Records Records Records
Written for Mushroom magazine, 1981. The most intriguing thing about Dunedin's second-hand record shop is that it doesn't have a name. No name at...
Merv Thomas
Marlene Tong
Ready to Roll
TVNZ's news hour at 6pm has always rated big, but from the late 1970s it had a rival. At its height, TV2 pop chart show Ready to Roll was reaching ...
Lisa Crawley
Goldenhorse
Kimbra
NZ Acts in the US Charts 2: Lorde and beyond
This is the second part of our story on New Zealand acts who have appeared on the Hot 100 (US singles chart) and Billboard 200 (US album chart). Pa...
NZ Acts in the US Charts 1: the road to How Bizarre
It is hard to say who the first New Zealander was to make it onto the United States charts. Local chart historian Dean Scapolo points to at least o...
George Tumahai
The Crystal Palace Ballroom
When, in the late 1950s, impresario Phil Warren took over Auckland's Crystal Palace Ballroom, he used his customary flair and promotional skills...
Broods
Phil Judd in Schnell Fenster, 1989: Antipobeat
In January 1989 early Split Enz champion – and Hot Licks editor – Roger Jarrett interviewed his friend Phil Judd during Schnell Fenster's summer Ne...
New Zealand Rare Record Prices: digging for gold
Long before New Zealand had record fairs and online auction houses, we had hundreds of cluttered, dark and dusty opportunity shops, affectionately ...
The Hi-Brows
Grant Gillanders
Russell Crowe’s rock’n’roll hunger, 1981
In the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collection is a treasure trove of photographs of Russell Crowe from July 1981, in his rock'n'roll persona, Russ ...
Ngāruawāhia: the David Stone album
David Stone was living in Rotorua and about to be married at the time of the Great Ngāruawāhia Music Festival. Having worked in the record industry...
The Great Ngāruawāhia Music Festival
"Woodstock Planned In Waikato” ran the headline in the New Zealand Herald. It had been a long time coming. Three years after the epochal Woodstock ...
Ngāruawāhia group line-up
The acts planned for the Great Ngāruawāhia Music Festival, as described in the festival newspaper the Ngāruawāhia Chronicle on 6 January 1973, th...
Aaron Tokona
Kemp Tuirirangi
Carol Davies
Flight of the Conchords: the second decade and solo years
2018: It's a sweltering mid-summer evening on a Monday in London. I've just picked up tickets from the Eventim Apollo, the rock and comedy mecca pr...
Derek Lind
Carol Has as Many Fans as Johnny
Billed as "Miss Rock'n'Roll” with the Johnny Devlin Show, tiny (she's only five feet two) Carol Davies is gathering enthusiastic teenage fans in bo...
Craig Scott
Craig Scott, 1970: The Singer Goes Round and Round
Auckland, 1970 "Sing for your supper” harmonise The Mamas and the Papas as Craig Scott sits on his bed sanding down a model aeroplane. The room is...
Reb Fountain
Donna Dean
Kim Willoughby
Playdate on the Scene, 1962
Roy Phillips
Ten silken hits of NZ yacht rock
I moved to New Zealand nearly 20 years ago, an emissary of the US free improv/noise/drone/psych scene, barely aware of local music outside of my no...
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Street Talk
The Naked and Famous
Max Merritt: the UK years
Max Merritt and the Meteors shifted their base from Melbourne to the UK in October 1970. The band then comprised Merritt, Stewie Speers (drums), Bo...
Songwriter’s Choice: Sam Ford and Trudi Green
When we were first asked to contribute to this series, we thought, "Hey, this'll be fun”. We had no idea just how difficult it would be, for three ...
Dead People and other stories: rock memoirs, 2015-2020
By sweeping the general non-fiction categories at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Shayne Carter has not only won yet more recognition for ...