Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Brothers Johnson X Quincy Conserve, live 73

Brothers Johnson live, Wellington , backed by Quincy Conserve. Photo by Bob Leask



Bob Leask added these awesome photos to the NZ's Music Scene, Bands and Nite-clubs 1960s and 1970s page on Facebook recently, saying "The Brothers Johnson ...at the Downtown club, Jervois Quay [Wellington]...with Quincy Conserve in the background.... I took the pictures...."

He believes they were taken around 1973. It was very common for overseas musicians to come here and play with a pick up band of locals.

There's a great profile on Quincy Conserve that's just been posted on Audioculture, written by Gary Steel, go read it here....

snip: "... In a time before organised music education for anything but classical repertoire, [band leader Malcolm] Hayman was a one-man school, finding the best players and pushing to get the best out of them...

... “We were in a lucky situation [in the late 1960s]. We had a resident dance hall that has long since gone, and we were also the resident band for EMI for their recordings. We used to back everyone up – all the schmaltz singers, Suzanne, Craig Scott. We had the recording down here sewn up. We used to spend all day in the studio and all night at work, 12 to 14 hours a day, every day. There were [import restrictions] on US and UK records and of course Aussie and NZ groups started covering them.”

“So from 68 to 74, of my own band I [recorded] five albums and something like 14 to 20 singles, which was an awful lot of material for a band in a country of this size, plus covers and backing for other people.”

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