Campus Compilation Weird and Wired

Rip It Up, Issue 110, 1 September 1986, Page 4

Campus Compilation Weird and Wired

Although fewer new acts seem to have released EPs and • albums this year; overall, more lesser-known bands have probably had the opportunity to get at least some material out. What has kept the output up has been several compilations. Campus Radio’s Outnumbered by Sheep earlier in the year featured songs by

both well-known and new acts, and last month received the thumbs up from that tired oracle, the NME. From Meltdown Records over the next few weeks comes a sampler of Palmerston North’s finest, while this month sees the release of a compilation put together by national lent radio of bands from all the country.

Weird Culture, Weird Custom (it’s good to see, after their advertisement last month, that students can spell "weird” after, all) contains 12 tracks by 12 different bands, few of which have seen vinyl before. Each university radio station chose two bands from their area to contribute a track. The result is a cross-section of New Zealand’s burgeoning talent: the Replacements and the Puddle from Dunedin, Jean-Paul Sartre Experience and All Fall Down from Christchurch, Wellington’s Crawbilly Creeps and Putty in Her Hands, the Remarkables and Three Leaning Men from Palmerston North, Hamilton’s the Wetbacks and Two White Eyes, and from Auckland, the Pikelets and the Battling Strings The project evolved out of the regular meetings the student station managers have, with Jackie Riddell of Wellington’s Radio Active being given the job of co-ordinator. “It’ll become a regular thing if the sales go okay," she says, “with the record being organised by a different campus each time. We have all the resources, so it’d be silly not to.”

In Wellington, Active advertised for a month for bands who wanted to take part. “We asked bands who hadn’t been recorded before to send in demo tapes, and we chose our two from those and from seeing them live. It was really hard to choose in Wellington, there were 10 bands that would have been suitable. It would have been very easy to do a compilation of just Wellington bands.” It had been hoped that the Students Arts Council would tour a couple of the bands on the record, with each station putting on a concert with their two bands, but no one was keen to organise it, says Riddell. Each station organised the recording of their contributions to the record, which is out on Jayrem; the striking cover based on Munch’s ‘The Scream’ is by Phil Kelly, a graphic artist with the Wellington city art gallery. CB