Ok this tape gave me heaps of trouble. It just refused to budge. I even transferred the reel to another case to see if that would work but no, nothing. It would play for 10-15 seconds and then start jerking around, spit out some horrid noise & the come to a halt. Finally I had enough of messing around with it & handed it over to Lynton who has several tape decks and the know-how to get things workin & though he also had a few issues, he got it ripped so you can thank our resident tape expert Dr Lynton Von Denhoven for this baby. Glad it finally gets to see the light of day!
Supertanker were one of the 'fab five' shall we say that made it onto Rob Mayes' 'Avalanche' compilation (Sept, 1993) which was three songs each from five Christchurch bands which were basically the biggest crowd pullers in town at that time. For good reason too, they all fucking rocked. This compilation put them on the map almost instantly. Student radio ran with it and the bands had multitudes of fans nationally almost overnight & garnered some international attention too.
'Vortex' were the support band for this gig and I managed to get most of their set as well so that's present in a separate download. Really like the first song which is a reference to the Close Encounters movie. Someone had a decent reverb unit in that band!
Supertanker were sort of in the middle of the scene stylistically I suppose, not too heavy / not too light, clever and emotive songs with twisted fuzzed out lead breaks and wall of sound distorted rhythm guitars. Nearer the 'My Bloody Valentine' or 'Ride' end of the pop spectrum to my ears but don't forget that in NZ we have our own home grown influences as well & The Straightjacket Fits / Flying Nun back catalogue would be buried deep amongst the subconsciousness of these youngsters without a doubt. That and the influence of the southern alps, the bleak winters, the rising damp, the prevailing easterly wind, the hostile locals..... the fact nobody even knew where NZ was....definitely defined the character of a local sound.
The early 90's were so much fun there.... too many good bands to count... parties & gigs every week....nobody seemed to have a real job.... just a great scene of creative types spending their money on amplifiers & booze instead of food.....
It's a pretty low-fi recording & not the entire gig either but whatever, this is free shit people! Really you should be paying me for dishing out this rare and wonderful stuff.
Supertanker Download Here.
Vortex Download Here.
And here's a video of Supertanker to wet your whistle. This song is also one of the live tracks in the download.
