Lower Hutt in the mid-1950s looked like a staid dormitory city for workers who commuted daily to Wellington on the “unit”, or walked and biked to nearby factories, and shopped on the local High Street. The working-class suburbs were dominated by thousands of newly built state houses; on her 1963 royal tour, Queen Elizabeth II said the sight of New Zealand’s state houses was evidence of the country’s “ordered prosperity”.
But behind the rows of treeless front lawns and weatherboard houses, music was being made. Early adopters of rock’n’roll, the Hutt Valley’s teenage baby boomers flocked to local halls, where youth clubs organised dances and talent quests so that there was no repetition of the local sexual shenanigans investigated by the 1954 Mazengarb report into juvenile delinquency. The Front Lawn evocatively captured this scene in their song ‘Tomorrow Night’: “She grew up out in the Hutt Valley ... She’d go dancing in the weekends.”
From this environment came many musicians who made their name in the 1960s – and this continues to the present day, with artists such as Vera Ellen and Disasteradio.
Click here to see a full-size version of the map at its best. Alternatively, the embedded map below is best viewed on a desktop/laptop/tablet; if you wish to zoom in on any particular location then double-click.
AudioCulture’s content director Chris Bourke – born in Lower Hutt – is tour guide. An Upper Hutt music map is in the works.
Other music maps on AudioCulture:
Flying Nun's Early Years in Christchurch