Dunedin’s Netherworld Dancing Toys became the country’s top band with the release of Painted Years in 1985.
For about six months in 1985 Nick Sampson was being recognised in supermarkets around New Zealand.
It wasn’t something the Netherworld Dancing Toys member had aspired to when the band formed in Dunedin in 1982. But that side effect of his song For Today conquering the charts, and the band cleaning up at the New Zealand Music Awards was as fleeting as it was unexpected.
“I know this sounds pathetic,” Sampson says. “But we’d go into a supermarket in Masterton or New Plymouth, and the lady behind the checkout would go, ‘oh, you’re in that band!’. It was quite weird. But they soon forgot who that guy in the band was.”
The band’s subsequent push for an international record deal hit a brick wall, and they struggled to maintain momentum.
But for that brief moment in 1985 Netherworld Dancing Toys reigned supreme in New Zealand pop music.
Sampson's new band the Black Flames had debuted at a Whangaparāoa venue the weekend before I spoke to him.
Scattered through the ‘maximum rockin’ soul’ band’s set were a number of Netherworld’s songs, including For Today.
The spirited single reached number three in the New Zealand charts during August 1985, becoming Netherworld Dancing Toys’ signature song.
In November that year the band performed at the New Zealand Music Awards in Wellington. They took home the awards for best single, best album for Painted Years, top group, and the publicly voted United Song of the Year.
Sampson is sitting near one of those awards as he speaks to me from his Northcote Point home, in the shadow of the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
“I was so nervous that day,” he remembers. “We had hours to kill, and I don’t know why but I got myself all wound up. In those days the Music Awards were live on TV, so it was quite high profile. And the next day it was front page news.”
Indeed, a large picture of the local heroes featured on page one of the Otago Daily Times following their success.
Here was a band, afterall, who had gained national prominence while remaining Dunedin based. Most other acts from the city relocated to the North Island once success came knocking.
But Dunedin was where the Netherworld’s had begun, and cut its teeth performing to a loyal university audience.
Their brassy, upbeat neo-soul clearly resonated around student pubs, and tracks such as The Trusted Ones and The Real You had charted in New Zealand.
It had also translated well to larger stages, with the band performing to huge crowds at the Sweetwaters Festival in 1983 and 1984. At the latter they held their own alongside international draw cards like Talking Heads, Simple Minds, and The Pretenders.
At that time the song that would become the Netherworlds’ calling card was yet to be written.
Nick Sampson was staying with his grandmother Elsie in Taranaki over the summer of 1984-85.
While earning good money at the freezing works as he’d done for a number of summers, he was also writing songs. The chorus of For Today had been written at the DB Ashburton hotel while on tour, and it was largely completed during the summer.
Back in Dunedin, Sampson took the song to band practice at the Roslyn Woollen Mills. The band decided co-frontman Malcolm Black Malcolm Black might better suit the song, and he rewrote the verses to fit his own intonation, while Sampson’s unforgettable chorus melody was unchanged.
It was the only song they worked on together, easily becoming the band’s most successful.
The year leading up to the creation of For Today, and the rest of the material that would comprise the Painted Years album, had been eventful.
In the wake of performing at Sweetwaters the Netherworlds had decided the band would become a fulltime proposition. The core of the band were Sampson, Black, bassist Graham Cockroft, drummer Brent Alexander, and a horn section.
Cockroft, who’s now a director of several prominent companies, was involved in setting up Radio One for the Otago University Students’ Association in 1984.
In that role he was dealing with record companies, and met Annabel Carr from Virgin Records’ New Zealand office.
“She said something like, ‘don’t I recognise you from a band?’” he recalls. “She’d been at the Windsor Castle (in Auckland) and had seen us. And she said ‘I’m keen to sign you guys up’.”
Virgin had only recently opened its New Zealand office, and was looking for a band to work with locally, with a view to taking it to an international market.
The early Netherworld releases had been on Flying Nun Records, Roger Shepherd’s Christchurch label synonymous with the Dunedin Sound bands.
While Shepherd and the band were friendly, not everyone involved with the label were keen on their pop sensibilities. The notoriously antagonistic Chris Knox was Flying Nun’s unofficial Auckland representative, and he wasn’t sad to see them depart.
“They got what they wanted out of Virgin,” he said in 1987. “That’s why Flying Nun wasn’t sad to relinquish the Netherworld Dancing Toys, because their aims were not attainable to us.”
Recorded at Auckland’s Mandrill Studio with Don McGlashan, The Real You single was the first fruits of the deal with Virgin. While it reached 31 in the charts and inspired enough confidence for Painted Years in 1985, the Dunedin horn section opted out after the single’s release.
“We decided, okay, we’ll simplify things by not having a permanent horn section,” Cockroft says. “”We’ll just do it with the four of us, and Tex (Houston) and Ged (Taylor) who were the sound
and lights guys.”
High up in Dunedin’s Consultancy House, there’s a stunning view of Otago Harbour from Brent Alexander’s office.
It’s from here that he runs his architecture and design practice, The Design Studio. The only real indicator of his past musical endeavors is a colourful Beatles print.
“I basically gave up my studies just to pursue the band thing for a while, and went back and studied later,” Alexander says. “We didn’t have a huge ambition to be honest. But when you’re young and unencumbered, that’s the perfect time.”
In February and March of 1985, the Netherworlds performed on the university orientation circuit around the country.
Now they were accompanied by Auckland horn duo the Newton Hoons (Mike Russell and Chris Green), and backing vocalists Kim Willoughby and Annie Crummer - both later of When The Cat’s Away.
This line-up, and the new songs that they performed, became the foundation for the recording of Painted Years during autumn.
“We rehearsed, we did the orientation tour, and recorded some demo tapes in Auckland,” Alexander remembers. “Those songs had been in the live set for a while.”
They settled on recording the album with producer Nigel Stone at Marmalade Studios on Wellington’s Cuba Street. Stone had produced the soul band The Hulamen’s Beer and Skittles EP there, a recording the Netherworlds were fans of.
Then only 21, Stone has since forged a very successful international career in film music recording.
Although they had previous recording experience, being in the studio with him was a different experience for the band.
“It was a big room and a completely different sound,” Alexander remembers. “It was a little bit intimidating to be honest. Nigel was a very switched on, intense, intelligent man. He had a good understanding of the technology, and of music and arrangements, as a producer should do.”
“He was absolutely nuts OCD,” Nick Sampson says. “But he was good to work with, and incredibly patient because we were pretty rough around the edges.”
With Virgin Records’ backing, the Netherworlds had a $30,000 budget for recording Painted Years at Marmalade.
That, and the several months they had to work on the album, was a rare luxury in New Zealand pop music in the mid-1980s.
With Marmalade Studios being used for commercial work during the day, the band settled in for sessions that began in the evening, working through to the early hours.
They were joined by the Newton Hoons, Willoughby and Crummer, and session musicians including Rodger Fox, John Nyland, Ross Burge, and Rob Winch, who brought another dimension to some songs.
Starting with a solid rhythm foundation, the songs were built up track by track through the lengthy nocturnal sessions.
Although Stone demanded a level of precision, Painted Years benefited from a relatively loose aesthetic that saw minor mistakes left in.
“We could have gone over the top and made a really heavily-produced record, but we wanted to make it sound as raw and honest as possible,” the late Malcolm Black noted at the time in a RipItUp cover story.
This was assisted by a flexible routine that saw the band regularly decamp to a nearby all-night Greek restaurant, or simply go home if things weren’t flowing.
Throughout the autumn months of 1985 Painted Years gradually took form, before being released in July and reaching number 10 in the charts.
For Today had become a contender for lead single from the album during the recording.
“During the orientation tour, that was the stand-out track,” Alexander says. “So we knew it was going to be the big one, and it did have the most energy put into it.”
Cockroft remembers being on tour in July when Annabel Carr from the record label got a call saying the single was rapidly climbing the charts.
Although it didn’t quite peak the charts, reaching number three and remaining in the Top 40 for 14 weeks was quite a feat for a local act at the time.
“I can’t remember which radio station it was in Auckland,” Cockroft says. “We were doing an interview, and they said, ‘are you guys from New Zealand? Really? We didn’t know that’.”
With a video on high rotation, the Netherworld Dancing Toys were inescapable after the album’s successful release.
So it wasn’t surprising that they were nominated in several categories at the New Zealand Music Awards.
Held in November at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, it included mimed performances from the Mockers, Peking Man, DD Smash, Patea Maori Club, and the Netherworlds.
That heralded the band’s unprecedented success, with five awards (including Stone for best producer).
“It was totally unexpected,” Alexander says. “They put us in the front row, but you still have no idea because it’s all very secretive. It was very exciting.”
For Today also won the APRA Silver Scroll songwriting award in 1985. Unfortunately, the band’s local success didn’t translate to overseas.
In late 1985 Black and Cockroft went to Australia to talk to Virgin Records about releasing the album there.
“They said ‘we quite like your record, but there’s not enough bottom end in it. We don’t think it’ll work here’,” Cockroft reflects. “It was very disappointing.”
That eventually led to the end of the band’s arrangement with Virgin in New Zealand. While they struggled on and released the Everything Will Be Alright album in 1989, ultimately other careers came calling.
But even 40 years on, For Today and its irresistible singalong chorus remains a fixture on New Zealand radio.
Malcolm Black
As well as having success with the Netherworld Dancing Toys, Malcolm Black had a long legal career specialising in entertainment law.
In 2018 he performed For Today with the band at the APRA Silver Scrolls. His bandmates remember their late friend, who passed away in 2019 following an illness.
“He was never overbearing, he was always very kind. I used to say ‘why do you want to play in a band with me?’ And he’d say, ‘well, I’ve never played with people like you before’.” (Nick Sampson)
“Malcolm always kept his head. You can imagine with a large band with different ambitions and temperaments it can get a bit lively at times. But he was always one of the sensible voices.” (Graham Cockroft)
“It was great working with him. He just oozed talent. In any band or any team, there’s a genius and a few other people. I certainly wasn’t the genius; that was him.” (Brent Alexander)
