Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Friday Music: Lorde's Mixtape, in reply to Sacha,
Serato
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Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to Rob Hosking,
and so did Blam Blam Blam.
This shot is at Canterbury Uni and it might be the same tour. It says 1981/2 on the back and I’m thinking it’s either The Screaming Blam-matic Roadshow or the Marsha tour.
Edit: although looking at it, it ain't February so ...
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Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to Stephen D. O'Hoy,
I fell asleep about 5 minutes into Knopfler’s first guitar solo and woke up as they played their final song.
I did that for the Doobie Brothers in 1976 or so. Every song of theirs sounded roughly the same so the beginning of the first song segued perfectly into the end of the encore and I was happy. I'd won the ticket on a radio station so like you I didn't feel cheated.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to Simon Bennett,
My first proper date was going to see Split Enz play at the St James in 1981, with the Blams in support.
I was side stage on that gig as part of the Blams touring party. The smoke machine jammed and filled the stage. I was able to wander out onto the stage as nobody could see a thing for an age. I just wanted to say I'd been on stage with Split Enz.
First international: Zep at Western Springs. Almost bankrupted me and the parents thought I was staying at a friends - well I was but we both went.
First paid for local: Probably either Ticket or Space Farm at Levi's Saloon in Customs St - building is still there (see pic).
First free local: Pretty sure it was either Human Instinct or The In-Betweens at school. They both played, I'm just unsure who was first. -
Tell me about it. I crawled into bed at 2am and found myself wide awake at 6.30. This is my new norm, and yep, wine makes it worse. Beer not so much.
The upside is that I also find now that I can deal with long international overnight flights with relative ease, quite painlessly (aside from my back) going into a day with 3 or so hours of fractured sleep bent into an odd shape. That never used to happen and I guess it's the result of needling less sleep.
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Hard News: Friday Music: I like your old…, in reply to Alec Morgan,
Still the Auckland Townhall was bulging at Lou’s two 70s shows if everyone who says they were there was. I was,
I was too, and I had an earlier encounter [this is crossposted from my FB page] in 1977:
I went with [Scavengers] Johnny Volume and Brendan Perry to the 1977 NZ press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel. We said we were from Radio Hauraki or something to get in but the plan was to get Johnny’s guitar signed – it was the same Les Paul Lou had played on the Velvets recordings and legend had it it had been sold by Lou in NZ in 1974 for drugs. Johnny ended up with it a few years on. It didn’t go well as I recall. Lou was less than accommodating and the guitar remained unsigned.
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Fact was, Johnny got up to get it signed – nervous as hell – and walked towards him. Lou and Rachel were sitting talking, probably laughing about the way the NZ MSM’s communal jaw had dropped when Rachel had walked in a few minutes earlier and said, in a well-husky male voice, “Hi Lou”, when Johnny tripped over the cables attached to Lou’s own large video camera. He fell and Lou swore at him and left. It didn’t ever get signed. A year or so later it was dropped and the neck broke. I’m pretty sure Johnny still has it, but it’s not playable.From memory, I think Simon knows the details on that.
Yup. It took a letter/petition from a few of we retail kids at the time to get the Verve albums issued.
In 1980, 6 years after the rest of the world, they also issued the double live album for the first time and it actually charted (when a chart position meant sales).
Loaded was issued earlier in 79 or it may even have been late 78, as it was via WEA and Terence Hogan, who worked their in their art dept., pushed it through.
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Lou Reed’s muse radically expanded what it was possible to talk about in a pop song, and what a pop song could be.
There’s a story told by Bob Dylan about how he was driving along in the car with the radio on in 1964 when he heard – for the first time – I Want To Hold Your Hand.
Rather, he misheard it, maybe because he was, he admits, stoned. He thought Lennon was singing “I get high, I get high, I get high” and Bob’s reaction was “He can get away with THAT in a song!” Of course the real line was “I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide” and it would take a couple more years before a songwriter would be that brazen in a pop lyric.
It is hard to remember / imagine what the mid ’70’s pre internet NZ world was like now but that Transformer album was hugely influential
It’s also easy to forget that for most of the 1970s you simply couldn’t buy any VU in New Zealand. VU & Nico was issued in 1971 without the banana (they used the back on both sides) and immediately deleted. I don’t think the next three albums were released at all (until 1980) or if they were it was token. There was a budget hits album available very briefly around 1974 and, bizarrely, the awful Doug Yule Squeeze album was on local release.
If you wanted Heroin or I’m Waiting For My Man your only choice was live LR versions. Given that, and how pirated tapes of the originals were your only other option, it’s incredible how influential the VU became in NZ.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Next Kids, in reply to Joe Wylie,
A rather slow version of a song that Toy Love made their own.
I’ve got that somewhere live at The Last Resort. Always a live highlight. It’s shame the recent live album had no cover versions as they were always a highlight of the show.
This might have to do: Toy Love do Syd Barrett in a Velvet's stylee
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Next Kids, in reply to Hebe,
The best place to start a New Zealand wake might be with the glorious Dunedin Double EP, or the first Hello Sailor album. -
Hard News: Friday Music: The Next Kids, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
You need to come to Bangkok, Geoff. These are new and they work.
