Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
Come to think of it, closer to home the bodgie & widgie subculture - clearly American-inspired - would probably have been another factor in pulling away from the influence of 'Mother England'.
And then came the 60s.
I'm trying think of another country on planet earth too, that would have so compliantly re-introduced the core of the British feudal honours system as we did just a couple of years back. Mother England is not as distant as we would claim it to be.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
I hear a underlying accent accent in pre-70s recordings of NZers that seems quite distinct to me. I quite like it.
There was a regionalism too that seems to be more and more subsumed these days - at least to my ears. Trekking around the South Island in the early 1980s you'd find pockets where you had to ask folk to repeat themselves or talk slowly. I'm sure they had the same issues with we northern poseurs.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
As Simon will be able to testify, the love affair continues ...
Your grin to I Feel Love at 3am has stayed with me :)
I think you said "Too many wobbly bits in this version though..." or words to that effect
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
I suspect that Britain's joining of the EEC was a contributing factor
Close to Home, Pukemanu, Glide Time, Goodbye Pork Pie and, later, Shortland St I'd agree.
the cargo cult of Mother England had suddenly turned out to be a mirage
See, I don't think that's ever really evaporated - or as much as we would like to think it has. New Zealand still seems thoroughly obsessed with the home nation in a way that has long since passed in Australia.
Returning infrequently as I do, it's something that hits you straight away.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Paul Campbell,
(maybe dealing to disco was more of an in-the-trenches-thing rather than the grand vision)
Indeed - there was a rough affinity with the tougher end of funk and soul, even when it mutated into disco. That turned when disco was usurped by the middle masses - Bee Gees and the like - and pulled away from its gay and urban roots.
The disco/punk wars alluded to in that story were as much to do with the fact that you took your life in your hands walking to Zwines, past Babes disco, as any musical divide. The bloat of prog and stadium rock was the greater evil musically at the time assuming my distant memory is not tainted by time. The post-punk scene was also the first locally to really embrace early hip-hop.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Peter Darlington,
Ha, think that's the one I have.
Worth a fortune if you do. I have one too which I bought from a 10c sale bin at Peaches Records on the corner of Queen and Victoria months later.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Paul Campbell,
must have been '75?
end of 76 or early 77 - Dylan Tait's piece and the first TV interview with the Sex Pistols anywhere as I recall
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they're engaged in our last real cultural fling with Anglophilia
Oddly too, the primary New Zealand punk influences musically (not always visually but that too) up to the middle of 78 were not British but a mix of New York Punk and pre-punk and - crucially - glam. It was an art school movement.
Until the last quarter of 77 probably less than 20 people in NZ owned a UK punk 45 or album. It simply wasn't released in NZ and there was no such thing as an imported record - or very very few. We got ours via Tim Blanks, a New Zealander who was Bryan Ferry's assistant, and my ex-girlfriend who was PA to the Melody Maker editor and sent the odd parcel of imagery and 45s.
Until October 77 the only UK punk releases in NZ were the first Damned album and the widely disliked debut from The Stranglers - oh and Anarchy in the UK on EMI, now listed amongst the world's very rare records.. It was in the stores for two days before being withdrawn.
The labels in NZ had however issued New York Dolls years before and the likes of Television, The Ramones, Patti Smith and Richard Hell which all likely influenced the sound of the early bands as much as any British acts. And Bowie/early Eno period Roxy.
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There's no sense of the kind of mash-up you'll find on the new Tourettes album of punk rock hip hop
To be fair, this was the generation that first listened to reggae in New Zealand and introduced it into the music being made - long before Marley came to NZ. And the kids were buying Funkadelic 45s as feverishly as they were buying punk - more so since you simply couldn't buy many punk records in NZ at the time and you had to work far harder to get the music that you needed to hear to be part of the tribe than you do now. They just didn't play them out.
In a way though, this piece is depressingly tabloid with the set pieces (the girls in bed - Neil's idea not the girls' as he claims) and the interviews with the 'kids'. It captures little of the essence of the scene but, rather - in retrospect - played a part in trashing it by focusing on the ascendant nihilism that really was largely absent up to then. By June 78 many of the originators of the scene had largely moved on. We hated this documentary when it aired for that reason.
I do, however, love the interview with Rooter - later the Terrorways - and most especially with Kerry Buchanan - later the best hip hop writer of his generation - perhaps ever - in NZ.
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to George Darroch,
Yes. You'll mainly be eating tofu, simple vegetables, and the same Indian you trust back home.
But watch out for the salt - often in the cheaper places it's chicken salt. Asking for vegetarian and actually getting it in SEA are quite divergent experiences. At least in the Indian places there is often a religious reason to expect.