AK•79 New Zealand Punk LP Compilation [Very Rare Vinyl]

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85

AK•79 New Zealand Punk LP Compilation [Very Rare Vinyl] Original pressing. 500 pressed.

Officially released in early 1980, despite its title (although a few copies turned up in the shops in late 1979 - see below), AK79 is the defining release of the thriving Auckland punk scene of the late seventies.

Its release was more a document of a scene that was passing - that had more or less moved on - as it had or was all over the planet, than anything then current. And as such its release was timely.

he album's history begins in 1978 when Bryan Staff, a radio DJ on an Auckland commercial station, 1ZM, first started to show an interest in the dozens of new bands playing around the Auckland area.

The bands were, by mid 1978, centred around a new Auckland venue, Zwines, housed in a 120 year old stone building off Auckland's Durham Lane. The building had a quite a history. It was - so the story went - Auckland's first jail, and in the sixties and early seventies it was a nightclub where some of the more legendary bands in Auckland's rock'n'roll history had played. In the early to mid 1970s it was Grandpas & Granny's (perhaps the worst rock club name ever?) owned by - amongst others - Tommy Adderley, who was at the time, Auckland rock royalty.

However, by the end of 1977 it was largely derelict. In the early months of 1978 it was - and the word should be applied very loosely - refurbished as Zwines, and became Auckland's second dedicated punk venue (the first, Hugh Lynn's Diamond Dogs in Queen Street, was short lived).

Zwines became a focal point for the thriving scene, with The Scavengers playing there regularly and residencies being given to the first of the second generation punk bands, such as Rooter (soon to be The Terrorways).

In their wake there were countless bands formed - names like Get Smart, The Aliens, The Idle Idols, The Mucky Pups, The Rednecks, The Stimulators and so on. Some mutated into others, all cross bred with each other and the scene grew hugely.

In 1978 New Zealand had virtually no local recording industry. True, a few bands were recorded by the majors, but mostly they were a fairly safe and sad bunch and many are best forgotten. Staff came up with the idea of asking bands to bring in tapes to the station he was working at - encouraging a few of these punk acts to record.

From there he took the concept one step further. He decided to compile an album of some of these acts, using whatever funds he could scrape together. Some acts provided their own recordings (such as The Swingers), some worked on Radio NZ downtime, some at Mascot after Staff worked out a cheap rate there. The idea was that whatever return came from the album would go towards singles by the bands, and other acts in the scene.

To this end, Bryan formed a label, Ripper Records.

Over the next few months the album came together and a name - AK79 - and a sleeve, designed by Terence Hogan, was applied to it, with the now legendary image (of one of The Terrorways, Dean Martelli).

The only band who really didn't fit were The Swingers, led by Phil Judd, who made it on to the vinyl by virtue of the fact that they were now signed to Ripper via a Mike Chunn connection.

The stumbling block was, however, pressing and finding the funds to pay for 250 copies, now being demanded by Ode Records, who had arranged pressing. Enter Record Warehouse, an Auckland based record chain, whose Roger King agreed to take all 250 and pay in advance for them. That allowed Staff to, if not cover all his costs, at least get the records in the store.

And so it was as the new decade turned, AK79 hit the shelves.

And left the shelves - within a few days they were all gone. Two hundred and fifty more were pressed in early 1980 and sold to stores other than Record Warehouse, followed by another similar run a month or two later.

And that was it for a time, until Bryan moved his label's distribution to CBS in late 1980. They repressed the album early in 1981, and even did a now very rare cassette edition. You can tell the CBS pressings by the copyright line at the bottom of the label - the first 750 didn't have it.

However by the end of 1983 Ripper was no longer operating and the album was no longer available. Total sales under 2000 copies.

Over the next few years it became harder and harder to get, and attained an almost mystical status, selling for big bucks around the world.

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