December 1, 2010. Underdogs and a (Very) Brief History of NZ Music

It is a great pleasure to be talking to so many people about New Zealand culture and music via the Phantom Billstickers Facebook page and website. We've had people from many countries visit our site now and I think this is largely because New Zealand is a very interesting country. It is a nuclear free country for one thing and I think that took more guts than people gave it credit for at the time. It was the right thing to do.

I often wonder if people know that New Zealand was discovered by Kupe the Polynesian Navigator and that it was later visited by Abel Tasman and then Captain James Cook in 1769. Cook was a remarkable man and navigator. He was from a working class background in North Yorkshire, England.

Whalers came to New Zealand in the 1800s and they brought with them all kinds of instruments and music. The settlers who came in large numbers from the 1840s onwards brought many instruments and songs with them too.

In the 1940s and 1950s there were the great Maori show bands touring the country. These were very exciting bands and paved the way for a lot of what was to come. Johnny Devlin was rocking the country by the late 1950s and early 1960s. Joe Brown was one of the great NZ music promoters of that era. Gore is the country music capital of New Zealand.

Radio Hauraki was a pirate radio station that came along in the late 1960s and which, frankly, helped save New Zealand music and culture at a time when state radio was extremely conservative.

The Underdogs were one of the great New Zealand bands of the late 1960s. Their song 'Sitting in the Rain' is one of my favourites of all time. This band started a blues tradition in New Zealand that continues to this day.

Keep the Faith,
Jim Wilson