Summertime Super-Fun-Pak! NZ Poetry on Vinyl -- Part One

Two records from the early 1970s -- private pressings for Waiata Recordings. All the golden voices from days of olde and yore, ever and anon are hither and yon -- Janet Frame, James K Baxter, Denis Glover, CK Stead, Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, Charles Brasch -- reading their own works.

The recording quality on some of these tracks is simply shocking. My copies of the original vinyl are NM, but probably as a consequence of packing too much onto each side combined with the limitations of the original recordings, the sound varies: prepare for level peaks and drops, pops, echoes, and distortion. 

I won't try to write about these as poetry is mystery to me. I just wanted to digitise them for myself so I thought I'd share them with you. 

New Zealand Poets Read Their Works (1974)

I have taken a thrush from my cat

New Zealand Poets Read Their Work For Children (1974)

And a leopard, and a six-legged giraffe

You Were Dancing With My Mind - 24 Silicon Hits of the 1980s (c. 1989?)

This one's been a long time coming (obviously, as this blog's not been updated in 16 months or something). Very excited to post this.

While enshrining the eighties in EnZed music, many serious musos scoff at the synthesizer, though other keys are all over underground records and pop charts; countless Flying Nun bands are built around that sound of a garagey organ.

This recently rediscovered collection is a celebration of the synthetic aesthetic, from The Body Electric's use of frequency shifters to sing like cybermen, to Simon Raby aping arpeggiators on the Korg. Included are some of the biggest New Zealand synth-pop hits of that decade -- 'Computer Games' and 'Sierra Leone', The Mockers and Split Enz -- with a couple of genuine obscurities and shoulda-been contenders.

You can hate yourself for loving these tracks, but you know they're the songs you want to dance to when that cheap speed kicks in at the flat party at 3am. If, y'know, you're not actually way too old to do that sort of thing anymore.


Listen to Music Created by Machines