Random Record

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Mar 2026: Diamanda Galás with John Paul Jones – The Sporting Life

Wow. I mean, just… super weird stuff, this. The Sporting Life by Diamanda Galás and John Paul Jones.
I must have bought this from Pretty On The Inside because there’s no way I was cool enough to buy it on my own initiative back in 1994.
Galás sings, screeches and howls in an experimental, operatically-trained way while Jones (ex-Led Zep) plays kick-ass riffs on 8-string bass. And then they chuck a fairly unhinged “Dark end of the street” in the middle of all that. It’s actually the first version I heard of that song, so it was pretty weird hearing a normal-people version in The Commitments. (I’ve just checked and The Commitments came out in 1991 so I guess I’m lying about that. That’s what us hifalutin’ literary types call ‘an unreliable narrator’.)

Thematically terrifying, musically adventurous. I’m scared to even look at this album most days in case it mugs me.

Hroðgar maþelode, sec gif þu dyrre…
(Hroðgar spoke, seek if you dare…)
and listen here

Jan 2026: Knightshade – Last Night in the City

This month’s Random Record is dedicated to The Vinyl Room Palmy, with the sad news that the shop is closing. Ron and his team really livened up George Street and we’re gonna miss them. Thank goodness the original Whanganui shop is still in action!
Here’s a photo of me and Ron at the PN shop. Love the customer contributions written on the pillar.

Okay, back to the random record: here’s a wee one to tickle your 80s hair metal fancy. Aotearoa had a few great rock bands in that decade, and in fact I wrote a review of a great Jayrem compilation called No Peace for the Wicked that collected a few of ’em in 2011 for NZ Musician magazine. As the great Marti DiBergi once said, don’t go looking for it, it’s no longer there. (Or at least, I can’t find the review on their website.)

Anyhoo, a band called Knightshade was on that comp, and I recently picked up this single: Last Night in the City / The Flight of the Oil Covered Penguin, and it rocks! It came out in 1989 and it still sounds like it, which is fine by me. I love a bit of pointy-guitar work with soaring vocals and harmonies. Well-produced, good old-fashioned rock with lots of gratuitous solos (especially on the penguin side).
Fun!

Oct 2025: King Missile – Mystical Shit

Today’s random record is actually not random at all because I have to tell you something: when I moved from Turakina to the big city to go to Massey University, I hid myself in records, just listening to music by myself because everything else was quite scary. I used to buy stuff from the super awesome shop Pretty On The Inside – who remembers that? Woo hoo! It was a fantastically weird and alternative shop, that had amazing second-hand clothes as well as all the best music. I’d go in there and ask them what was cool, and I’d basically buy whatever they said.
One of those things was this thing:

Wait — you’re asking yourself: is that LP still in the original shrinkwrap from 1991? It’s almost as though this Turkby guy is the sort of person who won’t break the spine of a book he’s bought, so it still looks new, etc. Yes, I carefully slit the side so I could take the album out to listen to.

‘Mystical Shit’ by King Missile was released in 1990, but I would’ve bought my copy in 1991. Almost every song was an instant classic (to me). Cheesecake Truck, Jesus Was Way Cool, The Fish That Played The Ponies, and so on.

Roughly a thousand years later (2025) I saw an ad saying that King Missile would be playing in Masterton and Whanganui. Thinking it was a joke I almost didn’t look into it further, but you know what? It wasn’t a joke, and here’s a photo of me with guitarist Dogbowl, holding his Devo-style Eastwood guitar at Porridge Watson’s to prove it!

(Thanks to Gary-boy for the photo)

John S. Hall on vocals was just as weird as I’d hoped, and the whole thing was a bit surreal, seeing these heroes of mine along with a dozen other people in good ol’ Wonga-dongas. The town where I endured high school, bogans, and once met a guy who was actually wearing a ‘white power’ belt buckle.
Life is weird. Life is chaotic. Life can sometimes be surprisingly cool, too.
(My thanks to the Papester for actually getting me off my arse to attend this gig.)

Sep 2025: The Nips – Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver

Today’s random record is… wait, let me show you the back cover first lest you pre-judge it as sub-par oi-punk.

They say that everyone who attended the Sex Pistols’ first gig went and started their own band. Shane MacGowan was in that scene, and his first band (pre-Pogue Mahone, pre-The Pogues, pre-The Popes) was:

a punkabilly outfit called… deep breath… The Nipple Erectors. Later shortened to The Nips, for some reason. This album is a compilation of their singles. Even in a punkabilly format, MacGowan was already showing a predilection for writing punchy, catchy songs. His lyrical skills certainly developed over time, though. For, as catchy as King of the Bop is, the lyrics aren’t exactly earth-shattering:
‘Why do they call me the King of the Bop?
Why do they call me the King of the Bop?
Why do they call me the King of the Bop?
Why do they call me the King of the Bop?
The reason is because I’m the King of the Bop!’

Okay, that’s actually genius in a really dumb way.

Songs like All the Time in the World, Stavordale Road, N5, and Gabrielle are pretty cool — if sometimes a little naughty in their content — and show MacGowan starting to harness his inimitable crooning & chaotic delivery.

After the band split up, bass player Shanne Bradley went on to form The Men They Couldn’t Hang, which at one point included Kenny Harris of the Screaming Blue Messiahs, a band we are certain to meet at some point on this rambling Random Record journey!

Aug 2025: Gen X – Kiss Me Deadly

Today’s random record is Kiss Me Deadly by Gen X. Yes, that is Billy Idol there on the cover. This is his band before he went solo. It seems like a lot of the British punks knew each other. Look who’s on guitar: James Stevenson (Chelsea, Kim Wilde), Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) and John McGeoch (Siouxsie and the Banshees)!

And yeah, the album kicks off with Dancing With Myself, an absolute Idol fave.