Various Artists: Come Fly With Me; Great New Zealand Rock’n’Roll 1964-72 (Sony)

A decade ago it wasn’t easy to find collections of local rock’n’roll but today we’re tripping over them: John Baker’s excellent compilations of 60s garage band rock like Pie Cart Rock’n’Roll and Get A Haircut (the latter coming up to the D4 and Datsuns); the Johnny Devlin collection; EMI’s Day in My Mind’s Mind series of “psychedelic” rock; Andrew Schmidt’s raw Chants R&B collection . . .

We’re spoiled for noise.

This 22 track collection covers similar 60s r’n’b rock territory (La De Das’ Don’t Stand in My Way, Larry’s Rebels’ I Feel Good, Chants R&B I’m Your Witchdoctor, Tom Thumb’s Got Love and so on) then moves into the “slightlydelic” era (of phasing and wah-wah pedals) with the Gremlins (Blast Off 1970), the Avengers (Love Hate Revenge), House of Nimrod’s seriously weird Psychothartic and closing with Blerta’s Dance All Around the World.

Most of these are familiar, but more rare are the Action’s desperate I Can’t Make a Friend, Music Convention’s Indo/sci-fi Footsteps on My Mind (a better choice might have been their mad surf-psychedelic Belly Board Beat), Top Shelf’s power-pop Baby The World Really Turns and a couple of others.

Complier Nick Sampson pays tribute to Baker and others who paved the way, but this is a useful single-disc start on a long and odd journey back in time.

Added: 7 Feb 10