It’s been 10 years since the release of Dane Rumble’s solo album The Experiment. Josie Adams looks back on why New Zealand fell so hard and fast. It sometimes feels like Dane Rumble was a mass hallucination. In the space of a decade, we’ve seen what was once just a standard summer bop – ‘Cruel’ … Read more
Blam Blam Blam’s records stunned Grant McDougall’s adolescent mind. He reflects on their impact and what it was like to finally see them live on their reunion tour, which brings them to The Others Way tonight in Auckland. It is winter, 1981. I am 12 and in Form 2 at Gisborne Intermediate. The Springbok tour … Read more
With the first 101 issues of Rip It Up going online this week at Papers Past – about 3000 pages in all – where to start? Two dedicated readers and contributors share their favourite moments from the magazine’s early years. In 1980 Simon Grigg founded the influential indie record label Propeller, which launched Blam Blam … Read more
In the mid-1980s, a teenager paid five dollars for a Katango fan club parcel. Thirty years later, her son attempts to track down the missing goods, or at least a refund. Katango was one of thousands of bands in the 1980s. Their members were effeminate young men who wore make up. Their fashion was loud … Read more
John Rykenberg ran a studio of Auckland photographers from the late ’50s through until the late 1970s. Last year, 900 boxes from his studio were donated to Auckland Libraries. One of the researchers investigating this massive collection of images was Gareth Shute, who shares some of his favourites. My interest in the Rykenberg collection came … Read more
Flying Nun’s rightful place in New Zealand history has been secured with the acquisition of the legendary label’s master tapes by the Alexander Turnbull Library. If Alexander Turnbull was around these days, he’d be your classic bearded, single-origin-coffee-and-fancy-toast-loving Wellington chap. Had he been at his peak in the early 1980s, on the other hand, he … Read more
A vast YouTube archive reveals the weird, wonderful and sometimes genius parallel universe of TopPop – the Netherlands’ anything-goes answer to Top of the Pops. Think of a band, any band, so long as they had an international chart hit in the 1970s or 80s. There is a pretty good chance that band lip-synced that … Read more
To mark the 20th anniversary of Drive, and the upcoming anniversary tour to celebrate it, Hussein Moses talks to Bic Runga and those involved in the recording to find out how it became one of the most significant albums in New Zealand music history. It’s been 20 years since the release of Drive, the album … Read more
Every week Chartlander travels back through time, landing in a different year on the official New Zealand singles chart in the hopes of (re)discovering forgotten Top 40 gold. Today we continue our tour of classic general elections at the start of Winston Peters’ career in parliament. The date is May 24 1979, and today, six … Read more
Every week Chartlander travels back through time, landing in a different year on the official New Zealand singles chart in the hopes of (re)discovering forgotten Top 40 gold. Today we continue our tour of significant election moments. The date is Thursday the 14th of June, 1984. Tonight, New Zealand’s prime minister Robert Muldoon will get … Read more
Every week Chartlander travels back through time, landing in a different year on the official New Zealand singles chart in the hopes of (re)discovering forgotten Top 40 gold. Today we go back to the last time the Labour Party came into power. The day is November 27, 1999, and Helen Clark has just been elected … Read more
Welcome to Chartlander, where each week we travel back through time to land in a different year on the official New Zealand singles chart in the hopes of (re)discovering forgotten Top 40 gold. Today we go back 26 years to this day in 1991. Welcome to the 10th of August 1991 in Aotearoa. Jim Bolger is … Read more
The year is 2001 and the music business is under existential threat from the latest teen craze: CD bootlegging. Its response involved draconian fines, an embarrassing txt-speak slogan and Dave Dobbyn made up to look like a burns victim. Robyn Gallagher explains. Cast your mind back 15 years ago, before the age of streaming and … Read more