Suburban Reptiles - Suburban Reptiles (2011) [1978]

Auckland’s The Suburban Reptiles, along with The Scavengers who started around the same time, were the first 1970s styled punk band in New Zealand. Formed at the beginning of 1977, inspired by a New Musical Express story seen by Simon Grigg, the original performing line-up was Zero (Clare Elliot, vocals), Billy Planet (Will Pendergrast, bass), Jimmy Joy (also Jimmy Vinyl, saxophone), Shaun Anfrayd (Brian Nicholls, guitar), Des Edwards (drums) and Sissy Spunk (Trish Scott, guitar).

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Blerta - This Is The Life (1975)

A crucial chapter in NZ's alternative lifestyle, music, film, and visual and performing arts histories, the legend of Blerta's four years on Earth (and probably other planets) possibly outweighs their actual recorded output. Others have written plenty about the significant influence of the troupe, including Roger Booth's excellent Bruno Lawrence bio, and a Radio New Zealand audio documentary. The cover art -- and the image of muddy hippies that the Blerta story conjures up -- has little to do with their sophisticated, finely-honed music. I expected fuzz guitar, sloppy lyrics about peace, and possibly bongos. Their debut album is jazzy, silly, bawdy, and above all well-crafted. Side one really captures the theatrical side of the touring band, with suggestive story-songs for the grown-ups (no "Dance All Around The World" here), and Beaver's joyful ballad "This Is The Life." Side two starts with the short Bruno-sung "Superman", then another ballad, then quickly moves on to nearly 20 minutes of tight pop-psych-jazz instrumentals. Essential.

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New Zealand Poets Read Their Work For Children (1974)

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New Zealand Poets Read Their Works (1974)

Two records from the early 1970s -- private pressings for Waiata Recordings. All the golden voices from days of olde and yore, ever and anon are hither and yon -- Janet Frame, James K Baxter, Denis Glover, CK Stead, Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, Charles Brasch -- reading their own works. The recording quality on some of these tracks is simply shocking. My copies of the original vinyl are NM, but probably as a consequence of packing too much onto each side combined with the limitations of the original recordings, the sound varies: prepare for level peaks and drops, pops, echoes, and distortion.

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The Enemy - The Enemy At The Beneficiaries ('78) (2001)

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The Features - X Features (2016)

The Features, perhaps more than anybody, were the band that provided the stylistic delineation between punk and post-punk in the Auckland, New Zealand scene. The Auckland band lasted for all of a year from late 1979 to 1980. But they achieved a few things in that time. There was the classic single ‘City Scenes’ and then the Perfect Features Exposed EP which effectively became a headstone. They would lay the groundwork for Fetus Productions, the pioneering outfit that was part industrial rock, part art project and a whole other story.

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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”.

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It's Bigger Than Both of Us (NZ Singles. 1979-82) (1988)

Excellent value 2CD reissue of this essential 1988 compilation covering an extremely creative and buoyant period of New Zealand pop music between 1979 - 1982 where music of the more "indie" nature really made an impression on the hearts, minds and souls of legions of "real" music fans. So over thirty tracks we get great hits from the likes of Toy Love, The Spelling Mistakes, The Clean, The Screaming Meemees, The Swingers, The Chills, Tall Dwarfs and a number of lesser known but equally thrilling out fits. Lovingly compiled and basing the set purely around singles really gives the listener a feel for the time and era, and a number of these tracks genuinely shaped the sound of New Zealand pop music for many years to come. Even with the current renaissance in "historical" New Zealand pop compilations this set stands head and shoulders above the rest simply because of its focus and the era covered. This is an essential purchase for any New Zealand music fan.

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