Music

My records. I bought all of them while I was at secondary school when you could still buy records at mainstream record stores. By the time I left school tapes had taken over and the new thing was going to be something called the CD.


Even though Richard may not be happy about this thread (it's all pop) I think Hix might approve.

I believe that the ad for Hitbusters involved the guy in the funny hat on the album sleeve walking around with a violin case pretending to shoot things. It was released in 1983 by TVNZ Enterprises as a spin off of the show Ready to Roll. I think that there was a time when Ready to Roll was the ONLY show on New Zealand television that played pop music. Of course this was at the time when if you were tired of watching TV One you could always change channel to TV Two, and if you didn't like that you could turn the TV off an go and do something constructive.

Later I discovered the joys of Radio With Pictures in the Dick Driver days. Who will forget the day Dick Driver got arrested for drunk driving. What a dick driver.

There was always a feature on Ready to Roll called High Flyers. This was the new release the "dudes" at TV One thought might become a hit. For years I thought that High Flyers was actually a band. I was always amazed at their quality and range - they never seemed to do the same thing twice. Eventually I decided I had to get a record by this amazing band called High Flyers. It was then that I made the horrible discovery.

My other memory of Ready to Roll is of dreadful number ones that were on for weeks and weeks. Particular low points were Star Trekkin, Dr Who - the Tardis (done as a prank to prove that any old drivel could become number one), and the Holidaymakers version of Sweet Lovers. The nadir though was the Alf song: Stuck on Earth. The video for this song featured a guy from TVNZ holding an Alf doll and bouncing it up and down in different rooms of a suburban house. Even when I was thirteen this was hard to believe.