Katango


A pair of obviously odd teenage pop fans met up on a football pitch in the Auckland suburbs in the early 1980s. Carl Robinson was the dude with the blue hair, while Paul Eversden flourished a bottle-blonde flop. They stuck out like the proverbial. “He walked up to me and said ‘Do you like Echo and the Bunnymen?’ says Robinson, “And I said yes! Two days later he came around to my house and we listened to English records.”

Eversden and Robinson had emigrated with their families from the UK in the 1970s, the Eversdens from London, and the Robinsons from the Merseyside city of Birkenhead – home to Elvis Costello, synth-pop architects Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and their friendship’s prerequisite, Echo and the Bunnymen. Robinson had returned there for the summer holidays the previous year, and an encouraging older cousin smuggled the bright-eyed 16-year-old into Liverpool’s clubs to see XTC and A Certain Ratio. He bought and brought home to New Zealand every new record he could.

Katango - Dial L For Love
Move over Club Tropicana, it's Club Katango, the Katango fan club.
Katango - cover art to Dial L For Love
Katango
Katango at the Windsor Castle, Parnell, Auckland
Katango
Photo credit: Simon Grigg collection
Katango
Photo credit: Derek Henderson
Katango play a single release party at the Venue, Symonds St Auckland
Katango - Pick It Up (filmed at Alfie's nightclub, Auckland, 1983)
Katango
Members:

Paul Eversden - vocals

Carl Robinson - synthesiser

Andrew Milne - synthesiser

Steve Glaister - synthesiser

Nick Ferneyhough - drums

Simon Ferneyhough - bass

Richard Newcomb - synthesiser

Labels:

Zulu

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