"Dominion Road" is the debut single by New Zealand rock band

The Mutton Birds The Mutton Birds were a New Zealand rock music group formed in Auckland in 1991 by Ross Burge, David Long and Don McGlashan, with Alan Gregg joining a year later. Four of their albums reached the top 10 on the New Zealand Albums Char ...

. The song was released in 1992 as one of four singles to promote the band's debut self-titled album. Despite only spending ten weeks on the New Zealand singles charts and peaking at #31, the song has since become a New Zealand classic, being rated as the 23rd best New Zealand song of all time by the

Australasian Performing Right Association APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwri ...

in 2001. The song has resulted in the installation of a brass plaque in the footpath approximately half-way down the song's namesake street, in a reference to the song's lyrics. Mutton Birds member

Don McGlashan Don McGlashan (born 18 July 1959) is a New Zealand composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for membership in the bands Blam Blam Blam, The Front Lawn, and The Mutton Birds, before going solo. He has also composed for cin ...

wrote the song after seeing a man from a bus window who, per McGlashan, "looked like he had been dealt some difficult hands in life". The song is an imagined backstory for this man and sees him occupying a

halfway house A halfway house is a type of prison or institute intended to teach (or reteach) the necessary skills for people to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. Halfway houses are typically either state sponsored for those ...

on Dominion Road, with the song having been described as a "story of one man's suffering and ultimate salvation".

Music video

Two videos were made for Dominion Road. The first of these was directed by Fane Flaws and filmed in New Zealand, mixing footage of the Mutton Birds performing the song in black and white with colourful footage of Dominion Road and the song's main character. An alternate video was later produced in the United Kingdom, featuring the band performing Dominion Road inside an old armoury building in London.

Track listing

# "Dominion Road" - 3:54 # "White Valiant" - 5:12

Legacy

Despite a lukewarm reception upon release, Dominion Road became a mainstay of 1990s New Zealand alternative rock, and helped contribute to the growing Auckland indie scene separate from the prevailing

Dunedin sound The Dunedin sound was a musical and cultural movement in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand, in the early 1980s. It helped found indie rock as a genre. The scene is associated with Flying Nun Records, an independent label. Bands associated with th ...

. The song is regularly selected amongst lists of New Zealand's best rock music, appearing on compilations including

Nature's Best ''Nature's Best'' is a two-disc compilation album of thirty New Zealand popular music songs, selected by a panel as the top thirty New Zealand songs of all time. Selection The genesis of the idea was the 75th anniversary of the Australasian Per ...

, the Great New Zealand Songbook, and as part of an album supporting an Auckland Museum exhibition on music making in Aotearoa. The song's position on Nature's Best was a result of it being voted as the 23rd best New Zealand song of all time by the Australasian Performing Right Association in 2001, the highest ranked out of four Don McGlashan songs to appear in the top 100. Dominion Road has been covered by numerous New Zealand artists, including

Dave Dobbyn Sir David Joseph Dobbyn (born 3 January 1957) is a New Zealand musician, singer–songwriter and record producer. In his early career he was a member of the rock group Th' Dudes and was the main creative force in pop band DD Smash. Since then h ...

Nadia Reid Nadia Reid (born 23 August 1991) is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Port Chalmers, New Zealand. She has released three albums and toured internationally. Early life Reid was born in 1991 in Port Chalmers, near Dunedin, New Zealand. Sh ...

and Towers. Dominion Road Plaque

In 2013, an unknown artist installed a brass plaque in the

footpath A footpath (also pedestrian way, walking trail, nature trail) is a type of thoroughfare that is intended for use only by pedestrians and not other forms of traffic such as Motor vehicle, motorized vehicles, bicycles and horseback, horses. They ...

approximately halfway down Dominion Road in honour of the song, in order to coincide with events on the street as part of the

Auckland Arts Festival Formerly known as Auckland Festival, Auckland Arts Festival or is an annual arts and cultural festival held in Auckland, New Zealand. The Festival features works from New Zealand, the Pacific, Asia and beyond, including world premieres of new wo ...

. However, changes to the road layout and discrepancies with the music video have led to debate as to where the halfway point described in the song actually is.

Charts

References

{{reflist, 2 1992 singles The Mutton Birds songs Songs written by Don McGlashan 1992 songs