Last week Into The Void played live at the Lyttelton Yacht Club on Friday night and the Wunderbar on Saturday – a real treat for a city chronically starved of live bands.

I went to both nights and it was bliss – this was the first rock band I had seen since the February quake. With venues few and far between in Christchurch at the moment, I got to thinking about previous Into The Void gigs I had seen. I first saw them at the Subway sometime in the late 1980s, but for the classic ITV gig you could look to any one of the numerous Saturday nights they played at the Dux over the past twenty years. They always went down a treat. But for me, perhaps the most memorable performance was at the Carlton Hotel in 1990, when Ronnie van Hout sang his vocals down a telephone line from Melbourne.

ITV's studio on Colombo Street was a write off after February, although thankfully the USAR team that searched their building managed to recover their guitars and drums on their way out. Sadly not their fender amps however – they are now probably part of the new landfill site at Lyttelton Harbour.

But back to last weekend. The Yacht Club gig featured an unusual support act – the Dead C meets ITV – as Robbie Yeats and Bruce Russell teamed up with Jason Greig for over forty minutes of unrestrained and unrehearsed guitar and drumming noise. ITV's best song was 'motorbike', which features one of my all time favourite guitar intros by Greig, before it builds into an awesome cacophony of driving rhythm and vocals. Looking forward to more gigs such as this in the coming months.

The Wunderbar sustained further damage from Monday's quake so I guess we wont be seeing any live music there for a while. But at least it's still standing. Not so lucky the Subway and the Carlton, both of which have been demolished, and the Dux which sits forlornly in limbo.