Middle Earth television produced a retrospective documentary about indie rock label Flying Nun a few years back, and it’s now available on YouTube, in nine parts, here.
It’s a fairly fascinating look at the Kiwi scene from the late ’70s through the early ’00s, and it’s notable for two things: 1. New Zealand is pretty much one giant small town, and the music scene it fostered bears similarities to the kind of scene that would develop in a small town–if that small town was geographically and socially cut off from the rest of the world by an ocean on all sides. 2. Chris Knox is kind of a cheese dick.
If you don’t have an hour to spend learning about NZ’s finest, underachieving-est bands, the following three clips are pretty much all you need to know, and it can be summed up by the assumption that the only band anyone in New Zealand had heard was the Velvet Underground.
The Clean, “Tally Ho.” (Or, NZ’s “Louie Louie.)
The Verlaines, “Doomsday.”
Look Blue Go Purple, “Circumspect Penelope.”
Post a Comment