Look Blue Go Purple (video)

As New Zealand's Flying Nun label celebrates it's 25th Anniversary with a hefty box set, the question arises: with all the recent hoopla/reissues over the likes of Kleenex, Delta 5, UT, etc., why do Look Blue Go Purple get the silent treatment? From 1983-1987, the quintet of Norma O'Malley, Kath Webster, Lesley Paris, Kathy Bull, and Denise Roughan worked unpolished practice-room chops and admiration for their forerunners (the Clean, the Chills etc.) into a pile of sublimely great strum-pop EPs. The FN website page (which must be a decade old) claims are all in print on vinyl, though all the links to the distributors to purchase FN stuff from are dead (anyone have info? I somehow doubt even LBGP's compilation CD is in print, but I could be wrong). O'Malley went on to the excellent Chug in the early 90's, Paris worked for the label, was also in Olla and manages Dunedin's Radio One now, Kathy Bull and Kath Webster made some sounds of their own, and Denise had some U.S. coll-rock success in the great 3Ds and is now in the relocated-to-UK and quite active Ghost Club. Thanks to a Flying Nun DVD comp a few years ago, here's two rare glimpses at LBGP in their 1980's glory, with "Circumspect Penelope", and what must be the equivalent of Dunedin Beach Blanket Bingo, "Cactus Cat" (watch for the Bats/Clean Bob Scott beachball cameo!)

More You Tube grooviness from a 1987 New Zealand TV appearance courtesy Oscartripe:
Live version of "In Your Favour", and a cover of Buffy Ste.Marie's "Codeine."

Comments

[Ian in FL]

Bless you, Brian Turner, for posting this! I've been wanting to see more LBGP footage. (And now that I think about it, I really wish I knew where I could find their compilation CD other than smokecds.com.)

[craig]

i second the opinion - my friend kelly and i had a kiwi-centric show in the early 90s (no phones in dunedin), and EVERY time we played LBGP people would call about it. even emo boys and garagerockers were buying their records at my shop.

hopefully FN gets around to acting like a real label again and reissues stuff reliably. shoot, the web page even gives me a 404 on the new box set :P

[ralph]

Ian, I don't know why you need it from somewhere other than smokecds.com. I've used them to sate my Kiwi jones for years and they've always provided excellent service. I used to order records direct from Flying Nun back in the '80s and early '90s, but that made it difficult to get hold of some of the great records released on other labels. SmokeCDs is a nice solution to that problem.

It would be nice to see FN become a real label again, but I doubt it'll happen now that they're owned by Rupert. Even label stalwarts like Chris Knox are releasing their records elsewhere these days. I never thought I would see that. As for reissues, it seems like that's all they do these days. They're actually pretty good about bringing stuff back into print and keeping it there for a while.