Music Plus
Fifty years is a long time to do anything – if you want to spend that length of time on something you need to start young.
Luckily, Shona Laing did. Now a new exhibition in Waihi is celebrating her 50 year career in music.
Back in the early seventies New Zealanders watched television in black and white. The full switch to colour didn t come till 1975. And everyone watched the same thing. There was only one channel until 1974.
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, an estimated 1.5 million New Zealanders watched on television, and that was back when the entire population of the country was less than 3 million. So when the sole channel ran a musical variety competition called New Faces, you can bet your life that a significant percentage of the country was watching.