Greetings from New Zealand!
Some of you may be interested to know that NZ musician Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits) recently published his memoirs, an excellent book called Dead People I Have Known. I'm sure as some of you know The La's toured America with Straitjacket Fits around June/July 1991 and there is a passage in the book about that tour:
"We got to tour America again, but we had to go with the Las. The La's were Scousers who’d had a hit with 'There She Goes', which was a good song, but I knew plenty of people with one of them. The rest of the La’s set was skiffle, which the singer sung authentically. Their three minute sixties songs already sounded reheated. While the British media was writing the singer up as a genius, I don’t think he cared, because he wanted to record everything on one microphone and he hated all his records. We didn’t speak to the Las because they were on pot, or - it was rumored - heroin, so we’d just mutter at them when we passed them in the hallway. Neither us, nor The La's, could be bothered. In Salt Lake City we were riding an open goods lift, and the Lee Mavers was on the floor above us, looking over into our cage and pushing a button that kept stopping and starting the lift. I looked up and told him to stop doing that, and that was the only thing I ever said to the singer of the Las. We usually blew the Las off the stage - because we could, and they were annoying."