Saturday, May 4, 2013

New Zealand Music Month

We now interrupt this alphabet play-through for some New Zealand music.
It has just been brought to my attention that May is NZ Music Month. Therefore, I shall now review one album by each of the bands I own stuff by that hail from my home country. Disturbingly, my CD collection yields a grand total of eight NZ music cds - 3x Brunettes (2 of which I have already reviewed), 2x Dead Flowers, 1x Straitjacket Fits, 1x Canis, 1x Banshee Reel, 1x Chills (which actually belongs to my husband). I DO have a bunch of older stuff, but it is all on cassette tape (half of it recorded off the radio because they never made official releases) and was part of my "preserve the reel" project.

Here are some bands that I enjoyed when I was young:

Pumpkinhead: Vocalist Brent went on to front The Valves whom I actually saw live at the Rock to Wellington way back when and thought "that vocalist looks familiar". I saw Pumpkinhead live quite a few times in local concerts.
There's some nice shots of Christchurch in the Pumpkinhead video.

147 Swordfish: From Christchurch. Performed with Pumpkinhead occasionally.

Semi Lemon Kola : Another skinny guy with dreadlocks. I think I saw them live once or twice.

Tempest (and this song) - changed their name to SevenTongues. Then moved to Aus seeking success but never found it.

Straitjacket Fits were one of the more well known NZ bands, and vocalist Shane Carter left to form  Dimmer. I saw them live a couple of times, one of my friends was a big SF fan. I still think of him whenever I hear them!

The Chills are one of the more well known - they have the sludgy NZ Dunedin/Flying Nun garage rock sound.

Blackjack actually released an album. Solid hard rock with melodic metal influences.

Scarf only ever released this one track. Glam vibe.

Push Push experienced some success (they got to #1 on the charts!) before moving to Australia (leaving their vocalist, Mikey Havoc behind) and vanishing without a trace. I REALLY loved Push Push when I was 13. Even dragged my mother to an all ages rock concert. Abandoned her so I could go up the front and mosh.

Nine Livez vanished without even a YouTube record. They also had the glam/hard rock feel and the only information I can find about them is that their guitarist became a policeman and got into issues for shooting a suspect.

Rumblefish also left no YouTube record. They had a funkier vibe, sorta like the RHCP maybe inspired them a bit. I have a copy of their live album "Freaky Dog Live". Must MP3 it at some point.

Saturn Rising were my favourite band in one of the Smokefree Rockquests and I was lucky enough to share a lecture in Uni with one of the members - so he gave me a copy of their demo album. They were nifty, a sort of rock-pop vibe with folkish elements. The school they hailed from was Rudolph Steiner, who consistently had very good bands at the Rockquests.

I should probably mention The Eastern as well. I didn't see them when I was a teenager - I've never seen them live, because they didn't form until more recently - but I went to school with Adam, the vocalist.

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