February 1994 in Auckland, the Big Day Out is bursting noisily into life. But as the giant outdoor music festival gets going, one band on the line-up is calling it quits. Eyewitness goes back to the day Dunedin's Straitjacket Fits split.

February 1994 in Auckland, the Big Day Out is bursting noisily into life. The headline acts are American grunge kings Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins. But as the festival gets going, one band on the line-up is calling it quits.

Eyewitness goes back to the day Dunedin's Straitjacket Fits split.

"We kicked both their arses!"

Shayne Carter laughs. I've just asked him what success in the music business looks like and he's got just the story. It's 1994 and his band The Straightjacket Fits is playing the Big Day Out, blowing headliners Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins off the stage.

Two months later, Carter's in a WINZ office in Dunedin applying for the dole. His Case Officer asked if he was living at the drug rehab facility just up the road.

She wanted to know when I was going to get a real job. I thought, you mean like yours? We'd been on that band trip, y'know, taken away to America and feted by major labels. It's a long way from (there) to the WINZ office, but not really. Two months!

Carter laughs again, but without much humour. He sounds more like someone who has accepted that his definition of success has little to do with how others might measure it, or even how he once might have wanted it.

The Straitjacket Fits formed in Dunedin 1986 when guitarist Carter and drummer John Collie, who had previously played together in a band called the Doublehappys, teamed up with bass player David Wood and guitarist and songwriter Andrew Brough. Right from the start, they seemed to have bigger ambitions than a lot of their contemporaries.

They hired a manager (Debbie Gibbs) and with their unique sonic dramas seemingly in place from the start, they signed to Christchurch label Flying Nun less than year after their first gig. In 1987 they released an EP called Life In One Chord. Track number two would become their best-known song.

'She Speeds', written by Carter with the rest of the band, was a classic from the moment it dropped. It made the Top 10 here and got the band attention overseas. One Australian reviewer called it "arguably the greatest debut single of all time". In 2011 Apra would put the song at number nine in their top 100 New Zealand songs.

The band's debut album, Hail, followed a year later and in 1989 the Straitjacket Fits began the first of several international tours…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details