I have noticed that from / in the 70's and 80's Austalian and New Zealand had some good songs from unknown (means not famous in Europe) singers and bands.

 

These following 3 songs I liked the best so far (I'm still checking more)...

 

Kiwi band "Split Enz" - I Hope I Never (1980)

 

 

Another Kiwi band

 

 

Aussie band

Edited June 30, 201014 yr by boys allowed

Shivers by Boys Next Door (featuring a very young Nick Cave)

Shivers by Boys Next Door (featuring a very young Nick Cave)

Sounds good to me!

Didn't know that Nick Cave's Australian... (but now I get why Kylie made a duet with him). :lol:

 

 

Off the top of my head Pre 2000:

 

The Loved Ones - Loved One (1965)

 

Split Enz - Message To My Girl (1984)

 

1927 - That's When I Think Of You (1988)

 

Merril Bainbridge - Mouth (1996)

 

Bic Runga - Sway (1997)

Sorry, I couldn't watch the last 3 (of the five) videos which you posted - perhaps it's blocked for my country! :rolleyes:

Well, I see Split Enz weren't so unknown like I guessed, when you as an Englishman can remember them...

 

Just recently I read somewhere that Olivia Newton-John is (or rather "was") the most famous Aussie singer in the US.

It's funny because I always thought she would be a typical American singer... :blink:

 

 

By the way, I have a question. How come when you all are posting videos - that anyone can just see the vids on this forum

without a big fuss while we can't see it here and have to go to the youtube site when I'm posting vids...??

Edited June 29, 201014 yr by boys allowed

Sorry, I couldn't watch the last 3 (of the five) videos which you posted - perhaps it's blocked for my country! :rolleyes:

Well, I see Split Enz weren't so unknown like I guessed, when you as an Englishman can remember them...

 

Just recently I read somewhere that Olivia Newton-John is (or rather "was") the most famous Aussie singer in the US.

It's funny because I always thought she would be a typical American singer... :blink:

By the way, I have a question. How come when you all are posting videos - that anyone can just see the vids on this forum

without a big fuss while we can't see it here and have to go to the youtube site when I'm posting vids...??

 

put the youtube code, after the = in [] them brackets with youtube in the first and /youtube in the second set of brackets either side of that code. :)

 

split enz had a hit here with 'i got you', thats how i know them but am not familiar with their other releases

split enz had a hit here with 'i got you', thats how i know them but am not familiar with their other releases

 

I was actually watching my Split Enz hits DVD just before I came into work today and got up to the point where the promotional video for “I See Red” was shown. I think “I See Red” was their only other hit in the UK, though I do not think it got into the Top 40.

 

I suppose anyone who is a fan of The Finn Brothers would know a lot of Split Enz songs, whilst other people may know “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” or “Message To My Girl”. I think the former song was voted, alongside McLennan-Forster’s “Cattle and Cane”, as one of the greatest Australian songs ever because Split Enz were living in Melbourne at the time [however, I think the famously cramped living conditions that gave Crowded House their name was a reference to a time living in Los Angeles in the mid 1980s rather than at this point in Melbourne].

 

In regards to “Message To My Girl”, people may also know this song if they happened to collect all those free CDs that came with Mojo in the mid 1990s, as “Message To My Girl” was featured in a version that was recorded with the national New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. This version was credited to ‘ENZSO’ [not to be confused with the duo Enso, the name being a combination of Enz and N.Z.S.O.] and came from an album released in about 1996, that featured most of the Split Enz back catalogue recorded orchestrally.

 

I never got to listen to the entire ENZSO album, as my friend at University, who was a big fan of Neil Finn, never got around to lending it me after he said he would so I cannot confirm whether the album was largely instrumental or not. I have still got all of my Mojo CDs and “Message To My Girl” is one track worth playing from the masses of artists that I have now forgotten about [the ones who were supposed to be the ‘Next Big Thing’]. It is a beautiful version of the song and I actually prefer it to the original. Anyone who likes Crowded House and is also a fan of the orchestral sounds of ABC’s ‘Lexicon Of Love’ album, should check this record out.

 

I think the ‘ENZSO’ album was performed at least once in concert, but I doubt if all the orchestra would have painted all their faces for the show. Unlike Kiss, I cannot imagine the group reforming for gigs with all the original 1970s make-up, especially if the reunion featured Neil Finn, who joined much later on when he was about 21.

 

I think I was about 21 when Crowded House originally split up in the 1990s and must have been 12 or 13, when I first saw the video to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” on The Chart Show. Other bands from Australasia that I have liked during this years include The Triffids, Midnight Oil, INXS, Frenté, The Go-Betweens and Mental As Anything, all acts that I guess people on here would have heard about before.

 

Loz

 

Sorry, I couldn't watch the last 3 (of the five) videos which you posted - perhaps it's blocked for my country! :rolleyes:

Well, I see Split Enz weren't so unknown like I guessed, when you as an Englishman can remember them...

 

Just recently I read somewhere that Olivia Newton-John is (or rather "was") the most famous Aussie singer in the US.

It's funny because I always thought she would be a typical American singer... :blink:

By the way, I have a question. How come when you all are posting videos - that anyone can just see the vids on this forum

without a big fuss while we can't see it here and have to go to the youtube site when I'm posting vids...??

If you look up Olivia Newton-John you'll find she was born in Cambridge, UK although she moved away young and I'm not sure what she puts for her nationality.

 

You might like to know she's also half German

 

 

And Split Enz became Crowded House eventually

Edited July 1, 201014 yr by Severin

Well, next time I should do better research before writing anything! :lol:

Didn't know that Split Enz become Crowded House so in that case

they're in no way nonfamous in Europe! :blush:

 

Same about Olivia Newton-John - I only read that she's an Aussie singer...

there was nothing about birth place or something so I didn't know that she's actually English/German.

 

 

 

@Zippy T Doodar

I listened to it and I agree. The 90's Orchestra version of "Message to my girl" sounds much better

than the original one from '84!

 

 

 

But Skyhooks and Mi-Sex are indeed unknown here and I wonder why they didn't tried Europe...

I'm sure it wouldn't have flopped.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UduuxKdPt9Q...feature=related

Edited July 1, 201014 yr by boys allowed

the easybeats had 1 major hit here in '66 with 'friday on my mind', they released a string of others that failed to impact on our charts... will look them up when ive time.

the easybeats had 1 major hit here in '66 with 'friday on my mind', they released a string of others that failed to impact on our charts... will look them up when ive time.

 

In the car, I am currently listening to a ‘Swinging Sixties’ three CD set and was actually playing The Easybeats the other night from this compilation. After getting home, I spent most of the evening trying to remember who recorded the song in the 1980s, thinking that it could have been The Dammed, Siouxsie & The Banshees or Echo & The Bunnymen [though I remembered that they covered Love, Trinity and The Doors instead]. I was sure it was either a Goth or Indie band from the 1980s who had covered it, but after looking in the Hit Singles book it turned out it was Gary Moore, a guitarist who I think used to be in one of the line ups of Thin Lizzy with Midge Ure.

 

I also looked at The Easybeats discography to see if they had many other hits, but it turned out that they only had one more chart hit in the UK. I do not know this other hit but I do know that their song “Good Times” was the song INXS and Jimmy Barnes covered for ‘The Lost Boys’ soundtrack [alongside that Doors cover by Echo & The Bunnymen]. In addition to this The Easybeats were listed in the Hit Singles book as being a group made up of members from England, Australia and The Netherlands.

 

Even though they had only a couple of hits in the UK I think The Easybeats were as big as The Beatles in Australia, because like many bands, I guess The Beatles would have not got around to touring there in the 1960s. This was due to bands taking about six months in a boat to get there, a timeframe which also seemed to be the usual gap between releases of albums by groups in that decade [therefore time was not wasted on long trips ‘down under’]. However, as far as the UK market is concerned I think the most successful 1960s group from Australia was actually The Bee Gees, who had two number ones.

 

Loz

 

 

Bowie did Friday on My Mind on his Pin-Ups album

 

Bowie did Friday on My Mind on his Pin-Ups album

 

 

I like Bowie but my collection is still missing many of his earlier albums including ‘Pin-Ups’. Even though it is a covers album, I think it should be a good album as Bowie would have still been ‘Ziggy’ at the time when it was recorded. In that case, I would say that ‘Pin-Ups’ is likely to be a better album than many of his later artist albums from the 1980s, especially the one that coincided with the ‘Glass Spider’ tour. Actually, I think ‘Pin-Ups’ could be the last album ‘recorded’ by ‘Ziggy’ and therefore could be looked upon as some kind of ‘symbolic’ project by Bowie to rid himself of that character.

 

At about the time Bowie released ‘Pin-Ups’, I think Bryan Ferry also released a covers album, as a side-project away from Roxy Music. As it is not an album that I have got in my recent pile of Roxy Music CDs, I cannot say whether the album would be all Glam-Rock or an album where Ferry would be crooning all those 1940s covers again [i suppose that particular ‘wartime covers’ album will still not be as bad as those covers albums by either Duran Duran or Simple Minds].

 

Are you a fan of Bowie and Ferry? If so, did you happen to listen to that two-part Radio 2 show about Glam-Rock, that was presented by Gary Kemp, a couple of weeks ago? I enjoyed listening to the first part but still have not got around to listening to the final part yet.

 

I think this second part will be mainly about British bands like Slade and Sweet. I think American acts, such as Kiss and Alice Cooper, could get a few mentions and will be talked about briefly but I think that the focus of the show will be mainly placed upon other British Glam-Rock bands.

 

Glam-Rock is not a genre that would come to mind when thinking about New Zealand or Australia, as I would expect most bands from these countries to be either in the pub-rock or hard-rock genres. I do not know if anybody would categorise Split Enz as being an outright Glam-Rock band [especially in the years before Neil Finn joined], though I suppose they could be, as they were formed in the early 1970s and had lots of make-up.

 

I think a documentary about Australian Rock would be of great interest to me, but I doubt that I will be hearing or watching one anytime soon on the BBC as ‘Australian Rock’ does not seem to seem to have the general appeal as either American or British Rock. Actually, apart from the BBC, I think that Rock in general is under represented on television at the moment, especially on the music channels that we get on Freeview.

 

As far as Rock music is concerned, I would have expected 4music to have a better playlist, as they take many programmes from Channel 4 and could take shows from sister channel ‘Kerrang!’ TV as well. Unfortunately these shows from ‘Kerrang!’ are quite rare and usually scheduled at about 1am in the morning after all the old Channel 4 comedy programmes have finished.

 

I do not mind watching 4music at night when many of these comedy shows are broadcast again, just as long as it is not ‘Bo Selecta’ that is being repeated. I never got the appeal of that show in the first place and I guess it would be very dated if I did.

 

Even though they are about 10 years old now, I do like watching ‘Banzai’ and ‘Trigger Happy TV’. Actually, as far as music programming is concerned I would say that ‘Trigger Happy TV’ has a better ‘playlist’ than many of the ‘shows’ broadcast in the daytime hours [for example all those ‘Top 20 R&B’ countdowns].

 

Does anybody else here watch Trigger Happy TV? If you are a regular viewer then you might be familiar with “Under The Milky Way” by Australian group The Church. I think it must be a favourite track of Dom Joly, as it is one of those obscure tracks from the late 1980s that is used over and over again as a soundtrack to all the crazy stuff that is shown on screen. Another record like this is “Bakerman” by the Danish group Laid Back, which also features on the ‘Trigger Happy’ spin-off album.

 

If you have been living in mainland Europe then you will probably know Laid Back as they have been going for years. I think they had a lot of big hits in the mid 1980s including “Sunshine Reggae” which I think was originally released in about 1984. They are not to be confused with Slovenia’s Laibach, who I would expect to be better known on here by fans of alternative 1980s music.

 

Nevertheless, if you do remember Laid Back’s “Bakerman” then I guess that you will also remember that skydiving pop video that accompanied the single, which featured the band plummeting to earth whilst playing various instruments. As well as the “Bakerman is baking bread” refrain I think there was something in the lyrics about “The night train is coming, got to keep on running”, but as it has been many years since I have listened to it without looking at any funny visuals, I may have got this line wrong and be thinking of something else instead.

 

Loz

 

 

I really need to get Split Enz stuff

Edited July 8, 201014 yr by toneski