Alastair Riddell "Alastair Riddell" 1978

...Then The Beatles happened. His father bought Alastair and Ron tickets to see them at the Town Hall. Alastair was inspired by The Beatles’ creativity, and that of the British bands that followed in their wake: The Who, Kinks, Small Faces. At the Galaxie in Lower Queen Street, he would catch local groups The La De Da’s, The Underdogs and The Action on Friday nights. He and Ron formed their own band, Peale, and played at the school balls...

...His interest in blues persisted, though he was no purist. He heard creative extensions of the blues in the music of Cream and Jimi Hendrix: both inspirations for his next group, The Original Sun Blues Band. With friend Selwyn Jones, he organised the First National Blues Convention at Moller’s Farm in West Auckland in December 1968, a one-day event featuring various Auckland blues outfits including the Original Sun. A second convention the following year built on the success of the first, spanning a full weekend and attracting performers and crowds from all over the country. The 1969 event included early appearances by both Rick Bryant (with the Wellington blues band Gutbucket) and Graham Brazier (fronting Auckland jug band The Greasy Handful.) The blues boom coincided with the rise of the counter-culture and the protest movement. By the time he was at university, Riddell was attending demonstrations against South African apartheid and the Vietnam War. But he was beginning to question whether the blues was the best vehicle for his musical ideas. An alternative presented itself in some of the new sounds coming out of Britain, particularly the “progressive” rock of groups like King Crimson, Yes and Van Der Graaf Generator. In 1972 he formed Orb, with guitarist Wally Wilkinson, drummer Paul Crowther, keyboardist Tony (later Eddie) Rayner and bass player Peter Cuddihy. Their repertoire combined prog covers with early Riddell originals. As prog became more bombastic and self-absorbed, Alastair found himself leaning more to the theatricalised pop of David Bowie and Roxy Music, and the glam rock and roll of T. Rex. He was especially drawn by Bowie’s philosophically-inclined songs on albums like The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory. He also enjoyed the dressing up. Orb split up after eighteen months, with Crowther, Wilkinson and Rayner joining the burgeoning Split Ends, though Rayner would join soon Riddell again (along with drummer Brent Eccles and guitarist Greg Clark) in Space Waltz. In the interim, Riddell formed Stuart and the Belmonts, a weddings-and-pubs covers band, satirically named after Brian Stuart, head of the Auckland vice squad, and the Holden Belmont cars driven by the New Zealand Police. In 1973 Split Ends catapulted themselves into the nation’s consciousness with an appearance on New Faces. At a time when television viewers had only one channel to watch, the Ends had a virtually captive audience. The following year, Space Waltz pulled the same trick. “We actually ambushed them,” Riddell recalls. “‘Out On The Street’ wasn’t even the song we did for the audition. But then we went down to Wellington and said ‘this is the song we think we should do’ and [producer] Chris Bourne said all right. So we went up to Broadcasting House and recorded it, then went down to the television studio and performed it, literally all in the space of a few hours.”...to be continued - audioculture

trax:
01 Smile 02 Wonder Ones 03 Come On Over 04 Wear My Light 05 Are They Real 06 Oh Ron 07 Eyes of Love 08 What Good Does It Do Me 09 I Can See Space… 10 Wonder Ones (Alternative Version)
…served by Gaius…