After writing the previous post about some of my past musical adventures, I did a web search on my old band Aardvark. Quite a revelation it was. I learned a lot, including the startling news that I am no longer of this world. It must be true, because I read it in more than one place, and you can believe everything you see on the Net, can’t you?

It seems these revelations were spread around the web by Dene Kellaway of Tree Records, where we recorded in the ’70s. In 1997, Dene gathered some of his label’s singles into a couple of CDs, titled Kiwi Made Music. Below is his blurb about Aardvark and our single,  Motorway Madness. My comments are in blue type.

Cover of the compilation CD that included our old Motorway Madness single. That's us on the left.

AARDVARK: The top live Band in Wellington [debateable, though we were up there] in the late 60’s, early 70’s [early to mid ’70s] and every major Label courted them [only Tree Records courted us] but they were not interested until the NZ Government decided to build a new Motorway and John MacGibbon and his family were hastily removed from their home [we left several years earlier, though the house had been under threat. It was just time to buy our own home.] which then sat vacant a year before being demolished. [Probably correct] John was angry enough to write a song about it. [Correct. But I wasn’t furiously, lie in front of the bulldozers  angry…] Asking fellow artists which Label would play ball with him, they all said Tree. [Bullshit. Dene Kellaway of Tree Records approached us to do a single, and  I didn’t write Motorway Madness until after that.] The B side [a cover of Carol King’s It’s Too Late] was their most requested song [it wasn’t the most requested song, but we played it pretty well and thought it would be a quick B side to knock out] at both at the James Cook Hotel and The Settlement, their two residencies. [Only the James Cook was a residency, though we did play at the Settlement several times, and had other residencies later.] They also appeared on “Studio One”, a music show made by NZBC-TV1, in 1972. [Correct] No further records were made simply because the Band was not interested in a recording career. [Sort of correct, but no one asked us to do any more records anyway] John died in July, 2007. [My emphasis. Greatly exaggerated!]

We did have another John in the band before we made the Tree recordings. It was John Trethewey and he died a few years ago in Cambodia.