, as usual there are many gigs coming up; I'll just focus on next weekend.

There are three very different things at The Mount's Totara Street. Friday (July 21) Wellington pop band Skram are joined by most excellent locals Marmalade Skies and also Iz Waddid Iz. It's an 8pm start, $30 tickets.

On Saturday (July 22) Shihad frontman Jon Toogood presents a solo acoustic night of songs and stories, and word is that these shows are both hilarious and fantastic. It's 8pm and $50.

RetroGrooving

And Sunday afternoon there is a treat for lovers of undercover Kiwi legends. At 2.30pm for $20 you get RetroGroove with support from youth band Area 51. Who are RetroGroove? They're the rare band where I would like to write a full column about each of their members given each's unique contribution to the New Zealand music scene. Problem is, there are eight of them – it's a big band.

Amongst the locals are Chris Gunn, who's played with Human Instinct, Salty Dogg, Larry Morris Band, and Ritchie Pickett; then there's the rhythm section of Wayne Melville (bass with everyone from Midge Marsden to Torch Songs) and Hamilton drummer Neal Reynolds, an absolute legend who was the founding drummer of Dragon and has since played with pretty much everyone famous in New Zealand.

There's guitar from the amazing Gary Verberne (Shona Laing, The Cat's Away and a thousand others), Grant Mason and Bill Forest on horns, and singer Georgia Brill. Oh, and Bill Gilgen on keys, a veteran of Ardijah, The Billy T. James Band, John Rowles and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.

Not bad. And that leaves just enough space to mention a Jam Factory show that sounds enticing. If you like bluegrass music that is. Saturday 22 is You, Me, Everybody, a progressive bluegrass quintet that promises 'the best of Americana in Aotearoa”. They're all virtuoso players and recently found a measure of international fame when their song ‘Stranger' was featured in Netflix's children's series Sweet Tooth. It's a 7pm show, $30.