TV

Rip It Up, Issue 65, 1 December 1982, Page 30

TV

Robert Eyres

Talking point of the month has to-be the four RWP regional spots. The willingness of TVNZ to take on this sort of project certainly makes the bulk of our radio programmers look pretty backward by comparison, which indeed they are. Nice fast format allowed lots of faces and views to be crammed in, although doubtless there are a few noses out of joint around the place among would-be experts who were not consulted. There were actually a few quite glaring omissions; Roger Sheperd of Flying Nun (although his nonappearance was, I gather, self-in-flicted); Wellington's Hulamen (easily the city's most popular live act over the past year but did not even rate a mention) and Herbs (in fact the whole series was a little too white for comfort) being the ones "that spring to mind. Most contributors made a reasonable fist of things and a few made a real impression as actual TV personality

material. Dick Driver probably did best and Riot Ill's Void, despite his 'street credibility' etc, proved yet again that he is probably NZ's number one media hype artist and a real frontrunner to take over Selwyn Toogood's role after the revolution. On the other hand a few others probably did themselves less proud. I for one could have done without Jim Wilson and his Tonto from Christchurch, Jane Walker and Paul Kean's rather vacuous pretensions to artiness and Michael 'pathetic' O'Niell, but I guess its all a matter of taste^^pflHHl The major advance in the way the series was put together, of course, lay in the fact that people got the chance to speak for themselves, rather than us having some nitwit-DJ-who-sends-his-jeans-to-the-drycleaners type, foisted on us as a pseudo expert as I'm sure would have happened a year or two ago. A worthwhile effort and possibly worth 'repeating each year. P.S. Did my eyes deceive me or did Dennis' O'Brien's 'J-J-Julia' appear on RTR a few weeks back in the 'High Flyer' spot, in a week when the single didn't even chart? Perhaps this really is the dawning of a new era of TVNZ commitment to local music.