There was no middle ground with Hogsnort Rupert, people either loved them or they hated them. But the Wellington pseudo skiffle pop band’s No.1 hit ‘Pretty Girl’ ensured everybody knew them. It outdid The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel to become the highest-selling single in New Zealand for 1970.
It sold more than 55,000 copies, spent three weeks in the top spot, won the band the Loxene Golden Disc group award, was released in Great Britain, declared a hit pick in both Melody Maker and New Musical Express and Top Of The Pops requested a copy of the film clip.
Centred around songwriter Dave Luther and affable frontman Alec Wishart, Hogsnort Rupert followed up with two albums produced by Peter Dawkins on HMV and toured New Zealand as part of promoter Joe Brown’s stable but had called it a day less than a year after ‘Pretty Girl’.
They reunited in 1981 and the band’s side project Dave and the Dynamos released the only locally made No.1 single of 1983 with ‘Life Begins At 40’, which was also released in Australia and the UK and would later be included by two national publications in their countdowns of worst songs.
On January 1, 2000, Dave Luther opened The Dominion newspaper to find the song had been declared No.7 in a list of the 10 worst songs of the millennium. When Rip It Up named ‘Life Begins At 40’ as the second-worst song ever he decided to ring the magazine...
...“Hello. It’s Dave Luther from Dave and the Dynamos. You’ve called our song the second-worst song ever,” he said. “Um … well, it wasn’t me,” came the reply from the flustered receptionist. “Well, I’ve got one question for you,” Luther continued. “Why weren’t we number one?” The criticism did not bother the Hogsnort Rupert songwriter. “We were only ever interested in making people feel good,” he told AudioCulture. “I'm not trying to say I've written one of the best songs ever.” At the age of 10, Luther was fronting the Dave Luther Skiffle Group in his hometown of Farnborough in northeast Hampshire and at 13 appeared on The Carroll Levis Discovery Show on the BBC playing guitar for The Blackjacks. The Blackjacks recorded one of Luther’s songs in a little studio in Denmark Street, London’s Tin Pan Alley, before changing their name to Daniel Boone & The Renegades, recording more of Luther’s songs and opening for such touring acts as The Searchers and Freddie And The Dreamers. When he and his fiancée called off their engagement, Luther decided he wanted to see the world and so he emigrated to New Zealand to work as an electrician. Arriving in Wellington in 1966 at the height of six o’clock closing, he joined a likely looking bunch queued up to get into the Chez Paree coffee bar. Within a couple of hours there was a guitar in his hand and he was performing in one of the city’s folk hot spots. At the immigrant hostel in Trentham he met another singer-guitarist, Ian Terry, and they decided to flat together with three other new arrivals. Born in Bradford, Terry had bought his first guitar at 18 before joining The Intruders. Restless and adventurous, he headed for New Zealand in 1966 where a job as a telephone technician with the New Zealand Post Office waited. Luther and Terry were soon playing two-hour solo spots at the Chez Paree. A rival coffee bar, The Cantata, hired the pair individually but they increasingly appeared as a duo. They also joined the Diamond Football Club and would take their guitars to after-match parties. Although Luther played soccer for the club, Terry’s interest was purely social – the clubs were able to stay open longer than pubs. It was at one such party, after Diamond had merged with Wellington United in 1968 to form Wellington Diamond United, that Dave Luther met Wellington United’s Alec Wishart, always with a kazoo in his top pocket, and they started singing together. Wishart had been a toolmaker and tool designer in Battersea, South London, before arriving in New Zealand in 1965 and being given a job with a company that repaired and rebuilt field lights and levels for the Ministry of Works. He enjoyed traditional and modern jazz as well as skiffle but had never been involved in anything musical in England. En route to New Zealand on the Rangitoto, Wishart befriended Liverpudlian Frankie Boardman, who was emigrating for a job as a post office technician with the NZPO. Boardman played guitar and had seen the embryonic Beatles at The Cavern Club and Litherland Town Hall in Liverpool. By 1968, he too was playing soccer for Wellington Diamond United. At one after-match get-together in a Wellington pub, Luther, Wishart and Boardman decided to start a band. Under-age and drunk teammate Billy Such declared, “I’ll play drums.” With no previous musical experience, he took lessons from New Zealand Symphony Orchestra percussionist Bud Jones. A teenaged Such had followed his parents to New Zealand in 1966 – he had remained in England for three months playing soccer – and he, too, was employed by the NZPO. A regular at the Id nightclub, he was inspired to take up the drums after seeing Paddy Beach thumping the skins with Joyful Crye, who would perform Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced LP from start to finish. With Luther on guitar, Wishart on kazoo, Boardman on tea-chest bass and Such on drums, Luther brought in Ian Terry and the band began regular Wednesday night sessions at Wishart’s flat. It wasn’t long before the soccer club’s secretary suggested they come and entertain at the clubrooms. But first they needed a name for the poster. Luther and Terry were sitting at the bar one day when an old boy came in to have his flagons filled. They were certain they weren’t a jug band or a skiffle band, but how about a flagon band? And surely there were no other flagon bands in the world, thus they became The Original Flagon Band. So they were for a couple of weeks until it was decided, in the best English tradition, they needed to add an odd-sounding nickname. Flutey Harper and Spitfire Mooney were short-listed before the band was renamed Hogsnort Rupert’s Original Flagon Band. It was a name Luther recalled from graffiti back home. They started performing a repertoire of skiffle, rock and roll, folk and Luther’s comedy songs at the club’s Adelaide Road rooms for free beer and when they got a gig at the Hungaria Association Football Club they received free beer and free goulash. They branched out to other places and soon had a following at Quinn’s Post in Upper Hutt...to be continued... - audioculture
trax:
01 Maggie Maggie 02 The Ballad Of Zooloo 03 Another Perfectly Ordinary Day 04 Turn Around Noeline 05 The Morning After The Party 06 When I Was Young 07 Drink To Me Lads 08 Photograph 09 All Our Own Work 10 It May Be So 11 I'm Going Home 12 What A Mouth
…served by Gaius…
...From the beginning of the new millennium a big upsurge in interest in psychobilly and related music had emanated from the USA largely due to Hellcat Records’ decision to expose the kids to Nekromantix and Tiger Army. It didn’t take long for those kids to do some digging, aided greatly by the new-fangled Internet, and discover the music’s roots and more importantly discover the Long Tall Texans. Inevitably the trio were soon being romanced by promoters across the pond and were gracing stages in the USA before you could say get up and go, and so it has continued.
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