Quincy Conserve Aire of Good Feeling ... Best of
(EMI) Verdict: TV-revived Wellington soul-funk outfit get a solid retrospective Herald Rating: * * *
Various A Day in My Mind's Mind Volume 2
(EMI) Verdict: Another deep dig into local rock archaeology reveals colorful gems Herald Rating: * * * *
KEY POINTS:
It might say something about the state of New Zealand music that youth-oriented TV2's current jingle is Quincy Conserve's groovy Aire of Good Feeling from 1971 while the supposedly fuddy-duddy TV One has a plaintive Evermore ballad.
That QC song - the spur for and opener of thisremastered 25-track best-of, an earlier collection having appeared in 2001 - sure remains infectious for its brass-rimmed summery funk and frontman Malcolm Hayman's reedy vocal.
It's certainly the catchiest thing in the Quincy canon - then again it was written by one Jim Peternik, an American songwriter who went on to pen Eye of the Tiger.
It also reminds that Quincy might have been great players, a band of cabaret-honed chops able to stretch into ambitious soul-funk directions - as can be heard on the time-signature-crunching, jazzy flute-freaked Don't Arrange Me - but they weren't great songwriters.
As this compilation shows, they had a heavy reliance on hand-me-downs from the likes of Todd Rundgren (including the charming Slut), Elton John and an instrumental version of James Brown's I Feel Good which is even more supermarket-friendly that when that chainstore ad campaign got hold of it.
Their best original - the psychedelic bossa nova of Ride the Rain - came from troublesome drummer Bruno Lawrence.
Still, if the quality wanes as the tracks wear on and they can't exactly be accused of being ahead of their time you hear why they were so highly-regarded in the era of the Loxene Golden Disc.
And on All Right in the City Hayman's vocal stakes his place as New Zealand music's first rapper.
Quincy Conserve also turn up playing the obscure San Francisco Girls on the second in the A Day in My Mind's Mind series, sounding quite unlike they do on their own album.
It fits the paisley mood of the collection, subtitled Fantasies, Polka Dots & Flowers: 27 Kiwi Psychedelic Trips 1967-72 rather well.
This one is as ear-opening as its predecessor, especially for those of us far too young to have been there at time and maybe still thinking that New Zealand rock didn't go weird until Tim Finn got busy with the facepaint and hairclippers.
But no, whether it's the Hi-Revving Tongues or the Avengers getting busy on the fuzztones, the Dave Miller Set reaching a parallel orbit to David Bowie's Major Tom, Timberjack Donaghue breaking out the sitars, or the Music Convention's Bellyboard Beat capturing the sound of surfing a six-foot swell into the Bay of Bengal, it's the sort of album that flies its freak flag high and still tests positive for all sorts of banned substances, even this long after the fact.
Complete with double or triple doses of the La De Das, Larry's Rebels and the Fourmyula (including Nature), In My Mind's Mind II is more than just another well-intentioned local rock artefact, it's a real trip into a kaleidoscopic past.
