Obscure | Contents | Feedback

featuring The Love Factory Band, PLUS John Campbell, DJ Mu, 50hz, Steve Par, James Belich, Hidibeast and more.

In Wellington, in the early 1990s, there was a weekly club night run by Radio Active 89FM called the Love Factory, at Chips nightspot in the Willis Street Village. The house band was an odd collection of misfits, utilising socks, roman sandles, pocket protectors, SL1200s, dats, meatpacks, wigs, and songs made up of sampled farts or Eric B and LL Cool J loops: the Love Factory Band.

Every Wednesday, hundreds of pop kids would gather to move to sounds from the likes of Public Enemy, 7A3, the Trammps and "I Was Made for Loving You" by Kiss. On a good night, Chips manager Frankie Stevens, brother of the famous Jon, would get up on stage and front the Love Factory Band for "Viva Love Factory". They coulda been contenders. But it was not to be.

When We Were Nerds is the story of the LFB, and how a lethal combination of Fanta, nitrous oxide, full-frontal nerdity and fat-ass rap beats drove the core members Collin Swedge, Darren Storm, Ni-Jel, Brice Price, Sharon Duffy and Noeline Swedge to the dizzy heights of micro-stardom, then plunged them back to the vales of obscurity, while others scaled ladders of success and adulation.

It's all here: the Naked Angel and Bodega gigs, Sale of the Century appearances, Queensgate P.A.s, the infamous "Fanta attack" support for Head Like a Hole's debut single launch, the links to the cultish hairdressing scene, and extracts from their notorious but still-unavailable videos.

Over the course of 20 fascinating minutes, you'll find just what drove these Welli underground legends to produce the orangely obsessive and compulsive music that defined an era; beats that, in the words of a local rap artist, were most definitely "the poos".

Rated PG (contains Fanta)