I only really know one song by American country singer Crystal Gayle, but I really like it, especially the piano accompaniment: “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”.
The song was a hit worldwide in 1977, reaching Number 1 on the U.S. Country charts and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album it was taken from , “We Must Believe In Magic”, went platinum.
This performance of “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” by Crystal Gayle appears to have been in Australia, judging by the accent of the announcer (or is it South Africa?):
Apparently Crystal Gayle, who is the younger sister of Loretta Lyn (never knew that till now), has blue eyes.
In April 1979 I attended a live concert of reggae musicians Bob Marley and The Wailers that was part of the Babylon By Bus Tour, featuring songs like “Positive Vibration”, “I Shot The Sheriff”, “No Woman, No Cry”, “Lively Up Yourself”, “Is This Love?”, “Get Up, Stand Up” and “Exodus”.
It was an afternoon concert at Easter, at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.
I was actually in Auckland with a van full of other students from Massey University in Palmerston North, selling “capping magazines” – a collection of largely rude jokes with a list of that year’s graduates in the centre.
The entrance area to Western Springs was an ideal place to offer the magazines – at 50 NZ cents each – to passersby on their way to the concert.
When the time was right, we stopped selling, went in and enjoyed the concert, then carried on again afterwards as the crowds slowly headed off to cars and buses.
This was the same venue where exactly two years earlier I had experienced the Alice Cooper “Welcome To My Nightmare” concert, and in December 1978 David Bowie (“Station To Station”), so it was interesting to see it in the daytime.
The setlist of the Babylon By Bus Tour reflected the album of the same name, which the tour through Asia and Oceania (New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii) was promoting.
These are the more well known songs from the album and tour (well, more well known to me at least…).
“Positive Vibration” (sometimes called “Rastaman Vibration”:
“Rastaman Vibration”:
“I Shot The Sheriff”:
“No Woman, No Cry”:
“Lively Up Yourself”:
“Is This Love?”:
“Get Up, Stand Up”:
“Exodus”:
More than anyone else Bob Marley is identified with reggae music, and I guess I was privileged to see him in 1979 – just over two years later he died. The legacy remains.
Last night by chance I came across an old favourite from New Zealand in the Seventies: Mother Goose singing their slightly ludicrous “Baked Beans” – which just goes to show you can make a rock song outof anything!
I had forgotten about Mother Goose, but they actually did pretty well for themselves, having coming up with the idea of mocking themselves by dressing up ridiculously when they performed in the South Island city of Dunedin and then nationally.
The more they made fun of themselves, the more popular they became: they broke attendance records accross Australasia, and their debut album “Stuffed” was Mushroom Records’ fastest selling album.
When they went to Australia, what later became top bands queued up to be their support acts, like Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Men At Work and The Angels.
Their first national tour was with international, i.e. British, band Supercharge – this particularly got my attention because a flatmate of mine in Bamberg, Germany in the early Eighties was later in a blues band that had a number of gigs with Supercharge, including when they toured with Chuck Berry.
Mother Goose moved to the USA in 1978 for a year and did very well, with members of Kiss and Devo becoming fans of their shows in New York.
After returning to Australia the band continued to attract huge crowds there and also on tours in Canada, eventually breaking up in 1984, with a reunion in 2007 as part of a celebration of 30 years of the “Dunedin Sound”.
Here now is the “Baked Beans” video, which was so well received it even got shown on TV between prime time programmes in Australia and New Zealand:
Just to show they didn’t just do humour, here is “This Is The Life”, live in Dunedin, New Zealand:
Glad I chanced on this one again, hope you enjoyed it too. 🙂
The Scavengers were one of the first New Zealand punk bands in the late Seventies (along with The Suburban Reptiles), most well known locally for their songs “Mysterex” and “True Love”.
The band was actually formed pre-punk in the mid Seventies by graphic design students at the Auckland Technical Institute and renamed The Scavengers in 1977 when the punk movement started.
They contributed the two tracks mentioned to a compilation album called “AK79”.
At first the only video of “True Love” played by The Scavengers I could find was from an “AK79 Show” in 2008 where the sound quality was so bad I didn’t want to inflict it on you. Meanwhile I just found another, shorter one that is bearable (just!) and gives an idea of the original energy.
In 1979 The Scavengers moved to Melbourne, Australia and again renamed themselves The Marching Girls in 1980.
I was thinking The Scavengers were the punk trio I engaged for a free rock festival at the Massey University Student Orientation in Palmerston North in March 1980, but unless they came back to New Zealand before renaming themselves, I guess it wasn’t them. Have to do some digging to find the answer to that one.
Anyway, here is “Mysterex” from 1978:
In this clip band member at the time Brendan Perry (who now does VERY different things) describes the background to “Mysterex”:
As mentioned, here is “True Love” at “AK79 Revisited” in 2008 (the other video of the same performance says The Scavengers…):
Actually, I will give you the option of watching the other video if you like, which includes two girls jumping on the stage and has better video quality (but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the sound!):
And here is The Scavengers song “True Love” played by the band’s reincarnation Marching Girls some years later, when it was used in the soundtrack of a film called “Dogs In Space”:
Tamed down a bit by this time… think I prefer the Scavengers version.
One song I remember from 1979 was “My Sharona” by The Knack.
It was apparently the biggest hit of the year and spent six consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart as well as five weeks at No. 1 in Australia.
The followup single “Good Girls Don’t”, from the same album “Get The Knack”, peaked at No. 11. The album itself went to No. 1.
Here’s “My Sharona”:
This is the “cleaned up” version of “Good Girls Don’t”:
And here is “Good Girls Don’t” in the the original, “unexpurgated” version:
I nearly fell off my chair when I heard this version the first time. (Especially on New Zealand radio, I was surprised it wasn’t censored.)
Incidentally, while preparing this I read that lead singer Doug Fieger passed away just three months ago, on February 14, 2010. Drummer Bruce Gary, who had not participated in more recent reunions, died in 2006. Both were in their mid Fifties.
Hard to believe when you watch the lively videos, and all the more reason to be thankful that we can.
