![]() “Over the wall and into the car, you’re driving fast, you’re driving far, had to get away from the bricks and wire, heading for a funeral pyre. ‘Change For A Change’, ‘Schizophrenic’, ‘Shadows’ and ‘Number’s Up’ were sharp, intelligent, punk rock, driven by hard guitars and Stephenson’s dark, desperate words: This line-up recorded the demos that would become the Or’s Well In ‘84 EP, posthumously released in 1987 on Simon Coffey’s Onslaught Records.ĭead Image's posthumous EP Or’s Well In ‘84, released in 1987 on Simon Coffey's Onslaught label The Henchmen and Dead Image at SPAM, Symonds Street, Auckland, October 1983Įarly in 1984, Kevin Taylor from The Plastic Pegs joined on drums and Tony Chandler from North Shore punks Public Enemy was added on bass after Chris Boulter was ejected. They played shows with The Gordons, Flak, Eight Living Legs, K4, The Henchmen, Children’s Hour, and The Exploding Budgies. They lived just across the bridge from the venue in Grafton and played there often on Punk Sundays. Shortly afterwards, MacFarlane peeled, Boulter switched to bass and new guitarist Mathew Ahern (from Pukekohe and formerly of punk band Local Chaos) joined.ĭead Image finally found firm ground and had a good run of shows in late 1983 with The Henchmen, playing Mainstreet, Windsor Castle, and SPAM, the short-lived musicians cooperative venue in upper Symonds Street. The divisive Prime Minister Rob Muldoon was still in power, the police were harsh judges where punks were concerned, and mid-year (the weekend ‘Finger’ was recorded), a grey battleship, the USS Texas, sat in Auckland harbour, a not-so-subtle reminder that sabre rattling US President Ronald Reagan was in the White House, where his brinksmanship made nuclear death seem at times only a finger away. Billed as Dead Image, Vicious Circle sounded out of place amongst the 1960s debris and traditional peacenik company on the tape, but in many ways, their dark, succinct punk rock nihilism got closest to the sense of threat that hung over New Zealand in those days. In August 1983, Vicious Circle returned to the studio again to record ‘One Finger From Death’ for Last Laugh Studios’ Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) fundraiser, Celebration. The first two later appeared on a double-sided reissue single in 1998, shared with The Plunket Boys. Vicious Circle entered Progressive Studios in April 1983 and recorded three tracks – ‘Mainstreet’, ‘Ultraviolence’, and ‘Ode To Brezhnev’. Singer Allen Stephenson and drummer Mac MacDonald had been Plunket Boys, and the entire group had been in First Offence. Guitarist Chris Boulter and bassist John MacFarlane had a past in The Mormons, The Bastards and The No-Ones. While many of the groups rose and fell in the western suburbs, Vicious Circle were already survivors of previous punk acts. Too many fights and too many police, and when the police came, they just saw punks. The Auckland punk scene had become the stereotype it had always courted – violent, nihilistic and self-destructive. Roskill hall show, 1982īootboys roamed the hall, beating on punks with baseball bats and with the inevitable heavy police presence it was just too much.īootboys roamed the hall, beating on punks with baseball bats and with the inevitable heavy police presence it was just too much – the hall shows died. The Plunket Boys, No Tag and others at a Mt. By the time hall diehards Vicious Circle (Allen “Nobby” Stephenson on vocals and guitar, John MacFarlane on bass, Chris Boulter on guitar and Mac MacDonald on drums) played the Mount Roskill Memorial Hall in mid-1983, the hall scene was an urban nightmare. If it wasn’t the bootboys, it was the over-zealous team policing units. The hall scene thrived for a while, until the violence they were trying to avoid began walking through the doors. Weekend punk dances at West Auckland halls pulled big crowds to see a swelling number of punk bands from the west including The Dum Dum Boys and Famous Five, and later in 19, The Henchmen, The Mormons, The Orphans, The Executioners, The Plunket Boys, Sick Dogs and Vicious Circle. ![]() Pushed out of inner city Auckland by a lack of venues and the hard shadow of Auckland’s bootboys, by the early 1980s punk rock was firmly ensconced in the suburban heartland of West Auckland. ![]()
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