SPLIT ENDS 'FOR YOU'

Rip It Up, Issue 3, 1 August 1977, Page 13

SPLIT ENDS 'FOR YOU'

Francis Stark

Once upon a time, there were two benevolent rock and roll promoters in Auckland (well, we thought they were, but we were much younger then). From the middle of 1971, when a balding Englishman called Elton John, touted as the next big thing, played the first true international rock concert at Western Springs Stadium, Robert Raymond and Barry Coburn hauled New Zealand music kicking into the sixties, and (eventually) the seventies. For a while it seemed that they had the sole option on success in promoting overseas rock acts through New Zealand, and their golden touch didn't finally start turning to brass until New Year 1973 and Ngaruawahia. But that disaster for them, and their creditors, was undoubtedly a triumph for a new generation of New Zealand performers. A number of acts made the huge leap from folk-clubs and dance-halls to an audience of 15,000. People like Blerta, Lindsay Marks, Brent Parlane, Rosewood (two-thirds of the frontline of Waves), Tolepuddle, Orb (Alistair Riddell) and Split Ends gave their first nervous curtsey to really large audiences, and most of them profited immensely. Another of the Raymond/Coburn enterprises at the time was Levis Saloon, which featured the pneumatic-drill rock and roll of Ticket generally, but which, on Sunday nights, was given over to the rather inappropriately - titled "folk nights". It was these sessions which were the breeding ground for many of the successes of Ngaruawahia: and a band who were one of its biggest failures Split Ends(z). The band grew out of a group of people who had played together at

school, in the 1972 Students Arts Festival, and at the Wynyard Tavern before' the line-up had been settled. It comprised Phil Judd, Brian Finn, Michael Chunn, Miles Golding (violin) and Mike Howard (flute), and it was the last-named pair, who both departed soon after, who were in many ways the backbone of the group. The first Split Ends record, "For You" b/w "Split Ends (on Vertigo) was released in May of 1973, or thereabouts, actually after Golding and Howard had gone, but still featuring them. This single demonstrates the basis.on which they = built ; an '• audience of devotees who took. them through two years of scant reward. It is also interesting to note the reappearance of Miles Golding fo n%the group s album Second Thoughts , recorded in London in 1976. He had gone to Britain to continue his classical music training and, along with two friends, provided | the string parts for "Matinee Idyll and "Stranger than Fiction". "For You is built around two major characteristics of the .band at that time': the almost atonal 'harmony' singing of Phi! Judd behind Finn's sweeter lead, and frantic duets between the violin and flute. In fact, it is in many ways a duet of duets, held together by he pu n c h y bass of Michael Chunn and ■: a - drummer who may well be brother Geoffrey, who joined the band after the departure of-Golding and Howard. There is also a brief electric guitar foray which points to the arrival of Wally Wilkinson, the band s guitarist, at about the same time. The song itself is an enigma presumably chosen as the first single because the band considered it so strong, and still sounding remarkably effective, despite the. Coburn non-

production. However, it virtually disappeared from the group s live act thereafter. A little heavy on the glitter rococo, the song -nevertheless produced a gem of a couplet in: For nights on end You've been my friend, I turned the lights on just for you. and an astonishing instrumental bridge which has Golding and Howard trading solos rather faster than the eye can see, before Chunn wades in with the most memorable bass figure si nee "Sunshine of Your Love . All in the space of less than three minutes.

The other side is more overtly bizarre. It can't be many "progressive bands (still a heavy word in 1973) that ran to your actual theme song, but, at the same time it was a long way from "Hey, hey, we re the Monkees", to "Split Ends : Guess there's no words can beat Sunday treat and rlgamortis meat, Wish you'd never found your feet, Sniffing toe-jam s really neat. Apart from such grotesqueries, the song still demonstrated Phil Judd's ear for the lyrical possibilities of the mundane: Writing letters to my friends To tell them all about Split Ends . . . It opens with manic acoustic guitars, and once the metamorphosed country bass-line comes in, there's no looking back until the final gong, some two minutes later. Together, the songs were a revelation. New Zealanders weren't supposed to produce records that sounded like nobody else sadly, New Zealand punters weren't supposed to buy weird records either. The band split and reformed as a rock band of sorts and they were on their way a little less strange, a little less distinctive and a little more in step with their audience. Perhaps the history of the band has been a long retreat to musical acceptance from when they once said: We're outside the times, Seen the break of day. My parents beat me because I laughed - Or something like that . . .