Celebrating NZ music throughout May: 29 – The Mockers / Pop Mechanix / Scavengers / Suburban Reptiles / Toy Love

It’s nearly the end of the month, and there are still plenty I’ve missed. And I promised we’d finish checking out some of those recent kiwi punk bands, so let’s do that today too.

The Mockers

From 1984, their catchy hit song “Forever Tuesday Morning”.

This reminds me of a long standing rock music program on NZ TV, every Sunday night from 1977 to 1989, called Radio with Pictures. That’s where we got to see all the new music from overseas, and non commercial kiwi music, and was eagerly looked forward to every week. Here’s a short clip about the show.

It reminded me because Andrew Fagan, from The Mockers, went on the show to be interviewed by Karyn Hay (the frontperson from 1980 to 1986), and that was the start of a long standing rock’n’roll romance. I couldn’t find a clip of that original interview, but here’s an interview with them both many years later.

Pop Mechanix

Active from 1979 to 1988, here they are in 1981 playing live “Jumping Out A Window”

OK, time for some punk now.

Early kiwi punk bands

I wasn’t familiar with any of them at the time, but there were a few.

Here’s The Scavengers with Mysterex

And Suburban Reptiles with Saturday Night

Does the current stuff measure up?

We checked some out here. Let’s also check out Courtenay Hate. No actually, let’s not. I couldn’t find anything I thought was halfway decent, but feel free to go look for yourselves.

Apparently Soda Boyz are good, but they are nowhere to be found. That leaves us with Caroles. Here’s a rather rough live vid of “Now You Know”. It’s not my gig at all, but might appeal to the hard core amongst you.

@sift666 keeps saying modern music is shit, and I keep arguing with him. But I gotta say he’d be right about this lot. These guys were not too bad. But both Courtenay Hate and Caroles are fucking awful and not just because I’m getting crusty.

Let’s go back to the past again to finish

Here’s Toy Love with Squeeze

And Courtenay Hate scarred me so much I have to go and listen to Courtney Love, even though she’s not a kiwi. Join me, if you like.

Thanks for listening

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