What I found today #1

Sorting through some of my personal stuff this morning I found this newspaper cutting inside an old diary.

It’s a review of a pop concert held at the Wellington Town Hall. In the top right of the article you can see, in pen, a date: 15/12/86 and next to it ‘BRILLIANT CONCERT’.

I was bewildered, 16 years old; a few months into a clerical job at the Wellington Education Board and surely doomed to remain there until the end of time.

Then it seemed to me that little cracks of light began to appear; promises of something.

Like this concert: OMD, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Every human creature in the building was possessed by wild joy.

Not everyone; not Gary Steel. I was outraged, well, I must have been when I read this: ‘The whole affair was about as blandly bright, safe and white as a youth for Christ convention’.

And the last paragraph: ‘Too bland for the alternative set, too cute for the cosmic crowd, OMD have won the puppies, and they are on a winner. Who can blame them’.

It is brilliant music journalism. And I’m glad I was one of those puppies.