RUMOURS

Rip It Up, Issue 121, 1 August 1987, Page 10

RUMOURS

Auckland Watch for the Rheineck Music Festival to be held at Abbys in Victoria St on Saturday August 29. All three bars will have live music from 11 am to 12pm, with Al Hunter, Nares, Skindivers, Maria Monet, Neon Quaver, Society Jazzmen, Tommy Adderly, Toot Suite, Red Adair, Soul on Ice and Rhythm Cage ... National Anthem return with a single this month ‘Wonderful Reason’ plus live gigs with new six-piece lineup ...the Pterodactyls have an EP and Three Leaning Men an album due out in the next month on Meltdown ... Lynne Campbell from Working Holiday is joining Sweet Harmony, whose new album is available at their gigs ... Mondays at Charley Gray’s cinema are “Cheap Thrills” nights: previews and rarities for $3.50 ... ever keep

clippings or notes of the pop charts? Russ Leadley wants details of National Hit Parades and the Top 40 from the years 1961 to 1967 for aNZ music encyclopaedia he’s compiling. Write PO Box 378, Greymouth In New Plymouth Sticky Filth have an EP out ths month ‘At Least Rock & Roll Doesn't Give You Aids’ ... new bands are the Urchins, with Brendan Conlon (ex-Remarkable) and Mark Airlie (ex-Pilcrow), and a thrash metal band Das Unter Mensh about a dozen local bands are booked so far for the Kuhtze No Ordinary Band contest at the White Hart on August 28 & 29.

The first national training scheme for backstage theatre workers is underway. Trainees will spend two years training while working in a theatre, learning all parts of their craft. Organised by the National Theatre Technicians Training Committee, applications for the new entrant training scheme close at the end of August, with an introductory

course planned to start midOctober. For details contact Jeremy Collins ph. 09-792-583, or write PO Box 9443, Courtenay Place, Wgton...

Joe 90 have a single out ‘Walls Surrounding Me’ in early Sept, when their tour starts... Maya have finished recording an album-length cassette. Chris Bourke

UK & USA Top UK producer (Grace Jones, Talking Heads, Simply Red, Bob Marley, Robbie Nevil) Alex Sadkin died after a car accident in Nassau, Bahamas, on July 16. He'd just completed Boom Crash Opera's debut LP ... the Smiths look likely to split after a rift between Johnny Marr and Morrissey. St rangeways Here We Come looks like being their last album ... Springsteen is back in the studio ... after their recent suit against Nike shoes for using ‘Revolution’ in an ad, the surviving Beatles are now suing Capitol for delays releasing Beatle CDs. Their lawyer

claims it’s the company's way of getting the band to drop their eight-year suit over Abbey Road royalties. LL Cool J was recently fined $250 for “lewdness on stage” — simulating sexual intercourse. "He was on a sofa hunching up and down and carrying on,” said the Ohio police chief. Ohio brought in new obscenity laws after the Beastie Boys caused an uproar... teenagers imitating the Beasties ‘Fight For Your Right to Party’ video caused $350,000 worth of damage when a luxury house was gutted by fire in Washington... meanwhile British Beastie fans are stealing 300 Volkswagen badges a day. VW are now selling the badges by mailorder to prevent the vandalism Terence Trent D’Arby was involved in a fight outside a London theatre. The heckling bystander didn't realise young Tel was once a Golden Gloves champ.

Former toilet seat fitter Bill Withers (‘Lean On Me’) is the latest to have a hit used for an ad: ‘Lovely

Day’ now extols the virtues of Ford Escorts. Meanwhile, post-Platoon ‘Tracks of My Tears’ now means Budweiser ... Shock! Bill Wyman was seen at Island Records 25th anniversary bash with a woman old enough to be his mother! ... Wilson Pickett is in a New Jersey court, facing charges relating back three years, when he allegedly fired a gun at one of the Isley Brothers while on a hunting trip. Pickett, who claims he didn't know the gun was loaded, is now on Motown with a new LP American Soul Man ... Ronnie Spector is back with Unfinished Business, with the title track by Gregory Abbott ... Run DMC's Tougher Than Leather movie should be out in the US by late August. Christchurch Canterbury Polytech's Plain Radio is back on air from August 3 to 18 on 92.1 FM, while Radio U recently held a successful Kiwi music only day... South American ? are now

a four-piece and touring and recording under the name South American Big Band the Smithereens are now Big Game Hunters Worlds Apart are recording an album at Nightshift without the assistance of guitarist Jodie Bell who won a trip for two to England off a tube of toothpaste! ... Churchills have a new bassist, Paul Thompson, and hope to tour mid-August. Flying Nun news: the Chills proved to be a hit at the New Music Seminar in New York and they have a new album recorded ... members of Max Block now living in Sydney will team up with the Bats for their last Aussie date, and with the Verlaines on the first date of their tour, on August 28 ... Tall Dwarfs, after packing the Old Star for the Jesus on a Stick party, recorded an EP at Nightshift... keep an eye out for a 45 by Rex Bourke’s Strange Love

Martin McPherson has left his post at the Youth Centre. Bridgette Hanrahan from the Court Theatre will be taking over ... after a successful Dole Day gig and Saturday night with the Bats, the New Zealander looks set to become an alternative venue which should help out some of the local bands wondering where to play. Anyone interested phone Running Promotions on 64-324 John Greenfield Wellington

The Cricketers have reverted to weekend gigs after dropping Sneaky Feelings for a covers band and disco. They will vary their licensing hours depending on gigs. A sigh of relief passed over the town after the possiblity of losing weekends of local and touring bands ... tenders are out for the operation of the Council’s Chews Lane underage venue, but the restrictive contract riders make it a dodgy proposition ... No 9 have their album Nowhere Fast released on Jayrem and are touring north in August and September ... also out on Jayrem is the Hardedge Compilation compiled by Gerald Dwyer with No Idea, Compos Mentis, Five Year Mission and Flesh D-Vice ... Compos Mentis have their final vinyl, a 7” EP ‘Backlash’ out backed with three tracks from South African band Powerage...

Besser and Prosser have released (Volume II) Forms and Gestures, music for piano and violin on Kiwi Pac-

ific ... a compilation LP of musicians on a Labour Department work scheme features Subdominants, Flying Poakas, l-Shence and Tim Golder out this month. The RWP reggae special will be screened late August ... new band the Choice play the Southern Cross ... Phase Two are making a video of ‘The Spoiler' and are touring south ... Chicago Smoke Shop, 'rapt" at scoring the Robert Cray support, will record an album. Hammond Gamble has offered to produce ... replacing Jeff Thorp in Neil Jones’ Heaters is bassist Chris Patton, back from UK where he played with Peter Green ... Tim Robinson has left the Juke Jivers ... guitarist Dave Murphy and blues singer Marg Layton will tour the South Island. . Dave Feehan has reissued his album Ballade to counter claims from commercial radio that there is not enough locally made easy listening music available for them to meet the quota ... the Central Regional Arts Council is establishing. a touring artists programme and newsletter and a performing artists directory for the central NZ region. Enquiries to P 0 Box 5048, Wellington. - .. John Pilley . Dunedin Chris Knox shaved half his hair while in Dunedin and Straightjacket Fits gave locks of it away at their gig * the * following weekend ... every second ; Monday night Radio One have local bands playing live in the studio, and a live album of Dunedin i bands is planned, having recorded the Benders and Cassandra’s ; Ears. And through Radio One David - Kilgour and Chris Raoul are producing a history of Dunedin music. . ; Alistair Galbraith has a new band with Peter Jeffries ... Anthony Baldwin, .- ex-guitarist of Let's Get Naked, has been recording with an Arts Council grant... new band After Dark debuts at a Rational Records pre-election bash ... a new punk label is being formed ... the Baxters are reformed as the Playground and are soon to record ... the Griffins have split... a bizarre crowd filled the theatre for Sid and Nancy, including a couple of ■ “the . authorities,” who made a few arrests — surely unrelated to the recent raid!

Sharon Guytonbeck