- About -
The Enemy were Dunedin's first Punk rock band. They existed for only about a year before moving up to Auckland and morphing into Toy Love.
A number of tape recording were made, some of which have been converted to mp3 and will be uploaded to this site. If you have any information about The Enemy, please add it to this page.
You know I had a Toy Love site for all those years but I've been listening to The Enemy at the Windsor a bit lately and I realised that I should have had an Enemy site instead - they being the more interesting band. Anyway, I've uploaded those songs to the internet. This is the first time they've been made avaliable to the general public so I hope they like it!
Below is a Directory containing all the tracks from The Enemy at the Windsor CD. Which I believe is a recording of the last Enemy gig
Before you start clicking on them, realise that they are in .m4a (ACC) format, which is the itunes format (NOT mp3). This means that depending on your system you may have to right click to download them, otherwise you could just get a text file.
The Enemy directory
What's so great about the Enemy is that they're effectively a first wave punk band, as much influenced by David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Iggy pop and Cockney Rebel as The likes of the Sex Pistols and Ramones. This means that their sound and songs are unique. A great song is 'Cover Version' although it doesn't come though too well on the Windsor stuff.
Personalised Discography
(I might move this section at some point)
Well, there is no discography. They never actually released anything while they were together, although there were plans to release a twelve inch with 'Swimming Pool'. However this fell through. Then in 1995 The Enemy - "Iggy Told Me" Live-Recorded at the Beneficiaries Hall Dunedin 5/78 was Released on free CD with Kiwi Rock book published 1996.
I later got hold of a tape off Roy Colbert and made a CD out of it. I think he hates my guts for that, but a lot of people appreciated it.
I also bought a tape of Toy Love live at the Cook at his auction and released that onto a double CD (it wouldn't fit one) and started the website toylove.org, where I got many hundreds of emails from people interested in Toy Love and I started selling CDs by mail order and through Echo records in Dunedin (as it was then)
Because of this site I got into contact with various people who had Toy Love, and other recordings. One of these 'Bob' loaned me a literal box of rare NZ recordings. I never had the server space before, but now I'm putting as much of it online as I can.
There is quite alot of other stuff out there, but I don't have it all.
I've also got all the issues of Garage (which was a classic music zine from the hight of the Dunedin Sound days) to put up, if I can ever get round to scanning them. I've scanned an Enemy interview though, so I will put that up.
Enemy Psychology
One interesting thing about the Enemy as opposed to Toy Love is that Chris Knox seems to have had some sort of conversion to PC or at least more liberal ideas in general between the two bands. I don't exactly know why this was, but it makes for an interesting contrast between his earliest, and later work.
You can here an example of this in "Rainbow", where Chris feels the necessity to attack hippy women for not looking up to date enough in their fashions. The song is clearly a send up of The Rolling Stones "She a Rainbow", which just goes to show how much of their music was influnced by the sixties.
The enemy in their own words - Partial lyrics of Iggy told me, A seven minute punk song!
Iggy Told me
We were The Enemy and know that that is true.
We were the Enemy and we existed for you.
Because Iggy told us and Iggy would not lie to me.
We started playing because everything else was fucked.
We started playing for the cunts and the bucks
Cause Iggy told us and Iggy would not lie to me
Back in Dunedin late last year.
We wanted something to blister your pearly ears
Cause Iggy told me and Iggy would not lie to me
So we just started and eventually we grew
Until we became the thing that is here in front of you. and
Iggy told me and Iggy would not lie to me, ha ha
Oh yeah
The people seeme to like the things that we did
Well at least only fifty percent of them ran away and hid from us
And Iggy told us and Iggy, Iggy wouldn't lie to me
You may well ask: "What's this got to do with Iggy?"
Well I don't know we might as well have called Ziggy
Cause Ziggy told us too and he's going to tell us something in a second yeah [?]
The fact remains that Iggy is insane [cuts out for a second]
Like that!
We want to get it in the face
Cos Iggy told us and Iggy told us and Iggy wouldn't lie to me now, me!
right right right right
For those of you who have seen this before
You know I usually end up on the floor
Iggy told me and Iggy would not lie to me, oh no oh no oh no!
For those of you who've been here before
You know there's blood, and blood is such a fucking bore
Iggy told us and who want to listen to someone who's a has-been? Ah?
I used to cut myself for your delight
But I won't cut myself again it gives me a fright
I'd like to
I'd like to right right you want some blood?
Ah blood, ...spit
I'm Nero, Caligula, God
Is there lust in her eyes?
Where is it? I can't see your disguise, you're all so bland
Look at you...
...right now, right now, right now, right now...
...oh Iggy, oh Iggy, oh Iggy, oh Iggy
Oh Iggy me - He would no lie to me
Oh Iggy, oh Iggy, oh Iggy, oh Iggy
Told me... [noises and groans]
We were The Enemy, We were The Enemy, we were, we were the Enemy
We were, We were, We were, We were the en!
That's it that's, over return to your beds
...That's enough, that's enough, that'll do
And Iggy told me - He would not lie to me!!!
Thanks for your money honeys
Up to Music
