Friday, October 29, 2004
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 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. # | Thursday, October 28, 2004
Download Fahrenheit 9/11Michael Moore was reported not too long ago as saying he was fine with people downloading his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11."I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that," he said. "I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening."Now, although Moore might be slightly glazing over the rights of other people involved with the film (the studio and distributors spring to mind), this is a pretty good invite for those of you who haven't yet seen the film, and can't be arsed spending a few bucks on getting it from the local video library (assuming your local video library has it of course. It doesn't? Here's the answer). So, yes, Marc Perkel Rantz has set up a download page here, which has many different types of formats available for download - from a 650mb high-quality avi, to a slightly scratchier 40mb wmv version, and right down to a 14mb audio only version. Get it while his bandwidth holds out... # | Tuesday, October 19, 2004
listen.co.nzClassic. listen.co.nz - a domain name I bought a few years back and finally failed to renew this year during a period of financial crisis - has popped up on Trademe with a price tag of $15000. It used to just redirect to noizyland.com, but I had, over the years, dreamed up all sorts of fantastic purposes it could be put to use for. None of which I ever acted upon, time being about as rare as cash in my current state, but at least the possibility was there. I tried selling another domain with what one might consider high potential a few months back on the same site, and didn't get one bidder. I suspect this auction might be going the same way. In fact, of the 198 listings in domain names on the site, only 6 have bids, and only a couple are for more than a hundred bucks. I mean, really, who's going to pay $25000 for p.co.nz? Imagine how much actual P that would buy, after all. (Don't know? Actually, neither do I.) On the other hand, if listen.co.nz does sell, I will be absolutely gutted. # | Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Apra Silver Scrolls 2004The gloves are off! In an interview with Grant Smithies in the Sunday Star Times over the weekend, Betchadupa's Liam Finn reveals that he doesn't mind who wins NZ's premiere award for songwriting, as long as it's not Dimmer."Really, I don't care who wins, so long as it's not Dimmer. To me Dimmer just sounds like Shayne Carter trying to be Marvin Gaye, but he's left out all the Marvin. He sounds really gay."Ahh, from the mouths of babes! Shayne Carter - the main man behind Dimmer - replied as such... "That's priceless, bro. All I can say is, if Betchadupa epitomise toughness, I'm glad I'm not tough ... It's so subjective, so as far as who wins. Pinch of salt, bro. But I'm looking forward to the awards night. I don't usually go to those kind of dos, but we're going this year, even if it's just to have a scrap with Betchadupa."Brilliant stuff. Like our very own Blur v. Oasis, or Robbie v. Oasis, or Paul McCartney v. Oasis, or something. Anyway, we'll be there on the night, scribbling away some notes, and trying to stay out of any free-alcohol/petty-grudge inspired melees. Stay tuned... [via dub dot dash] # | Thursday, October 07, 2004
The Trogg TapesThe legendary Troggs tapes, which are said to have inspired the argument between Nigel Tufnel and Michael St Hubbins at the Rainbow Trout Recording Studio in the movie Spinal Tap, can now be downloaded from here in all their original glory.The Troggs are (and still are, despite their studio bickering) according to Wikipedia, are a British band whose most famous hit is that learner guitarist's standby 'Wild Thing'. As the Penguin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music pointed out about the recording, it features "instrumental incompetence, mutual recrimination and much foul language". Here's a typical bit... Engineer: "Just play the beginning again." ACOUSTIC GUITAR Engineer: "Yeah!!" ACOUSTIC GUITAR, then... Engineer: "No! you had it there at the beginning Ron. It was sounding good! But just...Ron, Ronny, just listen for a sec..." Presumably Ron, muffled through the microphone: "...all fuckin' night! I just cannot feel it any other way than the what I've been fuckin' doin' it!" Engineer: "You have played it tonight." Ron: "Well you'd be better fucking forget about it, cos' I ain't going to be able to do it tonight. I can tell you that fucking now. I cannot fucking do it." Reg(?): "Well I'm going home. if that's the case then we should find out before we get to the fucking studio. We fucking wanna do that, that and that, 'cos..." DOOR SLAMS. and so on. # | Monday, October 04, 2004
Playing with the Rainbow puppetsAs a kid I used to watch Rainbow all the time. I thought Zippy was probably the funniest character alive, and I longed to zip him up during one of his more outrageous tirades against the slow-thinking, slow-talking George. As with all good kid's telly, it was a multi-layered show that appealed to adults as much as kids. I wonder if my mum was watching over me and my siblings' shoulders and laughing to herself during this particularly double entendre'd laden episode, only a bit of which I'm pasting here... Geoffrey (to camera) "Hello everyone, today we are talking about playing"And, honestly, it gets worse. Much worse. Rod, Roger and Jane turn up... Rod: "We could hear you all banging away."You can see the whole transcription, and indeed, watch the episode in question here. Classic. [via Radiation] # | |
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