Tuesday, June 03, 2014

In love with these crimes


Real Groovy Records has a sale on this past weekend, with 10,000 LPs on sale at $10 a pop. I went and had a dig and found a few gems, along with some dross, like the above record, arguably one of the worst records ever released by Flying Nun, a faux country record with no redeeming features. No, I did not buy it.

The gent in the middle is Eric Glandy aka Derek Ward, brother of Barbara Ward, who is Chris Knox's former partner. And on the far right is one Don McGlashan - as someone mentioned to me, bet you won't find this release in his discography! Seeing it reminded me of a magazine article from several years back, so I dug it out...


The Worst of Flying Nun Records: In Love With These Crimes was an indepth nine page article published in the September 2007 issue of Andrew Schmidt's excellent magazine Mysterex, written by one Mr Gene Pool Belmundo. Songs singled out included The Clean - Ginger Ale; Sneaky Feelings - Be my friend; Doublehappys - Needles and plastic; and The Chills - Male monster from the Id, and also included an aside titled 'Interlude: Stupid ideas"  that mentioned the above album from Mr Glandy and pals...

"Small labels often release a 'novelty' item or two, many times the informal, pseudonomous work of well-known musicians. One such project on FN which actually worked was The Weeds' fine Wheatfields single in 1986.  However,sometimes these whimsical ventures backfire.

"As revealed in Heavenly Pop Hits: The Flying Nun Story, the release in 1986 of The Eric Glandy Memorial Big Band's Adrenal Glandy: Songs Of Love, Hate And Revenge had something of the 'spite signing' about it, some tit-for-tat hissy fit between whoever up at head office, which gained a fringe theatrical troupe a much-coveted place on the FN roster..."

In Heavenly Pop Hits Chris Knox reveals how they got Eric Glandy on the label in revenge for Netherworld Dancing Toys and Marching Orders getting on the label... fair enough...

WATCH; Heavenly Pop Hits doco in full over at NZ On Screen


Speaking of Don McGlashan, he jumped up onstage with Street Chant  at Arch Hill Records 15th birthday gig (May 30) to help out on their cover of his old band Blam Blam Blam's song There is no depression in New Zealand. Kick arse version and it still relevant. Happy birthday Arch Hill, keep being awesome.

3 comments:

Chris said...

I bought it Peter! I knew it was Flying Nun related but not much more about it, so I took a punt. It's dreadful - kind of like one of those 'quirky' art-pop records out of Wellington in the early eighties, but worse. The cover is pretty beat up, but I see that it sells for silly money online, so you never know, maybe my I'll get my $10 back. I think I partly bought it because I found the whole $10 sale selection pretty disappointing. That was the only thing I bought. Although I did pick up a great new record - Dark Matter, a new release from Stephen Cogle of The Terminals and Victor Dimisich Band

Chris said...

Any chance of you posting a scan of that article?

Peter McLennan said...

Hi Chris, so you picked it up? Brave man. I found a few late 70s boogie funk gems in there. Don't want to post a scan of the whole article as it belongs to Andrew. And it would probably create a fair bit of controversy. Might try and get Andrew to repost it somewhere.... cheers!