From the Vaults

Chris Clark: I Want To Go Back There Again (1967)

2 Jul 2012 | 2 min read | 1

Of the few white acts on Berry Gordy's Motown label, Chris Clark -- with platinum blonde hair, pale skin and a kind of Marilyn Munroe appeal -- was undoubtedly the whitest. "Getting my singles played on radio was difficult," she said later. "Once [DJs] found out I was white they thought Motown had tried to trick them. "I always hesitate to say any of that, or that... > Read more

The Wailers: And I Love Her (1965)

27 Jun 2012 | <1 min read

Although Bob Marley came to prominence in, and dominated, the Seventies, we often forget he was an exact contemporary of the Beatles in the Sixties. When they were in Abbey Road recording Can't Buy Me Love, the Waliers were in Studio One in Kingston asking the rude boys and razor gangs running wild in the streets to Simmer Down. Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone were also... > Read more

Howard Morrison: Howie the Maori/Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (1982)

21 Jun 2012 | 1 min read

The late Sir Howard Morrison was a complex character. He was a master of self-placement in the public domain (at Michael Jackson's side when the singer visited) and although some skewered him for snuggling up to politicians and dignitaries, he was also a populist and popular figure, and someone who throughout his life quietly -- and sometimes overtly -- advanced various Maori causes. He... > Read more

Unknown soprano: The Goodness of Chairman Mao is Deeper Than the Sea (1967)

20 Jun 2012 | <1 min read

While there is doubtless some historic or artistic merit in many of tracks posted at From the Vaults, sometimes we pick them just because we can. There may well be artistic merit of some kind in this song and there is certainly historic significance. Whether that's enough to make anyone want to listen is another matter. Yes, the old record is scratchy and yes, Chinese sopranos can be an... > Read more

Coast: Why; A Peace Medley (1970)

18 Jun 2012 | 1 min read

The war in Vietnam threw up hundreds of songs -- taking about every political position imaginable -- but this track is interesting as an early example of a musical montage. Not a "song" as such but a medley of vocal samples (including one from American Vice President Spiro Agnew), sound effects and hooks from anti-war songs by Neil Young and the Plastic Ono Band, this piece... > Read more

The Nu Page: When the Brothers Come Marching Home (1973)

15 Jun 2012 | 1 min read

The Nu Page were a one-single group signed to the Motown subsidiary label MoWest which released songs by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Thelma Houston and Tom Clay (whose version of Abraham Martin and John/What the World Needs Now is Love gave them a top 10 hit). Of Nu Page very little is known but this song -- celebrating the closing overs of American involvment in Vietnam -- had some... > Read more

Bob Dylan:Belle Isle (1970)

14 Jun 2012 | 1 min read | 1

Because of the length and breadth of his catalogue, it is hardly surprising Bob Dylan should have appeared at From the Vaults from time to time (see here), not always with great, lost songs either. A few are real duds. His myth-destroying Self Portrait double album of 1970 is one of those oddities you can return to and find the oddball rubbing shoulders with the truly awful and... > Read more

The Buckinghams: Foreign Policy (1969)

12 Jun 2012 | <1 min read

Very few today would even remember the MOR group the Buckinghams from the late Sixties. Their big hit was Kind of Drag ("when your baby don't love you") -- although Hey Baby ("they're playing our song") got a little radio mileage. The Chicago-based Buckinghams (and think about that location in the late Sixties) were a close-harmony group like the the Ivy League out of... > Read more

Bike: Save My Life (1996)

11 Jun 2012 | 1 min read | 2

Unless you actually know Andrew Brough, he is one of the great lost figures in recent New Zealand rock. One of the songwriters in Straitjacket Fits alongside Shayne Carter, he jumped/was pushed in 1992 after their second album Melt and briefly re-emerged in the mid Nineties when he seemed to get the wind behind him with Bike which became a vehicle for his distinctive, melodic songwriting.... > Read more

John Giorno: Suicide Sutra (1973)

7 Jun 2012 | 1 min read

An important warning before you listen: Do not push play if you are suicidal, off your medication or are having a really hard time of it right now. Especially don't push play if you have access to a firearm. This disturbing piece was written by New York poet John Giorno (born 1936) and appeared as a piece on his Dial-A-Poem phoneline which he founded in the late Sixties. People could ring... > Read more

The Inhalers: Nico on a Bike (1990)

6 Jun 2012 | 3 min read | 1

When Nigel Beckford of Wellington got in touch two years ago about the album by the band Sven Olsen's Brutal Canadian Love Saga, he opened a door into a very strange and wonderful world. That album Songs From the Bottom of a Hilltop went into our Best of Elsewhere 2010 list and has, as expected, become a collector's item. There were only 400 pressed and it was an elaborate package of two... > Read more

Screamin' Jay Hawkins: Monkberry Moon Delight (1972)

4 Jun 2012 | 1 min read | 1

With Paul and Linda McCartney's Ram album being given the reissue treatment -- and album critically derided on release in '71 but a longtime Essential Elsewhere album and now picking up highly favourable reviews -- it is timely to post this track by the great Screamin' Jay Hawkins (who is interviewed here). Throughout his career McCartney to that point had drawn on interesting source... > Read more

Johnny Cash: The Chicken in Black (1984)

3 Jun 2012 | <1 min read

Fortunately for Johnny Cash he didn't die around the time he hit rock bottom in the mid Eighties. If he'd gone then -- before his career resurrection through the American Recordings and the Walk the Line film -- he might not have been remembered as the man-mountain solid rock of country, the troubled man of faith or the middle-finger rabble-rousing guy of that famous photo. Imagine if The... > Read more

The Flys: Love and a Molotov Cocktail (1978)

29 May 2012 | <1 min read

1977 was a confusing year in Britain: pub-rockers Dr Feelgood were at an all-time peak, the Sex Pistols, the Clash and others advanced the punk agenda, and off on the margins were power-pop bands which hadn't quite seen the changes coming. The four-piece Flys out of Coventry -- a little distant from the London scene -- were in the latter category, they knew a power pop-cum-New Wave riff but... > Read more

Red Hot Peppers: Witchwood (1976)

28 May 2012 | <1 min read | 2

New Zealand's short-lived but impressive Red Hot Peppers in the Seventies revolved around multi-instrumentalist Robbie Laven (originally from Holland) and singer-guitarist Marion Arts. Laven was quite a musical threat, he could apparently play about 50 instruments and on their debut album Toujours Yours he plays guitars, sitar, fiddle, lyre, qin, sax, dobro, banjo, mandolin, flute . . .... > Read more

Leon Russell: Back to the Island (1975)

18 May 2012 | 1 min read

Leon Russell is like the Kevin Bacon of rock: there are six degrees of separation between him and anyone else. Actually, that's not true. There are about three. Leon to the Beatles? Well he was at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh so that takes care of that one . . . and opens enormous doors to others. And Leon to Dylan? Same gig, more and different doors opening. To Elvis? He... > Read more

Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan: Jimmy Berman (1971)

17 May 2012 | <1 min read | 1

Given they had so much in common -- a love of words, counterculture cachet, Jewish upbringing and so on -- it is a surprise poet Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan didn't write and record together more often. There was a session with poet Anne Waldman in 1968 (which had Arthur Russell on cello), others in '71 with a similar group (and a sitar player) and another in '81. Oddly enough it seems... > Read more

Norman "Hurricane" Smith: Oh Babe, What Would You Say (1972)

15 May 2012 | 1 min read

Norman Smith was an unlikely chart-topper when he knocked Elton John off the top of the US charts with this, his second single: he was 49 at the time and prior to that his career had been firmly on the other side of the microphone as an engineer and a producer. But what a career he had enjoyed. In his late 30s he'd been taken on as a sound engineer at EMI's studios in Abbey Road and was... > Read more

Status Quo: When My Mind is Not Live (1968)

14 May 2012 | 1 min read

For the past 40+ years, Status Quo have been a heads-down boogie band in denims and "rockin' all over the world". So it's hardly surprising people would know them for nothing more than that enjoyably reductive style. However . . . For a few years in the late Sixties the original band (with the inevitable line-up changes) flirted with trippy hippie rock of the psychedelic... > Read more

The Saints: (I'm) Stranded (1976)

12 May 2012 | 1 min read

Bob Geldof once observed, "Rock music of the Seventies was changed by three bands -- the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints". That the Saints out of suburban Brisbane -- hardly the home of rock music, let alone an angry and intelligent version -- should be in that illustrious company comes as no surprise to anyone who followed their career from this exceptional debut single,... > Read more