Kiwi Music - for the Weekend....Higher Trails (Original) - John Hanlon

This was a 'short' at the pictures, mid-70s. If you don't know what that means, ask your mum or dad.

I was about 11. The mountains, on the big screen in a small town flea-pit, were utterly breathtaking.

Even on here, they're still pretty stunning.

Kiwi Music Day 8 - three bitsers

I'm getting in early because I'm tied up tomorrow morning....

I've got three incomplete numbers which also tell a sort of story, in their way.

The first thing I've found is an excerpt here from 'Big Bad Don' - its a version of the more famous American song 'Big Bad John'. The NZ version was about All Black fullback Don Clarke. My folks had it in the radiogram when I were a lad.

It's also pretty representative of that short-back-and-sides culture of the time.

Then there's a mix of Fourmyula's 'Otaki' - Fourmyula's most famous song of course was 'Nature' and although this is a bit rough I kind of like it. It's also very hippyish - a lot changed between 1965 and 1970....and the last bit is the Avengers' Love Hate Revenge' which has already been carried by Keeping Stock.

Of paper shufflers, Kiwi Music, and not worrying about Daggy Boy

Ele at Home Paddock responds to a comment from - who else? - Cactus Kate about what farmers think of paper shufflers. The comment is in the context of NZX buying a bunch of farming publications and the reasons for doing so.

I won't comment on that - much - because I'm too close to some of this stuff. But here's a - true - story which illustrates the point fairly well.

A colleague, also from a farm, told me this one - as a child she was with her dad at his run-off in the King Country when the new bank manager called in (the fact he even did this dates the story). The bloke turns up in his suit, introduces himself, and is really putting on the smarm a bit. He gets asked what he does with is spare time and volunteers the fact he likes a bit of shooting. Farmer's eyes light up. "Really? There's some good shooting around here. You want to do some now?" And before the bank manager has time to say yes or no a 12 bore is pressed into his hands. The farmer also quickly convinces him the best place to shoot from is from the Landrover. Not from the cab though. Or the back.

No - sitting on the spare tyre which sits on the bonnet. The bank manager is perched precariously in his suit on this dusty tyre: the farmer hops into the cab, puts his daughter (my future colleague, the one who told me this story) into the passenger seat. Revs up the engine. And whispers to his daughter: "watch me make this little ******** **** himself."

Meanwhile, Keeping Stock has Fred Dagg/John Clark and assorted helpers doing his 1998 version of 'We Don't Know How Lucky We Are' as the daily Kiwi Music number.

I seriously think it should be our National Anthem.  There's a self-satirising under-current, which is good, and a national anthem with this would be unique.

Hell, we could even lead the world!

It's also bloody true, I feel. 

One important change to the lyrics in the 1998 version, and one which showed that economically things had turned around - the 1975 original version had a line about:  

"If things get appallingly bad 

We all get atrociously poor 

If we stand in the queue with our hats on 

We can borrow a few million more."  

The 1998 version replaced this with the line:  

"If things get appallingly bad 

We're all under constant attack 

Remember we want to see good clean ball 

And for God's sake, feed yer backs!"  

At the moment, of course, we'd have to reinstate the '75 version...

Kiwi Music Day 7 - The Mutton Birds - Ngaire (1993)

'Bittersweet' is such an over-used term, but here it fits. A lovely song about disappointment and heartbreak. I love the little bits of detail like 'you knew I had to come here/you knew there was no work at home' and the poetic bit at the end of the last verse:

'Is that the sun that's rising on you now? And did it shine the day you changed your mind?'

Remember seeing them live in Wellington in around 1995....a bunch of people in front of us said, more or less together as the band came on and plugged in 'Hope they play "Ngaire" - and then the band opened with it. It set off a magic night.

KIwi Music Month Day 6: Hi-Revving Tongues - Rain and Tears

Was a hit around the time I started school - a wet and miserable winter.

Yes that's Pete Sinclair introducing them, so this must have been from Happen Inn.

Two asides - firstly, if it were not for the need for certain unlikely events to have taken place, Bernadine Oliver-Kirby could pass for Pete Sinclair's love child. Watch the movement of the head, mouth and eyebrows next time she reads the news. Its Pete Sinclair to the life...

Also this tune is a straight rip off of Pachelbel's Kanon in D. Not that its unusual in that - a lot of pop songs have been based on it.

Apart from the ones mentioned in this rant here, there are also Oasis's 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and Petula Clark's 'Don't Sleep in the Subway'.

All kind of tangental, but never mind...

Kiwi Music Day 5 Twofer Tuesday No. 2: Greg Johnson "Save Yourself"

About 10 years after the last one...went to a presentation for work which was supposed to be about financial sector regulation, but the previous presentation (which was nothing to do with that) included this video. My other half was very ill at the time and this kind of resonated. Esp, the line about being 'pinned down/bad weather's on the way'.

She got through, btw. We both did.

Kiwi Music Week - twofer Tuesday - Crowded House

Not a big Crowded House fan, but this one has always struck a chord.  

WArning: serious bit coming up.  

Long story short - New Year's Day, 1994, got caught in a rip at Karekare.  For about 10 minutes I thought my number was up.  When we got back to the flat a flatmate, who was always playing the 'Together Alone' album, had this on.  

 

Kiwi Music Month day 4: John Rowles - If I only had time

Same era as Hogsnort Rupert... an almost unrecognisable John Rowles.

Video apparently shot during one of the waterfront industrial stoppages.

Hogsnort Rupert - Pretty Girl

...and here's the third.

This was popular around the time I started school....and also, in a small way, in my last student flat in the early 1990s.

One of the biggest numbers at 9 Sandringham Road, Oh yes it was. ....

The Knobz - Culture

The band that tried to look like the Knack...

...and got this song to number one at the end of 1980.

Mother Goose - Baked Beans (1977)

Here's another one for KIwi Music Month.

They were a Dunedin Band. Forerunners of the Flying Nun sound.

The Kiwi Music thing...

Ele at Home Paddock, Keeping Stock and Adam at Inquiring Mind are having a new music clip each day for Kiwi Music Month.

I have some catching up to do, but the first three follow: