Album Review: Riot 111 - 1981! (1981/2023)

Craig Stephen on a recent Leather Jacket Records compilation / retrospective …

Riot 111 were a band created by politics, discord and violence. Their origins lay in the protests and brutality of the anti-Springbok tour movement of 1981 which divided the country in two.

The quartet left the meagre sum of two singles, as well as an appearance on a compilation album of Wellington bands. All of these records have been virtually impossible to find over the past few years, and punters have had to stump up ludicrous sums to opportunistic sellers to get their hands on that vinyl.

And yet, they left a legacy as one of the very few politically dedicated bands that have come out of New Zealand – Herbs are probably the only other I can think of but in a very different style and method. Kiwi musicians notoriously avoid any whiff of confrontation.

(Blogger’s note: I strongly disagree with this. Herbs and Riot 111 were the mere tip of a rather large political iceberg, and I may feel triggered enough to write a detailed response to Craig’s assertion at some point) …   

Thankfully, right before Christmas a collection, simply titled 1981, was issued in a limited run. It rounded up Riot 111’s entire recorded output, using newly-discovered master tapes.

There was no end of inspiration when they formed – the Springbok rugby tour occurred at a time when South Africa was isolated in sporting circles due to the apartheid system. The tour exposed the ugly, racist, redneck upper belly of New Zealand. On one side were those who wanted the tour halted in solidarity with Nelson Mandela and the ANC; on the other side those who naively believed that politics and sport never should mix – or who just didn’t want to know.

 Two of the 16 games were cancelled due to crowd interventions, another was flour-bombed by a plane (but went ahead) and there were protests at all the others.

Into this heated environment came Riot 111 to stir the pot a bit more. Were they even a musical group? Not according to “singer” Void who declared: “We’re not a band, we’re a terrorist organisation.”

So, he penned ‘1981’, released as a single with an anarcho-punk collage cover that would have infuriated those the band wanted to infuriate: Hitler kicked a rugby ball as Prime Minister Robert Muldoon applauded and the All Blacks did an unchoreographed haka. This also forms the cover of the album without any obvious tweaks, while the back of that 7” - featuring police in riot gear - is replicated on the album’s rear.

The single is an (ahem) riotous agit-punk blend of aggressive lyrics, ruthless guitar playing and tribal drumming based around the famous ‘ka mate’ haka, and fused with the South African freedom chant Amandla. It is incendiary and provocative in the context of the winter of discontent that the sporting tour wrought on the country.

The 90-second B-side ‘Go Riot’ is hilarious. There’s no actual music, just a Germanic, hectoring voice ordering a cackling Muldoon to proceed with the contentious tour, and afterwards, distract the population with a royal tour. It then cuts into some mimicking of rugby-loving redneck boofheads.

1982 was an eventful year for Riot 111. They began by supporting The Fall, and at an anti-nuclear gig in Wellington they only managed to play one song as the “move move move” chant on ‘Move To Riot’, which replicates that of the police at protests, literally moved the crowd to riot with Void forced to dodge beer bottles launched at the stage.

The text accompanying the album tells of a stoush between the band and TVNZ which refused to air the video for ‘Writing On The Wall’ from the second single and reproduces the letter from the head of entertainment in full. In it, Tom Parkinson wrote that he thought the song was poor, the musicianship below standard and “the clip is very passe, poorly made and has little merit”. Not only that but he objected to the inference of police violence. So much for freedom of speech.  

Riot 111 comprised vocalist John Void (later just Void), drummer Roger Riot (formerly Roger Allen, a mild-mannered public servant from Wellington’s northern suburbs), guitarist Nick Swan and Mark Crawford on bass. Allen describes Void as having an immense stage presence in his plastic riot helmet, actual police baton and leather trousers or kilt.

‘Move To Riot’ is the most musical of all the tracks and returns to the theme of police repression with Void shouting through a tannoy imitating a police officer breaking up a demonstration. “I am the law, I am order, you have no rights, scum!” Other “officers” abuse and mock the protesters, ie “Did you fucking swear at me?”. As Void speeds up the “move move move” order the atmosphere becomes ugly. Void as “chief officer” says: “I have a gun in the car and I’d love to blow you away” and the song ends in women screaming, glass smashing and people being bashed.

Some tracks don’t have quite the same impact, eg, ‘Escape Or Prison’ is largely an over-played drone lasting an excessive seven-and-a-half minutes. Perhaps with studio time and an empathetic producer behind them Riot 111 could have unleashed a colossal debut album that would have left an indelible mark on the New Zealand music scene.

While all eight tracks released under the band’s name are included on 1981!, I feel an opportunity has been lost. Surely, those master tapes also included alternative takes and demos of songs that were played at gigs but not actually formally released?

By 1984 Riot 111 were no more. Right-wing skinheads were gatecrashing the gigs and causing violence driving many fans away. Void became an actor in Australia.  

Their existence was brief and output meagre but they left a legacy that has never been matched in this country.

Classic Album Review: Mi-Sex - '79 - '85 (1985)

Mi-Sex were a late Seventies/early Eighties band from New Zealand who spent so much time across the ditch, misguided Australians would eventually try to claim them as one of their own.

Fronted by the late Steve Gilpin, an excellent vocalist, Mi-Sex were hardworking pub rockers who jumped aboard the “new wave” bandwagon to morph into a relatively successful - within a local context - chart singles act. All of the band’s best singles feature on this '79 - '85 compilation. 

An almost perfect blend of power-pop guitar meets synthpop, undermined only by patchy lyrical content, a couple of dodgy latter period tracks, and the fact that cheesy futuristic new wave hasn’t aged especially well. 

A time and place thing, then, and even though you’re more than likely to find this one hiding in a bargain bin, if you can find it at all, it’s definitely the only Mi-Sex album you’ll ever need. 

Highlights: ‘But You Don't Care’, ‘Falling In And Out’, ‘People’, ‘Computer Games’, ‘It Only Hurts When I'm Laughing’, and ‘Space Race’.

Album Review: On-U Sound - Pay It All Back Volume 7 (2019)

I’ve got to be honest: I’m generally such a committed fanboy of just about everything the On-U Sound label releases, I fear I can’t really review this album objectively. I’m concerned that my love for the work of (producer) Adrian Sherwood - across something close to four decades now - will blind me to anything other than its most obvious flaws or shortcomings. But I’ll do my best ... and if I can’t be totally objective, then at the very least I can offer some information about what you can expect from Pay It All Back Volume 7.

The main thing you need to know that it’s the latest release in a long-running series of sampler compilations for the On-U Sound label. It was released in late March, some 23 years after the release of Pay It All Back Volume 6. 

Yet, even after such a lengthy period, many of the same artists who graced the first six volumes - which covered work from the early 80s to the mid 90s - feature again on Volume 7. See, for example, offerings here from label stalwarts like African Head Charge, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Mark Stewart, Little Axe, Doug Wimbish, and Sherwood himself. 

But it’s far from retro-centric; it’s not a nostalgia document. It’s a sampler to showcase new, recent, or forthcoming On-U Sound releases, Sherwood mixes of material not exclusive to the label, and/or previously unreleased stuff that never found a home elsewhere. 

As such we get a genuine hybrid of musical styles (except generic rock and pop) with the one common denominator being that everything here has, to one degree or another, been touched by the hand of Sherwood. That’s the glue that binds. 

Highlights include: the Play-Rub-A-Dub mix of Horace Andy’s classic ‘Mr Bassie’, Neyssatou and Likkle Mai’s version of Bob Marley’s ‘War’ (see clip below), Denise Sherwood’s ‘Ghost High’, Congo Natty’s ‘UK All Stars in Dub’, Sherwood & Pinch’s ‘Fake Days’ (featuring LSK), Little Axe’s ‘Deep River’, Ghetto Priest’s ‘Slave State’, plus the Coldcut/Roots Manuva collab, ‘Beat Your Chest’, which closes the album … and of course, there’s the understated magnificence of ‘African Starship’, which is a typically eccentric taster from the now 83-year-old Lee Perry’s 2019 album, Rainford ... climb aboard with “Pilot Perry” if you dare! 

The aforementioned flaws and shortcomings are few. Only a couple of tracks (of 18) leave me feeling a little cold, but I guess that’s the nature of sampler compilations. And, in my experience, so far as On-U Sound compilations are concerned, those tracks are just as likely the ones I’ll be listening to most this time next year. 

My own purchase was a rare foray back into the world of the compact disc - my OCD preventing me from deviating from the format I collected the first six volumes in. The supplementary booklet not only offers a plethora of information about the tracks included on the album, it also provides a comprehensive year-by-year guide to the label’s entire back catalogue.

Album Review: Various - Heed The Call! Whakarongo, Nga Tamariki (2017)

Growing up in New Zealand as a young child in the 1970s, my memories of local music are pretty limited, but it always felt as though the decade could be split into two clear and very distinctive halves.

In the first half of the decade I can recall television shows such as Happen Inn and New Faces, and it seemed to me that most of the music being produced here was either very saccharine, or mostly derivative of what was happening on the pop charts internationally. In fact, many of the more high profile homegrown artists - Bunny Walters, Craig Scott, Ray Woolf, Suzanne, et al - were covering or copying exactly what was happening overseas, and it was simply being repackaged for the local market by the major record companies. There were exceptions to this “rule”, naturally.

 

By the second half of the decade, the local pub-rock circuit had started to offer us a number of bands with fiercely original material; the likes of Dragon, Hello Sailor, Th’ Dudes, and Mi-Sex. Right at the end of the decade, the arrival of punk and new wave - see Suburban Reptiles, Spelling Mistakes, the Scavengers, plus others - ensured the game was changing for the better.

My point being … there never seemed to be a lot else beyond those categories. There was nothing in the middle. It was either the covers and crooners of the earliest vintage, or the edgy rockers of later years. And of course, there was the island that was early Split Enz. I can’t ever recall - beyond a couple of Mark Williams hits - there being much in the way of locally-produced disco, soul, or funk. Sure, that stuff was all over the charts in the mid-to-late 1970s, mostly within the “singles” realm, but not a lot of it came from these shores.

At least that was my perception, and if we didn’t see locally-produced disco and funk music charting on any regular basis, that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t being made. It just wasn’t being produced by the majors or distributed in any vast quantity. And if it wasn’t on the charts, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t being played in one or two of the more progressive nightclubs of the era. Not that I’d know, really … I was just as likely eating peanut butter sandwiches out of a plastic Partridge Family lunchbox at the time.

Which is where Heed the Call! (Whakarongo, Nga Tamariki) comes in. A brand new compilation album (released in December 2017) that showcases “17 Prime Soul, Funk and Disco Cuts” specifically from the Aotearoa of my childhood and early teenage years. Not that we called it Aotearoa back then either. It was still plain old New Zealand, mostly white, colonial, and largely rural …

It’s a terrific collection, lovingly compiled by the history-savvy Alan Perrott and John Baker, with my version being the CD (sadly, not vinyl), one that I had to order after the limited initial production run sold out in a matter of days. I don’t think anybody could have realistically anticipated the level of demand for this album. I certainly hadn’t.

One of the album’s highlights arrives right at the very start, with ‘Voodoo Lady’, a Dalvanius and The Fascinations tune that has so much fluoro disco bling oozing from it, you’ll probably need to wear a pair of dark glasses just to listen to it. Preferably a Bootsy-esque gold-framed pair.

Following on from that scene-setter, we’re introduced to Collision, with a James Brown-defying funktastic ‘You Can Dance’. Truth is though, we’re already familiar with these guys; Dalvanius having used the core of this band on the opener, under the Fascinations moniker.

After the opening double whammy, the listening experience becomes a knee-buckling trip deep into the heart of what was quite clearly a vibrant, yet mostly underground scene. A journey that doesn’t really let up until we reach the breathy closing moments of the album finale, ‘Total Man’, by er, The Totals. Which is quite possibly that band’s only release.

Other highlights include a couple of Mark Williams’ tunes, ‘Disco Lady’ and ‘House For Sale’, something relatively rare from the bold and brassy 1860 Band, ‘That's The Kind Of Love I've Got For You’, plus Herb McQuay’s ‘Night People’.

Of the more commercially established artists to feature, Prince Tui Teka provides the title track, Tina Cross offers ‘You Can Do It’, and Golden Harvest is on hand with that always familiar Kiwi yacht-rock classic ‘I Need Your Love’, which is one of the few chart-bothering tracks included. Larry Morris shows up, after a spell in the clink, with ‘Who Do We Think We're Fooling’, while Ticket, a band I’ve always more readily associated with the rock genre, feature with ‘Mr Music’.

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s work here from a few artists that I know very little about; the likes of the Johnny Rocco Band, (the) Inbetweens, Sonia & Skee, and the aforementioned Totals. Where the bloody hell have I been? I knew of the wholesome and religious Pink Family, who offer ‘Don't Give Your Life Away’, but I’d never actually heard their music.

Speaking of family, blood links might well be a theme; aside from the Pinks, there’s the Yandall Sisters (Adele, Mary, and Pauline) with ‘Sweet Inspiration’, and brotherly connections within Golden Harvest (the Kaukaus) and Collision (the Morgans). And of course, whanau was at the heart of, and often involved with, just about everything Dalvanius Prime and Prince Tui Teka ever did …

Heed The Call! is a fascinating compilation, and for the most part, a great listen. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s well worth the wait. Sure there’s some material that hasn’t aged all that well, and there’s a few sizable slabs of cheddar to be consumed, plus there’s a few covers or non-originals, but it’s a disco album, pulling the bulk of its content from the decade that taste forgot … so there’s your context right there.

Porky Post ... Album Review: Scotch Bonnet Presents Puffer's Choice (2016)

Welcoming back Porky, in a guest post capacity …

Reggae and Scotland haven’t had a great deal of history together. Thankfully, the Glasgow-based Mungo’s Hi-Fi has been doing its level-best to rectify that anomaly, on its own, and through the Scotch Bonnet label.

The label is largely a vehicle for Mungo’s but has also furnished a slew of choice reggae, dancehall and dub acts. Puffer’s Choice highlights many of those releases.

Being of Scottish stock myself, and a connoisseur of sounds that have originated from Jamaica, this compilation was a natural choice to buy from an Auckland store last year. There was a touch of the pot luck about the purchase; I was only aware of some of the acts, but given the roster it was clearly going to be a stab in the dark that hit the centre of the heart.

It begins with a rather unusual cover, Kraftwerk’s potty electro hit, ‘The Model’, performed by Prince Fatty; it’s the only track that doesn’t credit a sidekick, though Hollie Cook is the one adding the feminine vocals in place of the Teutonic timbre. This radically alters the nature of the original, making it sound more human and reversing the lyrics from “she’s a model” to “I’m a model”. You have to assume it met with the mercurial Germans’ approval, as permission would have needed to be sought from the writers to change the lyrics.

Rolling back the vibes, The Hempolics’ ‘Love To Sing’ is reworked by Mungo’s Hi Fi into a dancefloor heavyweight, with multiple verses from Solo Banton, complete with an early reggae intro.

Parly B’s contribution, with the assistance of Viktorious, ‘What A Ting’, rails against ethnic cleansing, calling out hypocrites and parasites alike, with a very 80s dancehall background.

There’s some booming bass and rapid-fire lyrics on Zeb & Scotty’s joint effort with Disrupt on the excellent ‘Jah Run Tings’. The first side wraps up with a remix of ‘Dub Invasion’ by the Led Piperz. Keeping the horn sample lifted from the classic King Tubby/Niney The Observer track, ‘Dubbing With the Observer’ which pilots the original version, this remix strips down the riddim to a simpler shuffle. “I know the kind of music that you want us to play, I know the kind of words you want me say… it’s a dub invasion, don’t take it lightly,” sings Solo Banton.

So far so good.

The second half kicks off with a collaboration between veterans Sugar Minott and Daddy Freddy for the appropriately-titled ‘Raggamuffin Rock’. The boys trade verses and it comes out like a good cop/ bad cop interrogation; Minott’s lighter tones make you feel at home, lying on a comfortable sofa with a glass of Islay single malt to hand (or something a little mellower – Ed), but Freddy drags you out into the rain-soaked alley and hits you where it hurts. Strangely, it works.

‘Golden Rule’ gets together Naram behind the boards and Tenor Youthman on vocal duties. It’s a retro-infused ragga cut with a fat bass, and when Youthman sings “if you trouble trouble, trouble will trouble you,” it invokes the genius of 1970s Jamaican star Linval Thompson, who, to this writer, is up there with a certain Mr Marley.  

Mungo’s Hi Fi feature on one of the undoubted standouts, ‘Give Thanks To Jah’ with Mr Williamz spitting rhyme after rhyme on a song that fuses Smiley Culture with Alexei Sayle: “whether you drive Mitsubishi or you drive Honda, whether you drive Mercedes or you drive dem Beamer, and it don’t really matter you a bus passenger, whether you work 9 to 5 or you an entertainer, whether you a MC or selectah.”

The album winds up with Bim One’s collaboration with Macka B, ‘Don’t Stop The Sound’ which uses a thick, wobbling future roots vibe over frantic, auction-paced toasting, and the eerie ‘Dub Controller’ by OBM, which isn’t for the feint-hearted.

Puffer’s Choice is a neat compilation of great dancehall, dub, ragga, old school reggae: and there’s not a bagpipe or bodhran in earshot.

Want more Porky? ... go here

Album Review: Various - Taranaki Music Sessions (2016)

A very regional collection of tunes reviewed specifically for NZ Musician (website only, in this instance). This CD release was probably not something I’d usually pay a lot of attention to, but like most nice surprises, the devil was in the detail, and there were a couple of gems to be found once I dug a little deeper:

Last year, when those learned types over at Lonely Planet rated our beloved Taranaki as the second best place in the world to visit in 2017, outgoing New Plymouth mayor Andrew Judd likened it to a “coming of age” for the region. For those of us rather more unfamiliar with the ‘Naki’s worldly delights, it came as something of a shock. What next? Claims that the province was an epicentre for all manner of homegrown musical brilliance? Well, yes actually, if the thinking behind the Doug Thomas-curated Taranaki Music Sessions is any indication. It goes something like this … when passionate Eltham-born and raised sexagenarian Thomas returned to Taranaki from Auckland in 2014, he set about pulling together all of the disparate strands of the local music scene, both past and present, to compile a CD of music quite unlike any other. In early 2016, the fruits of those efforts saw the light of day in the form of the 18-track Music Sessions release, which features a wide variety of genre (rock, pop, folk, chamber, and um, opera), and artists ranging from the still up-and-coming (Stephanie Piquette), to the long established (Brian Hatcher, Gumboot Tango), to the niche (Hayden Chisholm, Krissy Jackson), and all the way through to the outright legendary – see Midge Marsden, Larry Morris, and Dame Malvina Major, who gives us one of the more unique versions of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ you’re ever likely to hear. That old standard also happens to be the only non-original tune on the album. In short, there’s a little bit of something for everyone, with your reviewer’s favourites being Hatcher’s fiery opener ‘Pedal To The Floor’, and Chisholm’s jazzy sax groove, ‘Repetition’.

http://nzmusician.co.nz/music/various-artists-taranaki-music-sessions/

Album Review: Various - Two Tongues (2016)

As published in the August/September edition of NZ Musician magazine. 

Things don't get much more regional and grassroots than this ... and the album was all the better for that. One of a kind:

This 16-track compilation album of music from Whanganui provides a snapshot of some of that region’s creative talent, as produced and curated by local AV production guru Sacha Keating of Te Aio Productions. Part funded by the Whanganui District Creative Communities Scheme and limited to a CD run of just 150 copies, it reflects Whanganui’s rich multi-culturalism, with a blend of styles and hybrid influences present across the album’s hour-long duration. There’s naturally a heavy emphasis on local history and Maoritanga – with both Rihi’s 'He Pai Noa' and MoKu Whanau’s 'Whanau Ora' sung entirely in Te Reo Maori – and also a strong roots reggae and hip hop presence throughout. With helpings of old fashioned funk and soulful harmonies from Keating’s own group RedBack Villain, and even some orthodox rock from Wicca Bees, some of this material starts to feel almost borderless. Sure, it’s a celebration of language and all things Whanganui first and foremost, but right at its core, the album’s wider themes of identity, empowerment, unity and whanau are wholly universal. It’s a positive message from a community that hasn’t had its problems to seek in recent years, and it comes packaged in some great – and suitably challenging – cover photography from local artist Tia Ranginui.

Classic Album Review: Various - F**K Art Let's Danse / 28 Classic & Rare Tracks (2007)

I've been thinking quite a bit this week about the 40^th anniversary of the infamous Punk Festival held at London’s 100 club. About how that momentous event is often considered a defining or pivotal moment in wider pop culture or rock music history – heralding as it did, the arrival of an exciting new phenomenon. Or that’s how the story has been told, and it’s certainly the narrative we’ve been fed in one or two published articles this week. And then I recalled this album, one of the most treasured compilations in my possession, a comprehensive collection of tracks which serve to highlight the roots of the genre, and an album that throws a rather different light on the evolution of punk. I reviewed it for another site not long after its 2007 release:

If asked to come up with a list of bands or artists most influential in the rise of the UK’s late Seventies “punk” scene, the majority of self-respecting music historians would doubtlessly look first and foremost to the USA and its late Sixties/early Seventies “underground” scene. Indeed, any quick perusal of Jon Savage’s seminal book ‘England’s Dreaming’ (a history of the Sex Pistols and Punk) or Simon Reynolds’ ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’ (which covers the post-punk era) would reveal the massive debt owed by UK punk bands to their anti-establishment cousins from across the Atlantic.

It is a debt however, seldom fully acknowledged by compilers of punk collections; they’re more often than not very UK-centric, with mere lip service being paid to the influence and momentum provided by a wide variety of US-based bands – usually with the inclusion of an obvious track from The Ramones, and maybe something from um, Blondie. This is where F**k Art Let’s Danse differs from the large majority of the many so-called “punk” compilations … and as a 28-track, double CD compilation, it is all the better for not only acknowledging the transatlantic link, but actively celebrating it.

40 years ago this week ...

Take a look at this list of names: The 13th Floor Elevators, the New York Dolls, Iggy & The Stooges, Patti Smith, MC5, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Suicide, Television, Pere Ubu, and the Dead Kennedys. Oh, and just for good measure, The Ramones.

 

That list represents a veritable Who’s Who of the Seventies US underground scene, and all of the above bands feature prominently on F**k Art Let’s Danse. Only the addition of material from the Velvet Underground and/or Talking Heads would have made it something close to definitive in terms of US contributions to the scene. In fact, the album digs deep and travels even further back in time to the decadent mid-Sixties with the inclusion of garage and psychedelic tracks from the likes of The Sonics, The Seeds, Fugs, and The Creation.

But, similarly, if you think F**k Art Let’s Danse is all about those damned yanks and the template they provided, then you’d be wrong. The UK is represented by the not insignificant likes of The Damned, X-Ray Spex, Sham 69, the UK Subs, The Slits, and The Adverts.

 

Hell, we even get a couple of notable “hit” singles from Ian Dury (‘Sex And Drugs …’) and The Only Ones (‘Another Girl Another Planet’) … neither track being particularly authentic “punk” but the inclusion on here of each nonetheless pays tribute to the role pub-rock played in the development of the genre, and both bands flirted with the fringes of the movement without becoming completely consumed by it.

It could be argued that the album is weakened for the fact that it doesn’t include anything at all by the Sex Pistols, The Clash, or early Buzzcocks, but you can find that stuff practically anywhere, or at the very least on one of the other many compilations on the market. Clearly, the compilers of this album were wholehearted in their commitment to avoiding the bleedin’ obvious, and in truth that is one of its best features.

Overall, F**k Art Let’s Danse is a superb collection, and worthwhile alone for the sheer variety on offer. Punk is often viewed through ill-informed ignorant eyes as being a short-lived entirely British phenomenon; a scene that lasted three years max (between 1976 and say, 1979), but this collection begs to convince you otherwise.

CD1 Highlights: X-Ray Spex – ‘Identity’, Dead Kennedys – ‘Too Drunk To F**k’, MC5 – ‘Kick Out The Jams’, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – ‘Roadrunner’, and Department S – ‘Is Vic There?’.

CD2 Highlights: The 13th Floor Elevators – ‘Slip Inside This House’, New York Dolls – ‘Looking For A Kiss’, Patti Smith – ‘Piss Factory’, Pere Ubu – ‘Heart Of Darkness’, and The Slits (live cover) – ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’.

Album Review: The Clean - Compilation (1987)

I probably should have done this as a token nod to New Zealand music month back in May, but I’ve been rediscovering one of the world’s great lost bands in The Clean, and after revisiting one of the band’s earliest compilations, I decided to have a quick rant about what has become a true Kiwi classic:  

*

Short of going the whole hog and getting The Clean’s rather more extensive Anthology (2002) set, which compiles just over two decades worth of the band’s work, this album, the very aptly titled Compilation (The Clean are nothing if not straightforward) from 1987, offers as near perfect an overview of the band’s earliest (and arguably best) output as you’ll find anywhere. Er, that is if you can actually find a copy of this album anywhere (the Anthology album having stolen its initial thunder somewhat).

The Lo-Fi darlings of the “Dunedin Sound”, as championed by NZ independent label Flying Nun Records, The Clean – with the mainstays being the brothers Kilgour, David and Hamish – is now into its fourth decade as a going concern – albeit as an on-again off-again venture; a brief mutation into The Great Unwashed (see what they did there?) and the occasional “solo” project notwithstanding.

The content on Compilation consists mainly of the band’s much-coveted early singles plus the key tracks off its now near-mythical ‘Boodle Boodle Boodle’ EP, which provided The Clean with a hugely unlikely yet still relatively sustained commercial breakthrough in New Zealand. These are the tracks that helped establish the band’s reputation as a major influence on any number of today’s Indie contenders, and the most amazing thing about these songs is the fact that they were recorded using only the most basic of technology (I’m fairly certain they are all eight-track recordings, which is quite remarkable even by early Eighties standards).

Long-time advocates of the K.I.S.S. principle of music making (keep it simple stupid), whether that was deliberate, a necessity, or purely accidental, the band’s capacity for clever lyrics, jangly guitars, and dated whirly keyboards was a little at odds with everything else going on at the time – the Eighties being more about big production, nothing lyrics, and the application of high gloss to every last living thing! The Clean however stuck to its guns, kept faith with its own modus operandi, and has largely out-lasted the vast majority of its peers. Terrific stuff from one of the best “unknown” bands the world has never seen.

I really love the fact that my copy of this album is a grotty old bedsit-quality cassette tape, one that has been suitably thrashed over the years (purchased brand new upon release), as opposed to anything remotely flash or digital. I wouldn’t have it any other way, as it fits so well with the very ethos of The Clean and everything the band unwittingly represents.    

Best tracks (in order of preference): ‘Anything Could Happen’, ‘Point That Thing Somewhere Else’, ‘Beatnik’, the debut single ‘Tally Ho’, and ‘Getting Older’.