AK•79 (1979)

Officially released in early 1980, despite its title (although a few copies turned up in the shops in late 1979 - see below), AK79 is the defining release of the thriving Auckland punk scene of the late seventies.  Its release was more a document of a scene that was passing - that had more or less moved on - as it had or was all over the planet, than anything then current. And as such its release was timely.

The original AK79 was bracketed by two moments of raw brilliance that perfectly summed up the path punk had taken in Auckland since its first germ in 1977. The Scavengers, the Auckland punk pioneers, open with ‘Mysterex’, was a lyrically strident few minutes of vitriol aimed at the band’s former singer, Mike Lesbian, rushed off in a moment of anger by Johnny Volume when Lesbian left the band suddenly in the lurch on the brink of a recording contract in early 1978. Opening with a deceptive rhythmic patter, it quickly erupts into the bands’ trademark power-pop wall of guitar, ‘Mysterex’ both viciously waved goodbye to the former singer and welcomed the 17 year old bassist Ronnie Recent as his more than capable replacement. Decades on, it’s still an extraordinary work that has lost none of it brutal “fuck you”.

Music here