The Tongues - The Tongues (Reissue) (1970)

Late 1960s NZ pop group. They had a massive hit with Rain & Tears in 1968.

The Hi-Revving Tongues are best remembered, perhaps inappropriately, for their 1969 chart-topping single ‘Rain & Tears’. The band can also lay claim to pioneering New Zealand psychedelic pop while their six-month residency at Sydney’s Whiskey-A-Go-Go gave them a decidedly hard edge and their stage show was one of the most spectacular of the era. But mostly they are remembered for an atypical strings-laden ballad that they rarely performed live.
Chris Parfitt was the voice and face of The Hi-Revving Tongues, although the founder and band leader was guitarist Mike Balcombe, who was a few years older than the predominantly teenage line-up. Parfitt was 16 when his family shifted from Lower Hutt to Auckland in 1964. A career in rock and roll hadn’t really appealed but he attended Claude Papesch’s music school and decided to take up bass guitar, receiving lessons from Bill Belton.