Here’s a thought.

Imagine you were in a band when you were a kid in the late 1980s. The band didn’t last much more than a couple of years and in that time you recorded just four songs, for a small indie label.

They were good songs, released on cassette, but hardly anyone got to hear them before the band called it quits in 1990.

Dunedin band 'The Perfect Garden' in the 1980s. Photo: Supplied

Life goes on and your shot at rock stardom is a distant memory.

Roll forward 34 years. The owner of a small American record label somehow finds one of your songs on YouTube and is instantly a fan. Before you know it, your music is being re-released internationally on vinyl.

Surprised? You bet you are.

You can’t make this stuff up. It just doesn’t happen in the real world.

But it has happened to Southland musician and music school co-owner Aaron Ives, whose band The Perfect Garden from the late 80s are enjoying something of a renaissance decades after having their day in the Dunedin music scene.

There are two key players in this unlikely turn of events: Rob Mayes, musician, sound engineer, longtime music fan and owner of Christchurch indie label Failsafe Records; and Christian Fritz, DJ, longtime music fan and owner of Minneapolis indie record label MPLS Ltd.

More on them later.

Ives found himself drumming in The Perfect Garden in March 1989, aged 17.

A seventh-former at Dunedin’s St Paul’s High School, he’d recently returned from a stint as an AFS exchange student in Japan, where’d played in a punk band.

Drummer Aaron Ives in The Perfect Garden. Photo: Supplied

Ives had been mates with guitarist Kieron Flaherty since form two.

Flaherty invited him to join The Perfect Garden after their original drummer left.

Flaherty was right into British bands such as The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Stone Roses, and Ives quickly became initiated.

The influences can be heard loud and clear in The Perfect Garden’s music, much of which was co-written by the band members.

The band’s other members were singer Karen Hewitt, bass player Martin Quinn and guitarist Shane Walker.

The Perfect Garden’s melancholy guitar-driven alt sound, image-conscious style and introverted, shoe-gazing stage delivery made them a perfect support act for prominent Dunedin bands The 3Ds and The Bats at legendary venues such as the Empire Hotel.

They also rubbed shoulders with Christchurch bands Dolphin, Black Spring and the Holy Toledos.

Such a close-knit music scene it was.

Three true stories:

1. The Perfect Garden won a QEII Arts Council grant in 1990, but as they had already broken up the award went to The Holy Toledos instead.
2. The distinctive sounding guitar Andrew Brough used to record The Straitjacket Fits’ seminal 1988 single She Speeds - a lawsuit-era Ibanez Gibson copy – was later bought by Kieron Flaherty. You can see it in the She Speeds video. Flaherty used that guitar to record the tracks that became the EP titled A Place Not Far from Here.
3. The 3Ds’ brilliant album Hellzapoppin was recorded in the Ives family’s former home on a hill overlooking Port Chalmers. Legendary New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere was a neighbour. He gave young Aaron a painting of the hill for feeding his cats. It now hangs on Ives’ living room wall in Invercargill.

Ives says although The Perfect Garden members wrote songs and rehearsed them every week, “we had no idea about anything technical – we were only mimicking what we were listening to”.

This amounted to mainly British and Scottish alternative bands, the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain, and the C86 scene, which stemmed from a cassette compilation of rising bands put out by the influential NME magazine in 1986 and spawned noisy guitar bands with female singers such as The Primitives and Darling Buds.

Although the band members had little belief in their own technical ability, they certainly had a sound.

Even today it sounds fresh and seductive.

It’s no doubt the quality that endeared The Perfect Garden to Rob Mayes, who mixed the band’s live sound whenever they played in Christchurch.

A record label owner with a laser-guided ear for recording up-and-coming Christchurch bands, Mayes was himself a bass guitarist in Dolphin, Throw and Springloader.

His Failsafe Records label roster included name acts such as Loves Ugly Children and The Holy Toledos, to name just two of many.

His vast collection of original recordings is undoubtedly the most comprehensive archive of Christchurch music in existence.

It was Mayes’ doing that The Perfect Garden ended up recording their EP, A Place Not Far from Here.

On 17 and 18 March 1990 the band set up their gear in a vacant office space upstairs in the Christchurch Horticultural Hall for a three-day session during which four songs were recorded by Kevin Stokes and mixed by Mayes.

Nineteen-year-old Aaron Ives’ drum parts were finished on day one.

The four songs recorded were Amelia, Swirl, Into the Ground and End of the Perfect Sunshine.

For many years the only evidence it had ever happened was on the cassettes of rough mixes Mayes gave the band members.

Then, out of the blue, in 2017, Mayes contacted Ives and Flaherty – the only two former bandmates still in touch at the time – saying he was keen to remaster and release the recordings.

It was only at that point that The Perfect Garden signed a contract with Failsafe, and Mayes released a limited-edition compact disc of the EP, complete with cool art and a booklet, contained in a double gatefold cover.

“It’s beautiful,” Ives says. “Between 2017 and 2023 he sold a handful of copies.” Ives laughs. “One sold to Moscow, one sold to Brazil, about five went to the US and another went to my mum.”

Around 2015 somebody had made a rudimentary video for End of the Perfect Sunshine and posted it on YouTube, where at last count it had been viewed 2,400 times.

Ives thinks this is how Christian Fritz, the Milwaukee equivalent of Rob Mayes, discovered The Perfect Garden.

Fritz, like Mayes, is a hardcore indie music fanboy and, also like Mayes, runs his own record label, MPLS. He wanted to release the EP on vinyl.

Ultimately, an arrangement was reached and Mayes released the masters to Fritz. Ives and Flaherty agonised for two months over what image to use on the cover.

Three hundred copies were pressed, and the vinyl is being distributed in New Zealand by Flying Out for $65 plus postage.

MPLS Ltd, which bore the cost of the production, is marketing the release in the US, where it has received favourable reviews, including in New York Magazine.

“That’s what you start a band for,’’ Ives enthuses.

“Stuff like this. When you’re that age, anyway.

“For us it just seemed to languish for a long time. But then Rob made this beautiful CD and then Christian’s released the vinyl. All these years later to finally get some recognition, it’s quite unbelievable really.”

Although he’s still in touch remotely with his old mate Kieron Flaherty, Ives isn’t sure they’ll be able to get the band back together for a reunion show anytime soon.

Shane Walker is in Canada. Karen Hewitt lives in Tasmania. Martin Quinn is back in Dunedin.

Flaherty lives in Cambridge, England, and Aaron Ives runs Music South, a music school and recording studio, in Invercargill, with his partner Hollie Longman.

Having been in the business most of his adult life, Ives knows only too well there’s not a lot of money to be made in music.

“It’s rewarding for the soul, not the bank balance,” he laughs.

“Taylor Swift is pretty safe on top of the music rich list.”

The Perfect Garden’s A Place Not Far from Here is available on vinyl from Threes and Sevens Records, Flying Out, Failsafe and Bandcamp, special edition CD and digital download on Bandcamp, hear it on Spotify or find The Perfect Garden on YouTube.