NZ Singles

Rip It Up, Issue 12, 1 June 1978, Page 14

NZ Singles

Francis Stark

I don't know if New Zealanders buy more or less records per head than people in other places, but I get the feeling we don't compare too badly with our peers. Why, then, do so many of those local acts which do get recorded, and find their way onto the market, sell in such abysmally low quantities? Thelast month has seen quite a clutch of local 45 releases, and their success is an interesting pointer to the buying habits of the Kiwi consumer. Already a huge seller by local standards, “Tania”by John Rowles almost doesn’t count because of Rowles’ virtually permanent exile, but is still a sign that the country music audience, especially for Maori singers (viz. Tony Williams) is quite prepared to buy New Zealand product. It is quite blatantly a return to “Cheryl Moana Marie” crossed with the schmaltziest of C & W cliches, but it’s doing

very nicely. Golden Harvest, who are, perhaps coincidentally, another Maori act, are living proof of the value of keeping on the move in New Zealand. Their first single, "I Need Your Love" was pushed into the national top ten by non-stop touring, and a willingness to play outside the big cities. The follow-up, also fashionably discoish, "Give A Little Love” stands a fair chance of doing similarly well. It may well be that it is not just helpful, but essential to get out of the big smoke to shift a lot of local records. When we get to Auckland bands, this seems even more true. Citizen Band are currently sitting on the hottest reputation in Auckland, yet their appearances outside the city have been limited to say the least. Their current release, “I Feel Good,” whose flip, “My Pohutukawa” is, in my opinion, the best song amongst this whole batch, seems unlikely to scorch up the charts. In a similar position is Alastair Riddell, with quite a local pedigree, but not the kind of single-minded pursuit of airplay, sales and popularity necessary to strike it rich in the 45 market. His “What Good Does It Do Me?" seems already to have disappeared, and it deserves more than oblivion. Golden Harvest are succeeding in the same way that Mark Williams and Hello Sailor did last year constant promotion of their own record. As any number of local acts will tell you, if you don’t do it yourself,

the record company certainly isn’t going to. Perhaps the most likely candidates for their rewards this year are Hamilton band, Misex. Currently thrashing around the country pubs, bringing a rather diluted taste of the New Wave to Middle New Zealand, they seem to be getting through the necessary amount of work. Whether their record, “Straight Laddie”, a fairly undistinguished Ramones pastiche, is strong enough remains to be seen. The trouble seems to be that Auckland is the place with a big enough population to support a band indefinitely, where a lot of the recording is done and where enough good bands and musicians congregate to establish some kind of community. At the same time it encourages a touch of elitism by the presence of a greater number of acts of recordable standard. Who could blame all the Wellington bands who have made long-term trips north? Or the Auckland bands who stay at home? Ultimately, though, it is south of Auckland that local records are made or broken. Only those with enough drive to succeed on the singles market seem prepared to get to those people. Quite understandably, the ambitions of the likes of Citizen Band and Alastair Riddell extend considerably beyond a local hit single, and it seems that Auckland's rock and roll colony is leaving the others to it.