Sonic
By Various Artists
The archaeologists of local rock just keep digging. Last year, we had previously unreleased 1990s albums from Auckland band Crash, and Boom Boom Mancini, the UK-based band of Dianne Swann and Brett Adams from The Bads. Christchurch label Leather Jacket Records juggled reissues (Playthings, Solatudes) with new releases (Vorsen, Ringlets, Sundae Painters). It also unearthed Riot 111 and the Wellington band’s political punk rock of the Muldoon-Springbok Tour era for the compilation 1981!, as well as Grim Ltd, from 1960s Palmerston North, with the exhilarating Shakin’ It Up at the Nicoberg, recorded at their final gig in 1966.
That unexpected live album was the work of archivist Grant Gillanders whose long-running Frenzy label exhumes 1960s and 70s singles and albums for compilations. Last year, Frenzy delivered the never-released 1975 album by Auckland funk-rockers Inbetweens and the compilation 46 Years, by Cimeron, who only released one single, in 1977. This year, the label is out of the gate quickly with hard rock-cum-psychedelic funk collection Sonic, subtitled “12 Bloodsucking & maneating tracks from the Sonic vaults 1971-1972″.
Wellington’s Sonic Recording Studios – in Island Bay then Mt Victoria – was run by Alan Dunnage, whose preference was for recording choirs, middle-of-the-road singers, country artists and church services, supporting his studio by night work as a typesetter at the Dominion newspaper.
However, Sonic’s low cost appealed to hirsute rock musicians who kept the studio viable, so the middle-aged Dunnage brought in Edd Morris (to become Eddie O’Strange so he didn’t compromise his position at the NZ Broadcasting Corporation), a more enthusiastic and sympathetic producer.
The Sonic collection is bookended by Littlejohn, a band fronted by singer-songwriter Corben Simpson that later had Bruno Lawrence on drums and was a musical precursor to Blerta. The band’s opener is the hard funk Bloodsucker but the closing ballad, Have You Heard a Man Cry?, was Simpson’s ace. His first songwriting effort, it went top 20 then won him the 1971 Apra Silver Scroll. The version on the compilation is the full band re-recording and it’s still an impressive piece of pop songcraft.
Between those two points are Benjamin Gardner’s chunky rocker Maneater, which can’t quite settle on a style and is crippled by distracting studio effects, and two other hard-driving tracks by Wellington Battle of the Bands winners Blitz St Fuzz – Hard Times and Beautiful You, which has all the stomp of the La De Da’s.
Fat Gypsy’s rockers, I’ll Still Be Laughing and Shotgun on my Shoulder, feature 19-year-olds Ray Battersby and singer Doug Rogers (later a producer/engineer at Auckland’s Harlequin Studios) while the pair also appear as the Rogers-Battersby Legend with the more mainstream pop of Bullfrog.
Other songs come from Spann, Sons and Lovers, Bluebrick and – the last band to record for Sonic – Stille Ripple with the folk-rock Loner Postponer. It ended a year of Sonic’s diverse productivity.
Dunnage went back to what he knew, recording an album of Salvation Army hymns, and O’Strange started his own Strange label. A vein of local rock was tapped and has now been excavated.
Rock ’n’ Roll’s Alright!
By Odyssey
Another small seam from the 1970s was glam rock, spearheaded by Space Waltz and glam-prog-rockers Ragnarok – both given vinyl reissue recently. Now joining them is Christchurch’s Odyssey on a retrospective compiled by Grant Gillanders and fellow archivist John Baker.
In Ziggy Stardust/Kiss make-up, lurex, silk and flares, Odyssey made an instant splash in their day. On television’s Grunt Machine in 1975, they camped up the Velvet Underground’s White Light White Heat and Lou Reed’s Vicious, and opened for Reed in Christchurch that year.
The compilation shows they were influenced by the boogie of Slade (Ball and Chain) and The Sweet’s enjoyable glam-pop (the title track, Trevor) as much as by Reed, Bowie and Bolan.
They met some opposition along the way. As drummer Jeff Stribling told local glam-academic Ian Chapman, “Glam came out and all those [muso band] guys just attacked you and said, ‘You’re not musicians, you’re just dressing up.’
“It was all really exciting. But the worst part of it was the shit we took from the other bands.”
If the Sonic collection is time-locked, the often witty Rock’n’Roll’s Alright!, has enough power-pop (Buddy Holly’s It’s So Easy) and attitude (Prostitute) to pull it closer to the Stones’ strut and early Strokes, although they also default to MOR pop (Baby). At the time, Odyssey’s recording career was brief – just one official single, a cover of the Easybeats’ Sorry, included on the album. But later, as a three-piece, they tapped into nascent punk – Pogo here is part-Ramones, part-parody.
So, two albums taking us from grunt rock to punk rock and the changing of the guard. More rock excavated. Can you dig it?
These albums are on limited-edition vinyl and Sonic is also on CD.
