The Summer Of Love. 79

Rip It Up, Issue 100, 1 November 1985, Page 8

The Summer Of Love. 79

by Simon Grigg'

There are times when i have trouble

remembering the night before, let alone seven years ago, but I seem to recall that summer that took us into 1979 was a particularly hot and long one. Nostalgia’s a sweetening thing but the weeks seemed to rotate

effortlessly around Saturday afternoons at Parnell’s Windsor Castle when the known Universe, or at least a large part of it, massed extremely

uncomfortably in the lounge bar, as much to be part of the event as to hear the music.

This was Auckland’s Summer of Love, although in our case it was more Toy Love, who, from early February onwards dominated live music for a hell of a lot of people. The Enemy had made an impression (not least because of the circus games on stage with a beer bottle) but from the first note of their first gig, Kean, Walker, Dooley, Bathgate and Knox were the axis around which Auckland's 79 soundtrack revolved. By December 1978 the Scavengers and Reptiles had gone, Zwines had lost everything it once had (apart from the seediness)

and people were sick to death of punk jukeboxes. Basically the whole scene was looking a little flyblown. Toy Love led, or were a symptom of. the creative burst that changed all that. In 1979 Proud Scum played the Occidental and predated The Young Ones by four years. The Members played Mainstreet. The creativity and the surrounding energy were best documented on Bryan Staff's AK 79 compilation, a record which marks the beginning of both contemporary independent local recording and an intelligent effort to document a scene which had all but been ignored by major companies. In fact by 1982 more NZ rock records had been released in the previous three years than the sum total of the 70s prior to that. In 1979 it felt as if something important was happening. God knows I felt more inspired than ever before, but I think that was a fairly general attitude.

In 1978, RIU wrote that Citizen Band had "firmly established the right to play originals" a ludicrous statement in itself, but one that reflected the time.

However within 12 months, a band, on any level, that did not centre its set around original material would be a target of derision. By the beginning of 1980 I was working in a central city record shop trying to get the Gang of Four in the Top 40 and the Marching Girls were set to return, divide and conquer.

In February 1980 Elvis Costello and Toy Love played Sweetwaters Elvis played ‘Little Sister' by “the other Elvis” and I seem to remember I was speechless. In 1980 I discovered just how easy it was to make a 7” piece of plastic and contribute something worthwhile to the local music scene which had given me so much. In 1980 the Features played the best and worst gigs I’ve ever seen, and made a very special record called ‘City Scenes’. I won $lO off the Polygram rep who claimed the Flight X 7 debut 45 would get a bettei chart placing than the Spelling Mistakes or Features singles easy pickings! In 1980 we had XS Cafe

and Liberty Stage and the beginnings of the Newmatics, Gordons, Penknife Glides, Blams, Danse Macabre and something that was tagged the North Shore Invasion which gave us the

Meemees. That year, Toy Love, the Features, th’ Dudes and the Primmers disintegrated. Of course all sorts of other things happened in those two years, most of which I don’t feel qualified to write about, or nostalgia has blocked out, but in my part of the world I had a good time and I think we all achieved something worthwhile.

Simon Grigg