Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Is there anything besides Golden Harvest 'I Need Your Love'?
There were the great Maori showbands, some of whom were pretty neat. Real Motown Revue stuff. Check http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~mstowers/id47.htm
And there was some killer funk. We used to go and watch Tama around 75 in a club in Newmarket, near the Mandalay. Free form jazz funk.
And largely ignored are the bands that played the Queen Street and South Auckland clubs. Most never recorded but, damn, they could play.
-
Who owns the rights? Do you know, Simon?
Hugh Lynn I think, unless he passed them on to someone else.
I remember seeing Herbs Mk.1 at The Gluepot on Thursday to about 20 people early in 1981, with Colin Hogg and Mo Cammick, and being mightily impressed. I wrote, what I think was, the first live review of the band (for Rip It Up) aboout it and struck up an impromptu friendship with the guys soon after. I have a fairly blurry memory of standing outside the 1981 RIANZ awards (at the Logan Park Hotel) with several Herbs, Prince Tui Teka, and Tim Blam, enjoying herbs, if you will...
The various meetings we used to hold with them in the public bar of the Schooner in the years to follow were always fun too. We city boys didn't know you could smoke that stuff in there and get away with it.
Herbs have been fairly badly served in the reissue stakes..but then so much of our legacy has.
Talking of such..this is interesting
-
too many squeaks in that post methinks....
-
Propeller showed NZ that great nz albums were possible
thanks Rob....I feel humbled reading that. We just took the jump from singles to albums because we had to. There was no way we could ask either band just to carry on making singles forever. But as you say, a couple of years earlier it was almost unheard of for most NZ bands to even make a single. They were very rare beasts only released by the most mainstream of acts, or those with friends in labels (hence our Reptiles singles...Colin Lum at Phonogram was a friend). There was no Zodiac label releasing dozens of garage bands in the 70s. Dozens never made the studio.
I reasonably pleased with how those albums have aged too, both still sound pretty good (with a personal preference for Paradise), my only regret being that a) I've yet to properly remaster the Meemees, and b) the Newmatics album that was next on the list was never finished.
The cost did effectively kill the company ($12k for the Blams and almost $20k for the Meemees) although thanks to a gig or two, Brendan Smyth (then at QE2 Arts who gave us the whole contemporary budget for 82/83...$4K) plus my parents, managed to squeak through. However, we were just a squeak away from placing the Blams with Virgin in the UK, and the Meemees with a very large US indie (Americans loved them) when both split which stuffed that.
-
but this listing site here has it in 1981: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Tall+Dwarfs</quote>
July 1981 to be exact
And, although its in drastic need of an upgrade, which is on the way, I reckon this is the best AK79 page, but I would....
-
Some other comments....The Clean's 'Billy Two' always sounded to me like another take on the Jam's 'Billy Hunt'. It's the aggression thing.
And Tally Ho is pretty much The Subway Sect's Ambition. NZ pop was nothing if not plaguristic back then
But Liverpool's Mighty Wah! lifted the intro from that Clean track for their 82 single 'Remember"...same riff, same keyboard sound...I don't buy coincidence as there was a Clean buzz in the NME a little earlier.
-
With Phil Judd, on Mental Notes and Second Thoughts, they're way, way more out-there and far, far more original; like a sinister marriage between Eno-era Roxy Music, Eno's early solo albums and the (English) Canterbury scene (Soft Machine, Henry Cow, etc). The Beginning Of The Enz comp of early singles is also excellent, too. Overall, it's some of the most warped, truly unique music you'll ever hear.
I'm with you here. Mental Notes was so revolutionary when it first arrived. It's hard to overstate just exactly how much the Judd era Enz redefined the Auckland rock'n'roll landscape in those first years. I remember (says the old bugger) a bunch of us sitting around Taste Records in High Street (its a convenience store opposite the carpark now but in 75 it was almost too cool to go into) waiting for that box to arrive from PYE on release day. The simple fact is that after Mental Notes anything seemed possible, before that it was all Studio One, all so very safe.
Parts of MN sound a bit overwrought now, especially Phil's talking bits..very 7th form, but it changed things.
Myself, I liked their albums less and less after that..nice pop but the edge left with Phil IMO. That said, what I did like tended to be be Neil's and there was a depth and darkness in some of the earlier Crowded House stuff that hinted at Mental Notes.
On a different tack, I've had a copy of the remastered Car Crash Set compilation due out in Germany next year for a while now..incredible stuff and so underrated
-
Totally OT (was there a T?), but that just provoked a memory flash of the early 80s D-cops we used to encounter in Auckland.
They stood out like dog's balls in their dorky leisure shirts, which I presume they thought looked cool and streetwise
or the ones that used to wander Hight Street in their "cool" vinyl jackets that were never quite long enough to hide the handcuffs
-
James,
I don't want to go back and forth on this but your figures are askew again. There is a study, online but I can't find it again, I was reading a couple of days ago, from a New England University which analysed casualty figures over the past few months, going back to last year, which, using data provided by the US military at different times and provided fairly strong evidence of data shifting...ie moving bodies if you will from month to month to improve the next months figures. If that's the case its very hard to apply the word credible to your figures. Even the BBC link you touted said the drop was on some 38% over the same period. Which is it? No, the figures presented to Congress, were heavily manipulated in the understanding that certain sectors would lap it up. After all, making it all up worked in the past.Then we have the US Government Accountability Office whose report contradicts the General's...oh and the CIA's and the DIA's..all of which said the the General was making it up.
There is no evidence to support the claim that the surge has worked in anyway, beyond the touted drop in bodies (which is fantastic whatever be the cause). However several studies in Baghdad have attributed the drop in civilian casualties to one simple fact, illustrated by the huge change in religious demographics...that is that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad is largely complete. Your argument is, and I'm not drawing Bush-Hitler parallels before you jump, saying the the drop in Death Camp figures in early 1945 was a good thing, whereas the truth is there was no-one left, like Baghdad, to kill.
The drop in US deaths means little to me, I'm far more concerned with Iraqi blood, but the drop there can largely be attributed to the fact the Sadr has called a ceasefire..he's largely achieved his short term aims..controls large swathes of Iraq, and is able to wait. In the much touted Anbar, despite the fact that US forces are now largely staying in base , and thus not exposed to IEDs, casualties rose by 50% last month. Al-Anbar has largely been handed back to the tribes and their miltias.
Your contention that things are going swimmingly well in Iraq, in a month where almost 1000 Iraqis died violently (under the new revised rulings as to what can be counted), when Cholera is turning into a huge problem, where, 6 years after it they destroyed it, the richest nation on earth can't provide proper power and water to the masses, where millions have fled, where mercenaries seem to be running unchecked, lacks credibilty.
-
James,
my load of rubbish was supported by the US DOD, and various other US government agencies who disputed the the Petreaus report, and assorted other garbage like the assertion that the 500 killed in the bombings in Kurdistan were not ethnic cleansing..or the removal of the people shot thru the front of the head from the stats. And your on the ground reporters are goodies eh...the same guys who contribute op eds to The Daily Standard and the like...what's Rush thinking on all this, eh? Or Coulter? Give me a break...almost 30 US troops were killed in Anbar last month, and a poll this week showed 100% local Iraqi support for attacks on US troops. Don't believe the hype, James.I'm glad violence has dropped somewhat to the level it was at before the surge. The other argument you can draw from that is that ethnic cleansing in much of Iraq is largely complete..and that, as I believe you'll find if you search a little further, is supported by quite some evidence.
Ok, back to my dark place now...how is it here?