Quincy Conserve "Epitaph" - Compilation, ed. 1972

Hayman’s pre-Quincy story deserves telling in full another time. What laid the foundations for The Quincy Conserve in 1967 was Hayman’s time in Australia, where he spent 18 months studying at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. “I worked with horns in Aussie, worked in a couple of clubs that had resident horn sections, big bands, the Channel 9 band I worked in for awhile. Everybody sits there and plays off the dots, and if it doesn’t sound right it doesn’t matter. I got into the arranging of horns, and when I came back from Australia, I had ideas of working with horns in a rock and roll sense."…

…Before returning, though, Hayman spent several years playing the cabaret circuit “through France, England and the New Hebrides.” In his book Stranded In Paradise, New Zealand rock historian John Dix claims that it was a bout of tuberculosis in New Caledonia that led Hayman to return to Wellington, but Hayman told me that he came home because his mother was supposedly on her deathbed. In 1986 Hayman said he regretted having come back to New Zealand: “Probably the worst thing to do. I should have gone and gone. But my mother decided she was going to die and I came back to NZ, but she didn’t die." Hayman's mother was still around in 1986, "doing rather well for a dying lady!” Whatever the truth – perhaps a combination of the two events – Hayman’s return was a stroke of good luck. He brought with him skills that had been lacking in the popular music arena: his years of experience leading bands had turned him into a rigorous professional, and his newfound skills as an arranger made him invaluable both to his own band, and as a hired hand. In a time before organised music education for anything but classical repertoire, Hayman was a one-man school, finding the best players and pushing to get the best out of them. He was also renowned for being a somewhat fractious personality, and would fine his musicians for any misdemeanors. This aspect ensured the Quincy line-up was in constant flux. By 1975 Hayman was the last original member; musicians either left in a huff or, as with Bruno Lawrence, were unceremoniously fired… to be continued - AUDIOCULTURE

trax:
1. Aire Of Good Feeling 2. Peeling Paint 3. My Michellechan 4. That Same Feeling 5. Going Back To The Garden 6. Someone To Find 7. Mystery Lady 8. All Right In The City 9. Here I Am Baby 10. Common Man
…served by Gaius…