Soundtrack to your studies - 1973

In 1973, Split Enz appeared on the New Faces TV show. The band had been formed by a few students from The University of Auckland and the song they played was named after the room number (‘129’) from student residence O’Rorke Hall where singer/guitarist Phil Judd and saxophonist Rob Gillies were living when they first started playing together.

New Faces also provided a breakthrough for Shona Laing, who appeared the previous year singing her song ‘1905’ which subsequently became a hit. However, in a sign of the times, she was beaten on the show by lounge-y pop singer Steve Gilpin, who was more representative of the middle-of-the-road fare on television rock shows (though he surprised everyone by later becoming lead singer of chart-topping new wave group, Mi-sex).

This was also the year that one of New Zealand’s first multi-day music festivals took place, The Great Ngāruawāhia Music Festival. The headliners were Black Sabbath and Fairport Convention, who were joined by a who’s who of local talent - BLERTA, Billy TK’s Powerhouse, Dragon and Split Ends (before they changed the spelling of their name). Singer Corben Simpson was later convicted and fined for taking off all his clothes and performing naked.

The Rolling Stones played Western Springs to promote Goat’s Head Soup, though the most popular and enduring international album of the year was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

What was on the turntable while you were on campus? Suggest songs to add to our 1970s playlist, and you could win a $100 Flying Out voucher.