Ammped
Featuring Ammp
Podcast: Download (Duration: 20:19 — 14.0MB)
Formed as a high school band at St. Patrick’s College, Wellington, New Zealand, Andy Masseurs, Matt Powell and Andrew Richardson made a big impression early on by winning the Battle Of The Bands competition. But it didn’t stop there.
After disbanding and reforming – losing drummer Richardson – the band won a top 5 spot out of 500 entrants for the television show Song Star, which is judged by New Zealand’s best known and most successful musicians. Their song All I Wanted was produced for the show by veteran producers – and musicians. Cool, yeah. But the boys winced.
After the show, Richardson returned and Jason Murphy arrived on bass and All I Wanted was redone from scratch and now known as Ammp, they released their first single. It reached number 42 in the New Zealand airplay charts and began a long string of successes.
Their second single, Ironman, about Andy’s dad was picked up by the Taupo Ironman event as their official song. It also got the band into the NZ airplay top 40 for the first time at number 33. Third single Go was used in a Vodafone television advertisement (for music-playing phones) and reached number 26. The video for Go was shot at the famous Wellington Bar Bodega.
Bar Bodega were actually sanding the floors at the time and double booked. The sanders were sent home and Andy had to talk to management later on but it’s all good when you’re making a rock ‘n’ roll video and a ton of extras have come along for the day.
Recorded at the same time as Go, fourth single Always reached number 31 in the charts to be followed by the fun and fantastic Dirty Rock And Roll which peaked at number 37.
Their sixth single, Let The Sunlight In came through a twisted path.
Let The Sunlight In was originally a song called Mortal Coil. It had a chorus that repeated the word “shake”. Not bad but not that good either. When we came to mix the song on the way to recording Andy had an idea for a new chorus. Told David who looked aghast at the notion of re-recording the song. Mat came in heard the idea gave a high five to Andy and Let The Sunlight In was born. We were going through quite a tough period and it can be heard in the verse lyrics. Finding the chorus was really like letting the sunlight in.
And so the story continues as the band shifts their focus to creating an album out of this most excellent collection.
TRACKS PLAYED IN THIS PRODUCTION
- All I Wanted
- Ironman
- Go
- Always
- Dirty Rock And Roll
- Let The Sunlight In
