“Junk” by The Puddle

The cover of ‘Pop Lib’ by The Puddle, released on Flying Nun Records in 1986.
“99.9% of people on the street are unaware of ‘Jane From Occupied Europe’ by Swell Maps. 99.9% of people on the street are unaware of ‘Oar’ by Skip Spence… 100% of people on the street are unaware of ‘Pop Lib’ by The Puddle… make that 150%.”
Luke Haines, Sabotage Times, 2012

This blog is named after, and in honour of, a 1986 mini-album by The Puddle which was released on Flying Nun Records. Despite releasing “Pop Lib”, then the albums “Live at the Teddy Bear Club” (FN172, 1991) and “Into the Moon” (FNCD164, 1992), and finally a 7″ single “Thursday”/ “Too Hot to be Cool” (FN278, 1993), The Puddle never appeared on any Flying Nun Records compilation until “Time to Go – The Southern Psychedelic Movement 1981-86” last year (2012).

The song included there was “Junk” – a song that Puddle frontman and songwriter George D. Henderson used to introduce at the time as ‘a song about non-medical use of pain-killing drugs’. I hated that song, the sentiments it expressed and saw the damage that drugs (self) inflicted on him and others. So I guess it is ironic indeed that the first, and only, song from The Puddle on a Flying Nun Records compilation is the one I hate the most. It is also the least psychedelic song on that remarkable, damaged “Pop Lib” record. Pain killing drugs – “Junk” – are not psychedelic.

Around that time George D. Henderson was interviewed for Dunedin University student magazine Critic. The interview must date from 1987 or maybe even April 1988, as “Pop Lib” was released in 1987 and Lindsay Maitland died in 1987. The photograph used must be from 1986.

The interview ranges from early life in Invercargill, through Wellington and Christchurch scenes, including being banned from playing all venues in Christchurch and seeing The Clean play in 1981 (“the support band were terrible and I just kept wishing they’d finish so I could see The Clean who I’d heard so much about. As they came off stage and then went back on I realised that I had been watching The Clean”). It also covers the origins of The Puddle and the name, how “Pop Lib” was recorded and mentions “Junk” and some of the fall out from that life-style. Plus some other rather eccentric views.

Here it is: