When Paul Scott finally fetched up for university in Christchurch in early 1979, he had an idea and a name. The idea. To form a group with a musician he’d met on an earlier trip. His name. Chris Moore. Moore had a friend who played guitar, Paul Mason, and one who drummed, Kevin Emmett. The chemistry was there from the beginning. Musical tastes were diverse but they had Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, The Sex Pistols, and Lou Reed in common. For the group’s name Scott recycled his Timaru college band’s handle, Splash Alley.

Splash Alley found a singer in Richard (Dick) Driver, a tall wild-haired motorcycle racer, late of long hair punks’ The Doomed. Driver looked the part and had been on TV and in the papers. In turn he recognised in self effacing and humble Paul Scott, the determination and focus, needed for a successful group. Scott was constantly thinking about and listening to music, and coming up with words and sounds.

Splash Alley played largely covers at first. A set cribbed by Scott from Christchurch pub rockers’ Vapour and The Trails at the inner city DB Gladstone where they had a near residency in the first half of 1979. In the main it was high octane rock n roll and smart sharp pop. Lou Reed’s Rock n Roll, Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Listen To Her Heart and Need To Know, The Modern Lovers’ Roadrunner, and The Banana Splits Theme. Songs eliminated as Scott built the group’s catalogue. From the original Splash Alley came the storming white trash rocker Brains Are Dumb. Another early Scott band, Dawn Patrol, provided Radio Song. There was Scott and Moore’s slow building burner White Girl,and chunky riffer Spanish. Future hit Now and Skinny Girls followed.

The public got their first look and listen at the inner city Dux de Lux Restaurant on the old University of Canterbury campus, and they liked what they heard.

When The Swingers swung through in late August for attendance record breaking shows at the Hillsborough, Splash Alley, opened, returning the following week with Vapour and The Trails.

Mid-month September they were in morning daily The Press. A striking photograph capturing them in “a mood of menace and mystery.” The writer finds the group in good humour, describing their sound as commercial power pop, second wave, and energy rock n roll, and talking about a move to Australia. They’d been together three and a half months.

Better was to come. In October they played supported art-rockers Bon Marche, resident group at The Aranui, a large popular bar in the city’s Eastern suburbs. The Aranui was an institution in Christchurch, which ran music five nights a week, and Saturday afternoon. There was always a good crowd. A regular cast of people like Cheers.

Supporting a Marc Hunter-less Dragon at the Christchurch Town Hall prompted more coverage in The Press under the headline - Street Fighting Men - coupled another sharp snap of the group. Dick in front in narrow striped tie and op-shop suit jacket burst out at one shoulder. Paul Scott partly hid under a long black fringe. The rest slatted behind him. A classic new wave shot.

When Bon Marche vacated the Aranui to promote their cover of Phil Judd’s So This Is Love? Splash Alley moved in for seven weeks starting early October 1979. The experience was a valuable one as they honed their set and stage skills.

Splash Alley were radio station 3ZM’s group of the month for October. Their prize was a chance to record four songs – Commercial Airways, Skinny Girls, Texas, and Too Cool For Words.

With Christchurch tamed and successful out of city shows in Ashburton and Dunedin the north was calling. The fast accelerating Auckland live scene. The big North Island provincial city pubs. That was the road to Oz.

Dick Driver organised the Hillcrest Tavern in Hamilton, and The Cabana in Napier, adding the Albert in Palmerston North, DB Ngamotu in New Plymouth, Auckland's Potters Wheel, The Station, and DB Waitemata, and Whakatane’s Tainui Tavern.

They called it the Into The Eighties tour, and headed north in early December, away from that whole weird scene with Dick’s work mate. The narc who’d become a Splash Alley roadie. He'd hook up at after show parties in Dunedin and Christchurch. Buy a little. See who was selling and using. Then he disappeared, and scene people up and down the South Island were busted. A Christchurch music promoter and motorcycle dealer went away for importing heroin in motorcycle frames.

Dick Driver wondered why he was the one chosen to unknowingly help the narc enter the scene. Splash Alley didn’t use heavy drugs. It had to be the combination of music and motorcycles. Dick Driver, a keen motorcycle racer, had a foot in both worlds.

In the early 1980s Hamilton’s Tavern Hillcrest - a student pub on the city’s eastern edge five minutes walk from The University of Waikato campus - was the main stopping off point for touring groups in the river city.

Inside the crowd are quiet until Splash Alley hit the line in their upbeat rocker Spanish. “Everybody’s got a conscience, even in New Zealand.” That had them amping. A reaction they'd get repeatedly, playing two sometimes three forty five minute sets, in the provincial centres. They'd stay in the pub’s band house. Practice and write new songs in the morning at the bar. Win over the locals in the evening.

Auckland proved harder to crack. The scene was polarised and clique bound, and already serviced by a confidant, diverse, and popular set of groups when Splash Alley played their first Queen city shows in January 1980 at the Potter’s Wheel in New Lynn, and at the Station Hotel in January 1980.

Back in Christchurch in February 1980, Splash Alley, now renamed Pop Mechanix, capitalised on their growing reputation by selling out the Hillsborough Tavern with popular trio The Vauxhalls in support. An early March Orientation Timewarp Dance at Canterbury University saw them in guitar smashing mode trashing cheap op-shop guitars on stage.

It was soon clear they’d outgrown the South Island, and in mid April, after shows at The Gladstone with Vapour and The Trails, Vacuum, The Androidss, and The Vauxhalls, and at The Hillsborough, they hit the road, literally, their trailer uncoupling on the way back into Christchurch, smashing into a shop window.

They found a replacement and headed north on their Practical Wireless tour to play shows at Willy’s Wine Bar and The Last Resort. There they hit full stride as live band, leaping up a gear before the eyes and ears of Mike Chunn, former Split Enz and Citizen Band bassist, who signed on as manager, offering them a release on Auckland indie Ripper Records.

Outside Napier’s Cabana, a group stronghold, the trailer was written off again. This time by a drunk driver. Pop Mechanix hired a second van and started for Hamilton. A long tricky journey. They blew a tire at high speed. The van rolling before skidding along on its side. Band members piled atop one another. Their gear spilled out along the road.

They hired another van and arrived at the Hillcrest with one light and half a PA. They filled the room then kicked on to Auckland’s Windsor Castle, Mainstreet, New Station Hotel, Potter's Wheel, and the newly opened XS Cafe. Their reception in the city was enthusiastic, except for punk stronghold, the Windsor Castle, where they found the audience’s punker than thou attitude snobbish and off-putting.

In the audience at The Potter's Wheel they saw their former roadie, called him by the name they knew. He said it wasn’t his name, and expressed regret that the group had been caught up in the undercover vice operation. He knew none of the band members were heavy drug users.

Sleeping on the floor at XS Cafe, and in cheap rooms, opposite Mainstreet Cabaret, Pop Mechanix found their feet in the Queen City, picking up a Mod following inspired by the brilliant era evoking Mod movie, Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s rock opera.

A quick-witted Sunday News reporter pulled the group and their Vespa riding Mod followers together, for a preview showing, and a story. Although Pop Mechanix weren’t consciously a mod group. Their sound had neat lines and pop and power. Enough.

For their first single Pop Mechanix chose the upbeat wordy pop of Now. A classic debut. Confident, clever, and crafted with a strong internal dynamic. Scott’s bass up high in the mix, strafed by bursts of distorted guitar, and swirling organ. Emmett’s drumming pinpoint.

On the road again in June, Pop Mechanix, headed south. Another tour in the build to Australia. Another step. Except for Driver it was a step too far. His girlfriend was pregnant in Christchurch, and he was under family pressure to return home, torn, he quit the band in Wellington.

Mike Chunn suggested Andrew McLennan as replacement. His group, The Whizz Kids, played Pop Mechanix’s first XS Cafe show and he’d been impressed by Pop Mechanix's songs and style.

The new lineup stepped out for the first time in August at Mainstreet. Fans couldn’t help but be startled by the physical similarity between Driver and McLennan. Both were tall and lanky with big hair and sharp craggy faces. The difference lay in the voice. Driver’s stronger. McLennan’s more tuneful. As a performer Driver was more dramatic. McLennan, a musician, who could contribute to the sound.

Next up were shows with Manchester's Magazine, formed by Howard Devoto after his early departure from The Buzzcocks, and then at their Correct Use Of Soap peak. Rip It Up Xtra's Mark Phillips heard them at the Rumba Bar on Victoria Street West where they broke the door record in front of a crowd of “Boots, Mods, punks, (and) trendies.” He’d earlier thought them “tight, meaty, and highly danceable.”

In October Now crept to forty eight on the national singles chart. The city’s two most clued in stations, Radio Hauraki and 1ZM, began playing the track. Three thousand more sets of ears got to hear it in November 1980 when Pop Mechanix supported The Motels, in the country on the back of their hit Total Control. It was Pop Mechanix’s first time in a big concert venue. By then they had a set stacked with gems. Amped up garage rockers such as Spanish, Brains Are Dumb, and Cliche which poked fun at punks over a stomping punk riff. Disguises and Post Office Towers had the observational mod pop feel of The Jam. Ska left its mark on Ritz, a loping harmony heavy Antipodean skank. Holidays was its more musically successful dark side. White Girl, an early Moore and Scott collaboration, ate the air with an insistent stalking lead line, The Saints would have been proud of. There’s also more than a little snarling Stooges menace in Paul Mason’s guitar as the track builds and builds and builds around Scott’s biting lyric.

When Ritz backed with Talking and Brains Are Dumb was released as a one off single on RCA Records in December it settled at number fifty for a single week. An underage venue tour with shoo wop, shoo bop pop act Crocodiles; old guard rockers making a spirited return with Tears, was only a limited success. The lull before the storm. Pop Mechanix cut it up it up at Sweetwaters in January of 1981 where CBS Records Australia signed them for an album and Split Enz offered them the support slot on their upcoming tour of Australia.

Before they left New Zealand Pop Mechanix recorded their lasting claim to Kiwi fame, Jumping Out A Window, with Split Enz keyboard player, Eddie Raynor, at Mandrill Studios in late January 1981. It had the down beat air of The Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays. It’s lyrical content was similarly contentious, aided by chillingly concise vocal from McLennan which capped a keyboard heavy track with all the arty twists and turns of prime pop Split Enz. It was just as catchy. In contrast an earlier demo recording is up beat and bass driven. Jumping Out A Window would eventually be released in Australia and Great Britain.

After one final New Zealand tour Pop Mechanix made the hop across the Tasman in mid March 1981 leaving behind a top thirty single, and a glowing showing in the sharp Rip It Up Readers Poll for 1980. They were third favourite New Zealand group behind Split Enz and Toy Love. Ritz was number two New Zealand single behind Toy Love’s Don’t Ask Me. Andrew Snoid second equal New Zealand vocalist with Tim Finn, behind Chris Knox, and Paul Scott number four bassist.

Split Enz, touring on the back of their number one album, Corroboree (Waiata in New Zealand), were at their popular peak in Australia, drawing huge crowds on an extensive tour. Crowds who received Pop Mechanix favourably. The signs for success were good. There was an Australian video for Jumping Out A Window. A live spot on Molly Meldrum’s popular Countdown TV show. A lot of press. Daytime airplay.

They settled in Sydney, and began playing across the city, building their audience up, before venturing afield. They recorded record their first album with Eddie Raynor at AAV Studios in Melbourne. Cowboys and Engines eventually released in January 1982 under the name Zoo. Only the album lead in single - Holidays backed with The Ritz – was released as Pop Mechanix.

A Sydney group, Popular Mechanics, egged on by their Lawyer drummer, objected to the name Pop Mechanix as being too similar to theirs. An injunction and court battle followed. The Kiwi contenders were forced to play and release a single - Texas backed with Cowboys - as NZPop. A name which didn’t go down well with Australian rock fans. The honeymoon was definitely over. They weren’t pulling big enough crowds to do more than subsist, and McLennan, for one, was angry. Their manager Mike Chugg at Premier Artists said “don’t worry.” They’d sort it out.

The case made legal history, and Pop Mechanix ended up losing control of the name in all but Canberra and Northern Territory, effectively ruining the band in Australia, when for a few thousand dollars, the name rights could have been theirs. McLennan was gutted, and left the group in late November 1981 to join The Swingers.

Paul Scott sung on a remixed Cowboys and Engines. The group thought the Raynor tracks were too pop. The drum sounds too treated. So it was re-mixed by John Wood, who’d worked with John Cale, Fairport Convention, and Squeeze.

Meanwhile Zoo were playing three or four shows a week in central Sydney and the North Shore, and Eastern Suburbs. They had seventy songs in their repertoire, and after the tension of McLennan’s last days, the four original members simply closed ranks and started to feel alive again.

When Keep It Up, quite possibly the sharpest Ska track written and released by a New Zealand act, was pulled as lead off single from Cowboys and Engines, and bombed, the group pushed on. There was the album, and new single, Private Military, to come in early 1982, followed by a return to Sweetwaters, and a national New Zealand tour.

You can see the group looking tanned and healthy standing on the lip of the natural amphitheater above the Sweetwaters stage on the cover of the February 1982 Rip It Up. Blue blue sky behind them. The core Christchurch four looking confident. Cowboys and Engines was out containing five great songs in Keep It Up, Post Office Towers, Holidays, Shah Yahir, and Land Of Broken Dreams. Decades later Dick Driver could quote still the prophetic words to Land Of Broken Dreams. Their future starkly rendered in the present. There'd be further attempts to resurrect Pop Mechanix in the mid to late 1980s, but none were successful. Australia had defeated them and New Zealand forgotten.