Flying colours

Look Blue Go Purple, a group which stood out among the many in 1980s Dunedin, is being honoured at the Taite Music Prize. RUSSELL BROWN tracked down the op shop-raiding politest band in rock'n'roll”.

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In Look Blue Go Purple's first press interview in 1984, the band's drummer, Lesley Paris, advanced a theory about what made them sound different in a Dunedin music scene where you could barely throw a party without someone forming a band. "I just think that when we play together, we all listen really hard to each other - and when I play with other people, I sometimes get annoyed because some people don't seem to listen."

After a deep breath to acknowledge the passing of 40 years, the five members of Look Blue Go Purple - who have assembled on a Zoom call to talk about being named as this year's Taite Music Prize Classic Record recipients - are more than happy to endorse the idea.

"That was so well put," says bass and flute player Norma O'Malley. "I thought about this today and I think that the beauty of LBGP is that we played for each other."

"We were collaborative and considerate," agrees singer-guitarist Kath Webster. "Very considerate of each other." 

"Such a polite band!" O'Malley replies. "The politest band in rock'n'roll," Paris deadpans.

The Classic Record honour is well deserved and a little bit of a fudge: officially, it's for Compilation, the 1991 CD release that collected all their studio recordings, rather than for any of the three EPs they released on Flying Nun Records when they were still together.

There has been another compilation since: 2017's Still Bewitched, released jointly by Flying Nun and the Brooklyn New York label Captured Tracks. The American release underlined how well the band's music has weathered and the global reach it eventually achieved. Its title references Bewitched, LBGP's 1985 debut, which was recorded in 22 hours in an empty Auckland office on equipment their producer Terry Moore had borrowed from The Lab recording studio.