The Semi-Autonomous Rock Music of The STones

The Flying Nun record the Dunedin Double (1982) is
credited with having identified Dunedin as a place where independent,
garage style rock and roll was thriving in the early 1980s. Of the four
acts on the double album, The Stones would have the shortest life as a
band. Apart from their place on the Dunedin Double, The Stones
would only release one 12” EP, Another Disc Another Dollar. This
essay looks at the place of this EP in both Dunedin’s history of
independent rock and its place in the wider history of rock too. The
Stones were at first glance not a serious band, but by their own
account, set out to do “everything the wrong way,” beginning with
their name, that is a shortened but synonymous version of the Rolling
Stones. However, the parody that they were making also achieves the
very thing they set out to do badly, which is to make garage rock.
Their mimicry of rock also produced great rock music, their
nonchalance achieving that quality of authentic expression that defines
the rock attitude itself.