2004 APRA Silver ScrollsWell, despite what Ms. Biz says, I thought I was looking pretty dashing with my brown corduroy Scooby Doo jacket on as I made my way into the 2004 Silver Scroll awards at the Wellington Town Hall. Biz is right in pointing out that the general fashion sense of the male company ranged from spiffy-black-tie-elegance to just-rolled-out-of-bed-tardiness, whereas the assembled women were, almost to a tee, quite resplendent in a wide range of fetching ensembles. Come on guys, get it together.

I caught up with Jody Lloyd (aka Trillion, and of Dark Tower fame), whose been a bit of a champion of the indie scene for a few years now, and who has some good ideas on how NZ On Air money could be better spent than funding knock-off American-sounding commercial rock bands. He'd obviously come to make the statement, as his shirt had the NZ on Air logo printed onto the pocket, but the with 'NZ' removed and 'Sound like USA' replacing it. After witnessing the travesty that is the Goodnight Nurse video a couple of weeks ago I was in a mood to agree, and after spieling to each other for a bit we were joined by Miles Buckingham of un-chart-ed fame who proceeded to interview us on the topic. No doubt I'll end up being the host of the NZ Music Show when it goes to air on Radio Active (next Tuesday night, 9pm for anyone that's interested. Streams live on the web too).

The media crowd were expected to watch the ceremony from the Town Hall's upper tier with none of the free food or drink that the industry bigwigs were having pushed at them downstairs, so I had to make mercy dash to the bottle store on Willis St to pick up some Grolsch (they were cheap) to share around the gasping media crew. It was a weird set-up, to tell the truth, with a handful of journos and camera operators dotted around the upstairs area, looking down on the VIPs like they were in a goldfish bowl. Perhaps a public gallery might be the trick next year (if it's coming this way again), to fill up the space - I'm sure plenty of people would come along to catch the once-in-a-lifetime chance to catch the weird and wonderful cover versions of the Scroll finalists that get performed each year.

The best of these this year was the Paseload take on the eventual winner - Scribe & P-Money's 'Not Many'. The grungy Wellington rock'n'roll band dirtied up the main synth riff of the original and pretty much won the crowd over. I watched Scribe down below, to see if it got the main man's seal of approval, and he was definitely swaying along and enjoying it as much as the rest of the crowd. The same couldn't be said for poor old Shayne Carter, who had to put up with Rhombus pretty much murdering 'Backwards is Backwards' 'Getting What You Give'. I found a Wellington dub band being chosen to play this particular number particularly ironic after hearing a second-hand and probably baseless story of Shayne's dislike for the whole Welly-dub scene recently. The Betchadupa lads had also not shown, so any chance of him taking out his frustrations on the wee whipper-snappers was also denied to him. Still the coolest cat there, though.

Arthur Baysting used his time, as I heard it, to advocate for the relaxation of marijuana laws in favour of focusing government resources on halting the influx of more potent drugs. Nary a murmur of dissent was voiced amongst the remarkably relaxed muso crowd. He also had at least a couple of senior cabinet ministers at which this message was no doubt aimed, but no PM Helen Clark for me to snog tonight, unfortunately. Regardless of who was listening, it was good grand-standing stuff, and made a nice change from the continued 'isn't-nz-music-doing-well' vibe that has been the pervasive at this sort of event for a while now, and which is all very well for the people making radio-friendly rock-pop, but probably not the feeling across the board. How about some more funding for improv-free-jazz? Now that's a happening scene that's flourishing with virtually no funding, and could go ballistic with a little investment.

Anyway, politics and the random nature of awards ceremonies aside, it was a good ol' knees up once the social part of the evening got under way. Gareth from Goodshirt was nice enough to write a 'rock on dude!' message to my 4yo Milo, who highly rates the Auckland band, and Kirsten from Goldenhorse and Jody Lloyd drew a couple of lovely pictures in my journal.

If you didn't hear it first time around, National Radio did an excellent piece on the event for the Music Mix show, which is getting repeated tonight (Monday 1 Nov) at 11pm. Nice to see some people there on media passes actually did some work.

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