Pop CultureMarch 15, 2018

New Zealand’s greatest one hit wonders – and their second-biggest songs

Production editor

Calum Henderson dives deep into the New Zealand music archives to discover our greatest one hit wonders – and the not-quite-as-successful songs by the same artists.

What exactly is a one hit wonder? Everybody knows the term, but it seems none of us can quite agree on how to define it. In the strictest sense, the label should probably be reserved for artists who only ever made the singles chart (or top 20, or top 10…) once. More commonly, though, it gets used to describe an artist who had one single that was disproportionately bigger than all their others. Sometimes it’s applied when only one song has endured the test of time while others, though they were hits at the time, have faded into obscurity.

But then… what even is a “hit”? The more you think about it the more meaningless the whole sarcastic concept of “one hit wonders” becomes. Why do we mock musicians for only making one hit single anyway? That’s one more hit single than most artists will ever make; who cares if they never make another.

Probably we should just get rid of the “one hit wonders” tag altogether – bury it next to the other bad musical concept of “guilty pleasures”. But before we do, let’s see which New Zealand artists best fit the description.

Patea Maori Club

‘Poi E’ hit the top of the New Zealand singles chart in 1984 and its reputation as a New Zealand classic – it’s never far from any conversation about a new national anthem – has only grown in the decades since. It’s the only Patea Maori Club song most New Zealanders know, which is a shame because their follow-up single ‘Aku Raukura’ is arguably even better. That song made it to number 10, and the group had two other charting singles, but only one hit has really endured in the national memory.

Second-biggest song: ‘Aku Raukura’

Monte Video and The Cassettes

‘Shoop Shoop Diddy Wop Cumma Cumma Wang Dang’ is a song so annoying it’s hard to believe it was recorded in New Zealand. Colin Meads must have been overseas in 1982 or else he’d have driven up to Auckland from the King Country and doused the master tapes with Roundup. The man behind the Monte Video moniker was Murray Grindlay, a veteran musician, producer and jingle-writer whose most recent credit was last year’s suspiciously Byrds-sounding National Party campaign ad. ‘Shoop Shoop’ peaked on the New Zealand singles chart at #2; its even-worse follow-up ‘Sheba (She Sha She Shoo)’ failed to chart.

Second-biggest song: ‘Sheba (She Sha She Shoo)’

Deane Waretini

Deane Waretini is probably New Zealand’s purest one hit wonder. His sole entry into the New Zealand singles chart was recorded in a garage in Henderson with session musicians paid in KFC. It became the first number one sung in te reo. It was ‘The Bridge’, one of 1980s’ biggest hits. Waretini is still around – he starred in Māori TV’s Now Is The Hour as recently as 2012 – but though he released a string of singles in the aftermath of ‘The Bridge’, none of them managed to nudge the top 40.

Second-biggest song: ‘Growing Old’

Misfits of Science

Rap duo Misfits of Science are another example of a pure one hit wonder, getting to number 1 on their first and only foray on to the New Zealand singles chart with 2004’s ‘Fool’s Love’. What happened? Their follow-up ‘MmmHmm’ has a video, and it appeared on Kiwi Hit Disc 68 (between Fast Crew and P Money). But it never charted, and if Discogs is to be believed it was never even released as a single. Still, we’ll always have ‘Fool’s Love’, and its video’s impressive array of early-2000s replica sports apparel.

Second-biggest song: ‘MmmHmm’

OMC

Otara Millionaires Club are New Zealand’s most commonly-cited one hit wonders for their 1995 international megahit ‘How Bizarre’. Overseas this designation is probably fair enough, so they make the list – albeit with a huge asterisk beside their name. Let’s be clear: any New Zealander who claims OMC were one hit wonders deserves to be thrown in a skip. They had three other singles make the top 40 here, and ‘Land of Plenty’ made it to number four. It’s a beautiful song, and the whole How Bizarre album is well worth revisiting.

Second-biggest song: ‘Land of Plenty’

Fur Patrol

This seems harsh, right? Fur Patrol were one of the great bands of the 2000s Kiwi music boom, but think: can you name a Fur Patrol song other than ‘Lydia’? Most New Zealanders couldn’t. Fur Patrol’s rock contemporaries – Tadpole, Stellar*, the feelers, Zed – generally all had at least two equally big hits. ‘Lydia’ was better than any of them, a stone-cold classic, and it towers over the band’s four other charting singles (none of which cracked the top 15) in the national memory. Technically, perhaps unfairly, that qualifies Fur Patrol as a one-hit wonder.

Second-biggest song: ‘Andrew’

TrueBliss

Reality TV has provided New Zealand with a procession of textbook one hit wonders – New Zealand Idol’s Ben Lummis, Michael Murphy and Rosita Vai all hit number one, as did X Factor winner Jackie Thomas (Beau Monga was denied the top spot in 2015 by Wiz Khalifa). But while you’d have to go out of your way to hear any of their hits these days, there’s still a chance a stadium DJ or nostalgia-frenzied house party playlist could throw up ‘Tonight’ – and you just know it would go off. The original Popstars managed to hit the charts a second time with ‘Number One’, which reached number 12.

Second-biggest song: ‘Number One’

Southside of Bombay

If you judge a New Zealand one hit wonder on how often they get played at the rugby, Southside of Bombay are among our most elite. ‘What’s The Time Mr Wolf?’ barely snuck onto the singles chart upon its original release in 1991. It wasn’t until it was featured on the soundtrack to Once Were Warriors in 1994 that it became the ubiquitous hit we know and love to belt out while someone’s getting treated by the physio. They made it to number 39 with their only other single.

Second-biggest song: ‘All Across The World’

Netherworld Dancing Toys

Think of Netherworld Dancing Toys as the original Six60 – a rare example of a Dunedin pop band that didn’t want a bar of the so-called Dunedin Sound and made it all the way to the top of the charts as a result. These guys charted five other times (three singles and two EPs) during the 1980s – the most of any artist on this list – but none of those have stayed the course the way the horn-driven ‘For Today’ has.

Second-biggest song: ‘The Real You’

Coconut Rough

A shooting star across New Zealand’s 1980s pop skies, Coconut Rough burned bright and left behind one massive hit. ‘Sierra Leone’ was the band’s first single and it earned them ‘Most Promising Group’ at the 1983 New Zealand Music Awards as well as an opening spot for The Police at Western Springs. They broke up the next year, with only one other single to their name – securing their legacy as a classic Kiwi one hit wonder.

Second-biggest song: ‘As Good As It Gets’

Keep going!

HEX with Martina Brito (centre) in Lancaster CA (PHOTO: SUPPLIED)

Pop CultureMarch 14, 2018

Hex on tour, episode 1: The NZ music community of Northern California

Kiki Van Newtown

Guest writer

HEX with Martina Brito (centre) in Lancaster CA (PHOTO: SUPPLIED)

In the first of a three-part tour diary on their way to SXSW, Wellington band Hex arrive in California to find a New Zealand community halfway around the globe. Kiki van Newton (bass, vocals) reports.

On the first day of March we touched down in LA after four months of hard-out organisation. It wasn’t until eight hours into our flight that I really realised we were on our way to California. Those months had failed to make concrete a highly theoretical plan which up until two days before we left hinged entirely on whether we would get the correct visas in time. Last November, when we were invited to play SXSW, I was 16 years old and full of youthful vigour. Now I am a tired elderly woman, hunched in the middle seat of an aeroplane row, covered in aeroplane polar fleece.

Our entire time in LA it rained a tide that people were obviously unprepared for. All the terracotta tiled floors were left dangerously slippery as we drove around the city completing our various errands – Guitar Center, Ametron, A&T, Trader Joes. We slept in five beds in a single room in a dreary suburb tucked between huge studio complexes. Our second night we played our first show at a cute little club downtown called La Cita before heading out of the city for our first dive hotel experiences.

From what I could tell Palmdale comprised three or four chain motels, two gas stations and a beaten up taco restaurant. It was 2 am when we pulled in to EZ 8 and lay our bones across two rooms that smelled like cigarettes and cheap laundry liquid. The next morning I looked from our third-floor balcony across to the gas station that had provided late snacks the night before – hot chocolate, cookies, giant bags of crisps, and some miscellaneous ‘bakery’ items. Our tour regimen of carrot sticks and apples had lasted 1.5 days. By 9:30 on our third day, we were on the road to meet one of the New Zealand music’s most dedicated and kickass fans, the legendary Martina Brito.

Lancaster is a small city a couple hours north of LA. Martina met us dressed in full fangirl regalia: a Salad Boys t-shirt, badges from New Zealand Music Month, RDU and a bunch of New Zealand bands, and carrying her famed iPad, covered in autographs and scrawled messages from some of the biggest names in New Zealand music. She jumped in our van and thus began a couple of hours finally getting to know the woman otherwise known as badreligiontina. Martina directed our unsteady driving to Denny’s where we ordered a vast selection of beige yet delicious food and bottomless coffee. She regaled us with stories of growing up, her favourite bands in the US and New Zealand, her life in recent times, her studies, and the general trouble that she and her friends get up to. We ate and talked and took selfies and by the time we were ready to go, we’d all fallen thoroughly in love with Martina. (Thank you for everything!!)

On the road again, we barrelled through California towards Bishop, a frontier town in the high desert at the top of the Mojave, in the middle of endless tumbleweeds and rocks, ringed by gigantic mountains covered in dense snow. Before we arrived we discovered there had just been a huge avalanche that saw 25,000 people evacuated from Mammoth Mountain in a large-scale emergency operation. We were told this by an elderly gent in a hunting and fishing shop in Lone Pine that sold mugs where the handles were guns. He joked “at least I can sell those without a licence” as my eyes hovered above his cap peak to read the slogan ‘The Second Amendment: the Original Border Control’ with NRA embroidered at a jaunty angle to the side. I swayed from foot to foot nervously while I excused myself from his store to scurry across the road into a crystal shop.

HEX at La Cita (PHOTO: Bernard Gruschow)

You can see your breath in Bishop at this time of the year, while the sun still manages to cast its hot rays across your eyes. That night we played a show to the crowded Mountain Rambler, a local brewery heaving with young snowboarders and Bishop’s creative residents. We ate delicious tacos, drank incredible beer brewed onsite, talked to so many interesting and passionate people, and then all passed out in a nearby apartment. That night I had nightmares where I woke others with my screams, and from what I can recall they were all about breaking microphones.

The next morning we were up early for a long drive, but not before heading to Tricia Lew’s house for breakfast. Tricia is the original New Zealand music fan who began bringing bands to Bishop, starting with The Phoenix Foundation a decade ago. Since then she has played host with the most to New Zealand bands of all kinds heading to Bishop. Tricia filled in so many gaps in the New Zealand music family tree that even we didn’t know about, while filling us up with scrambled eggs and sourdough, sachets of Berocca and pots and pots of coffee. We left Bishop feeling grateful that there are people like Tricia and Martina in the world and humbled that our New Zealand music community extends deep into the hearts of people halfway around the globe.

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