Gary SteelThe Whizz Kids/The Steroids, Last Resort, Wellington, New Zealand
In Touch, March 1980
It’s unfair, really. Firstly, The Plague, then a truncated version (economics?) called The Whizz Kids (courtesy of Plague Productions) tour the country playing their brand of nasti-cystic nega-rock. Response? Fans flock in. Real cult band, man. Media reaction? Blankety-blank. (Except for one or two negative – surprised? – reviews).
Nega-bands get nega-reviews! Well, I won’t fall into the trough again. Suffice to say, here’s a piccy (they’re very piccable) of the band playing badly to a punky-packed house.
The Steroids, local lads who no-one ever sees because “they can’t be any good can they?”, played an hour-long support slot for The Whizz Kids. Now here’s a band with class. Or no class at all, which is great. No breeding, but lotsa bleeding going on.
This three-piece play with rugged ‘couldn’t care less’ determination and individualism, belying their background, and the cold new decade’s hard sheen. The perfect revivalist group! Wellington’s best.
But get off your arses boys. You know you’re good, so why scared to spread your spheres? Auckland should know you by now, and NZ should be blessed with at least s single’s worth of Steroid-graunch.
* This is painful to read again after all these years. It’s tempting to ignore my early attempts at reviewing but hey, it’s part of the record of what happened at the time, so in the interests of complete transparency, it might as well be back in the public domain.
