Various Artists: The Kiwi Music Scene 1965 (Frenzy)

What a remarkable year 1965 was in popular music.

The Beatles gave us Ticket to Ride, Help!, Yesterday, the Rubber Soul album and more; Bob Dylan changed everything with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; Jagger-Richards stepped up for the Stones as distinctive songwriters with The Last Time, Satisfaction and Get Off Of My Cloud; the British Invasion bands (Animals, Hollies, Yardbirds, Kinks, Who etc) hit their straps and the American bands (Byrds, Lovin' Spoonful etc) fought back . . .

Women singers – Dusty, Cilla, Lulu and others – came through and the world seemed vital and alive and full of fashion and fun.

But while some of the internationals were mostly writing their own songs and hinting at marijuana, in this country we were running behind and our pop stars were mostly still singing covers and the likes of Tommy Adderley and Rochelle Vinsen were appearing in the “I am an apple eater” campaign for the NZ Apple and Pear Marketing Board.

But 1965 was also the year that New Zealand realised that this pop music thing was a creative industry and in that year the Entertainer of the Year, APRA Silver Scroll (songwriting) and Golden Disc awards were inaugurated.

Pop was exploding and it was big business. And Radio Hauraki was sailing across the horizon to invent another radio future.

This typically excellent double disc by Sixties compilation expert Grant Gillanders offers a 66-songs snapshot of where we were at in '65 and if we seemed to be running a bit behind the game there was enough going on to for this collection to be exciting, fun, a little embarrassing and every now and again having a “Wow” factor.

It opens with Ray Columbus and the Invaders' exceptional Till We Kissed (the definitive rearrangement of the Merseybeat ffavourite Where Have You Been) and Larry's Rebels' equally fine, moody interpretation of the Bacharach-David tune This Empty Place before our biggest female star Dinah Lee drops by with I'll Forgive You Then Forget You .

So far so familiar?

But Gillanders astutely mixes the well-known by the Chicks (The Hucklebuck), Herma Keil (Shrimp Boats) and the Librettos (the theme to Let's Go) with lesser-known by material by those were hardly household names: the Sierra's with the close harmony Crying Game, the Detours, the Spartans, Ian Saxon, Alex Neill, the Rayders, the Vigilantes . . .

As always on such collections there are some interesting discoveries to be made: Jeannie with a gender-flipped A Certain Boy, Tony and the Initials undertaking Roy Orbison's demanding Leah with considerable confidence, Peter Nelson and the Castaways' Down in the Mine . . .

So here too are songs by the Dallas Four, the Pleazers, Dave Miller and the Byrds, Ricky May, La De Da's, Lew Pryme, Sandy Edmonds, Allison Durbin, the Gremlins and others.

But sensibly not with their most familiar material.

And peppered through are guitar instrumentals (Peter Posa, Gary Bayer, Gray Bartlett, Ken and John) and those throwbacks to the doo-wop/Fifties pop era.

Of course there are few lesser moments but they pass by in fewer than three minutes and for every one of those there are two others which will stop you.

And yes, there are a lot of covers (Louie Louie, Gloria, Like Dreamers Do, I Can't Explain, Bells of Rhymney, And I Love Her etc) which don't match the originals.

But again for every one of them there's the La De Da's ripping through a bruising Little Girl, Adderley's terrific Mr Jinx, the Dark Ages r'n'b thump on Tomorrow's Gonna be Another Day . . .

And oddities.

Have you ever heard of Sandy Snowden and Clarrie Light Combo who get two songs here?

Or Mauri Chan's instrumental Rickshaw?

With a booklet of excellent images, useful trivia, period information and a timeline, this is yet another impressive compilation from Gillanders on his boutique Frenzy label.

Ask yourself, where else are you going to hear the Astro Beats' Jenka Rock?

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This compilation on Frenzy can be found at any good record store.