From the Vaults

Neil Colquhoun: Talking Swag (1972)

15 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

For many years in the late Seventies/early Eighties, when working at Glenfield College in Auckland, I had no idea that the slight, quietly spoken music teacher Neil Colquhoun was the same person who had compiled an important collection of New Zealand folk songs for the book Song of a Young Country, and had subsequently produced a double album of the same name for Kiwi Pacific. On that album... > Read more

Sarah Vaughan: I Want You (1981)

11 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 2

Because we so often think of music as existing in distinct and different periods -- the Swing Era, Fifties rock'n'roll, the Beatles period etc -- we tend to forget just how much overlap there was. Punk, disco and Gary Glitter all co-existed . . . and people like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were around long enough to sing songs by the Beatles. And so was Sarah Vaughan who, in 1977,... > Read more

I Want You

Missing Persons: Words (1983)

9 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 1

Anyone who stumbled onto this LA New Wave band on You Tube a decade or so ago couldn't help note what others were saying: Lady Gaga had ripped off the style (and some of the sound) of frontwoman Dale Bozzio's sense of big-hair and glammed-up look. Perhaps more corrrectly Lady Gaga had simply taken it as a starting point, just as scantily-clad former Playboy bunny Bozzio took a little... > Read more

Elvis Presley: Do the Vega (1968)

1 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 1

Elvis Presley's catalogue of songs in the Sixties is pretty scattershot. Sessions would often be very productive (the material was hardly demanding) and so the songs would be drip-fed over a period of years with no real sense of chronology. But this was a strange one. Originally recorded for the film Viva Las Vegas, the song wasn't included on the tie-in EP (which incidentally didn't... > Read more

The Archies: Sugar Sugar (1969)

24 Sep 2023 | 2 min read | 2

Okay, it's irritating rot-your-teeth bubblegum . . . but wait, there is more to this than you might think -- and remember it came out in the year of Altamont, Hendrix, the Manson murders and so on. The Archies weren't a proper group of course, they were actually singer Ron Dante, session musicians and the great Toni Wine (more of her shortly). At the time this song was selling millions,... > Read more

Pavlov's Dog: Julia (1975)

18 Sep 2023 | 1 min read | 2

Sometimes there is just That Voice . . . a vocal delivery which is arresting, sublime, idiotic and otherworldly all that same time. And so it was with the vocals of David Surkamp, the singer with the prog-rock band Pavlov's Dog out of St Louis, who seemed to possess in equal parts the sound of Robert Plant's high drama, Leo Sayer on steroids and someone grabbing his balls in vice.... > Read more

Joe Boot and the Fabulous Winds: Rock and Roll Radio (1958)

11 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

From The Ventures (Walk Don't Run) and the Kingsmen (the garageband classic Louie Louie of '63) through Jimi Hendrix, the grunge bands (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam etc) to the Posies, Sleater-Kinney and Modest Mouse, the Pacific Northwest has been a breeding ground for rock'n'roll. Identifying the first rock'n'roll record to come out of the region however has been rather more difficult --... > Read more

Steve Allen and Shona Laing: Brother and Sister (1974?)

21 Aug 2023 | 2 min read

Steve Allen (Alan Stephenson) is best – and perhaps only – known for his hit Join Together which was chosen as the anthem for the Commonwealth Games held in Christchurch in 1974. There's no denying its uplifting and affirming quality and it was re-recorded in an international version editing out the specific reference to Christchurch. It was a big hit but also something of a... > Read more

Prince: Soul Psychodelicide (1986)

14 Aug 2023 | <1 min read | 1

This previously unreleased track came to light on the massive Super Deluxe edition of Sign O' The Times and is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least being what he shouts out: "Ice cream". According to Lisa Coleman -- of Wendy and Lisa, and one of the expanded Revolution band here -- when Prince was "in a good mood or we were having a good show, he would sometimes... > Read more

Age of Consent: Fight Back Rap (1983)

13 Aug 2023 | <1 min read

Who said the gay power movement lacked humour? Quite the opposite in fact, and humour is a powerful weapon. This one-off appeared on the Harvey Kubernick-curated double album English as a Second Language in 1983 on Freeway Records, another in his series of recordings of poets and spoken word artists from LA which included people like Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Wanda Coleman, Henry Rollins, Charles... > Read more

The Gun: Race with the Devil (1967)

7 Aug 2023 | 2 min read | 2

In the age of Cream (mid '66 to late '68), Blue Cheer and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the power trio became an established form and this group from Buckinghamshire -- two brothers and another -- took the hard rock, guitar pyrotechnics sound to the top of the British charts with this single. And that was about it for them. That's actually not entirely true, but there is a back-story and... > Read more

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas: I Should be Proud (1970)

1 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

On Anzac Day a few years ago I was invited onto National Radio to talk about songs from the era of the Vietnam conflict. And rather than going for some of the more obvious ones (Universal Soldier and so on) I picked some of the more vehemently pro-American and patriotic ones (Universal Coward by Jan Berry about draft dodgers). Then I moved from the truly creepy Letter to a Buddie and into... > Read more

Prince and Miles Davis: Can I Play With U? (1986)

21 Jul 2023 | 1 min read | 1

Not long after Prince met Miles Davis by chance in an airport in December '85, the little purple one penned this song – mostly little more than an over-busy extended funky groove and riff – in the hope that the dark magus would get together for a collaboration. Davis, perhaps remembering he'd missed the opportunity to play with Hendrix because at the last minute he (Davis) had... > Read more

Golden Harvest: Give a Little Love (1978)

10 Jul 2023 | 2 min read | 8

In the late Seventies, Golden Harvest from Morrinsville were briefly riding a wave of success. Their song I Need Your Love had been a huge hit and won them single of the year, and their self-titled debut album -- recorded at Stebbings by Rob Aickin with Ian Morris engineering -- delivered on their promise. With the exception of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower delivered faithfully in the... > Read more

Pearl Bailey: A Man is a Necessary Evil (1956)

19 Jun 2023 | 1 min read

Hard to believe, but Richard Nixon once appointed an "Ambassador of Love". It was 1970 (after Woodstock, but also after Altamont and the Tet Offensive) and more unbelievable was just who he appointed . . . the sassy, sultry and sometimes topless vaudeville and cabaret star Pearl Bailey who had recorded albums in the Fifties and Sixties "for adults only". The frequently... > Read more

The Embers: Planet 10 (1963)

5 Jun 2023 | <1 min read

Auckland band the Embers had a residency at the Shiralee nightclub in the central city and were a go-to backing band for artists like Jimmy Sloggett, Ray Woolf, Lou and Simon and many others. There was certainly considerable talent in their revolving door line-up. At various times the great guitarist Doug Jerebine (aka Jesse Harper), bassist Yuk Harrison (too many bands to mention, but... > Read more

Brave Combo: My Girl Lollipop (1982)

25 May 2023 | <1 min read

It was a brave combo indeed that took piano accordion polka-rock to the good people of Denton, Texas. But in the early Eighties this four-piece pulled together ska, Tex-Mex, rock, waltzes, rumba, zydeco and tango (with polka) and delivered their own versions of Hendrix's Purple Haze, Iron Butterfly's Inna Gadda Da Vida and The Twist, Perfidia and some mad originals. They played in... > Read more

Johnny Devlin: Matador Baby (1958)

25 May 2023 | 1 min read

It's widely known that Johnny Devlin was New Zealand's own Elvis Presley -- but unlike Elvis, Devlin wrote his own material. Certainly he covered the hits of the day -- Hand Jive, Wild One, Bony Maronie and so on. But he also wrote some creditable originals like Hard to Get, High Heeled Shoes, Nervous Wreck and so on -- which all were firmly within the genre of Fifties rock'n'roll as we... > Read more

Rufus Wainwright: Medley from Brian Wilson's SMiLE (2009)

22 May 2023 | <1 min read

As most people who follow such things know, the album SMiLE was the one that broke the Beach Boys' composer Brian Wilson. After labouring over it for months and months -- his spirit increasingly battered by complaints about its complexity from within the band, issues with record company and an increasing intake of marijuana which didn't help -- the project was finally abandoned in '67.... > Read more

Odell Brown: Mellow Yellow (1967)

15 May 2023 | <1 min read

The Chess label out of Chicago knew its way around the blues and funk so when swinging and finger-snap funk (like the Ramsey Lewis Trio's 1965 hit The In Crowd) was all over radio, the Chess brothers Leonard and Phil were onto it. The smart money was on songs with instant appeal, like Donovan's Mellow Yellow which organist Odell Brown and his band the Organ-izers -- tenor players Thomas... > Read more