for us New Zealand kids, growing up and going to high school in the nineteen eighties, watching radio with pictures, on Sunday nights, was a was a much awaited weekly treat before the grind of school on Monday. It was on radio with pictures where I got my 1st taste of hip-hop, watching the video of The Message, with my father beside me. With his hands in his pockets, he turned around and said, that's an interesting new kind of music. And it was on radio with Pictures later on in 1985, where I watched Leonard Cohen's videos to do Dance Me to the End of Love and Hallelujah the 1st time with my mother. Not many people seem to have watched the cheap looking Eurovision-style video of Hallelujah when it came out as the 2nd single from Various Positions, with the young university students who emerged from behind the stage pillars somewhat awkwardly to join Leonard on the big choruses. And it was also on Radio with Pictures, where I was confronted with the work of Chris Knox for the first time. I watched a snippet of a song from his first band, The Enemy, a song called Pull Down The Shades, in their famous, inimitable, bulldozer punk rock style, which someone also had described as a tractor. It was fast but the wheels seemed kind of slow-moving. Like a bulldozer slowly transporting dirt over a bleak across bleak South Island dreamscape, driven by someone in a woolly jersey. I came across quite a good little documentary about The Enemy, in which Chris Knox reminisces about his band's first and greatest show. It's quite cute because he said they thought they were so great that it gave them the energy to carry on and gave all these other bands the energy to start, like The Clean. Yeah, I'd heard The Enemy had caused all these other bands to start like The Clean but I didn't realise it was from the 1st gig. That amazing feeling when you first try something out, and amazingly it works. You could say and it sort of set the scene for the that melodic strain of New Zealand music. In Pull Down The shades you can hear all the usual important punk influences, like Iggy and the Stooges, but, it also has a particular melody driven inflection, probably thanks to Cbhris Knox's love for the Beatles and the influence of Split Enz on him as well as the rest of of all us New Zealanders who were lucky to grow up with their songs in the top 40, on New Zealand radio and TV throughout the 1970s. Split Enz songs like Shark Attack,  That Was My Mistake, seem similar.

Bangles here.

Before I met Yuri, I was also staying up late with my little brother Andrew Johnstone, later of the ecological punk bands Avil Retards and Acid Reign, to watch Radio with Pictures. He used to play along to the tunes on his axe as he did to ads. What a ledge! (legend?)" then I'll get onto the Bangles. Anyway. I was amazed by The Bangles.


hNFL WIPE VSV-VSV
Baker Mayfield only met his new LA
Rams team-mates two days ago,
surely he couldn't steer them
to victory against the Raiders.
Well, the former Number one
draft pick did just that.
With less than a minute
on the clock, he led his side 98
yards up the field and threw
the winning touchdown pass.
COMMENTATOR: Mayfield to the end
zone to Jefferson is that possible?
Touchdown.
There's a new leading
man in Hollywood.
Elation for the Super Bowl Champs,
snapping a six game losing streak,
devastation for Las Vegas whose
playoff hopes are on life support.