Graham Reid | | 1 min read
By the late 1990s, amidst the turmoil of local guitar bands which emerged in the wake of Guns ’N Roses’ hair-metal and angst-fuelled grunge, Auckland band Crash would seem to have as good a shot as any against peers like Push Push, Dead Flowers, The Feelers, Pluto, Zed and many others.
Formed in 1991, Crash hit student radio with their single ‘Cliff’/’Day at the Fair’ reaching the top spot on the bFM Top Ten and their video ‘Red Velvet Sofa’ holding the No.1 slot on Max TV for nearly four straight weeks. They played everywhere from the New Zealand Tattoo Convention in Auckland to Mountain Rock, Sweetwaters 99 and Auckland clubs such as Pelican and POD.
Fronted by singer Natasha Reid, they were distinctive in a landscape of young men with guitars and their diverse, smart and well-crafted songs reflected that. They looked set to break out, but their debut album recorded at Revolver Studio never appeared and, disheartened, the band broke up.
And that would have been it – another band that did the hard yards and was forgotten – until 2023 when Rob Mayes of Failsafe Records remastered their singles and the lost album tracks.
Mayes released the self-titled 17-song collection on CD in an elaborate gatefold cover in November, mostly for the international market. But within a fortnight of its release, the Crash collection landed in the New Zealand music charts at No.4, between Coterie and Stan Walker, 24 years after the band went their separate ways.
Theirs is a story worth telling, unique but also not unfamiliar.
As with many bands, the first line-up of Crash came together through friendships, chance encounters, mutual interests and people from very different musical backgrounds . . .
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To read the rest of this article about Crash's fascinating career at AudioCulture go here.
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Audioculture is the self-described Noisy Library of New Zealand Music and is an ever-expanding archive of stories, scenes, artists, clips and music. Elsewhere is proud to have some small association with it. Check it out here.
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