Public Address - Hard News (Home)

We still died at each other's hand | Jan 26, 2010 10:59

This month two years ago, there were 10 murders and a moral panic. Police minister Annette King found a mildly unfortunate way of saying that we tend to suffer a high homicide rate in summer and was hammered by National's Simon Power. David Farrar dutifully broadcast Power's response to his crowd. They both took care to ignore the substance of what she actually said. It became the narrative.

I guessing you won't remember those killings off the top of your head. There were some shockers: 22 year-old Saishwar Krishna Naidu was stabbed, trying to prevent a youth robbing his family's dairy in Clendon. Shayne Pita Walker was also stabbed one night in Tokoroa, by a 14 year-old. The body of 18 year-old Michael Hutchings was dumped in the Clutha. Scottish backpacker Karen Aim was bludgeoned to death in Taupo.

Then there are the two you will certainly remember: Bruce William Emery was remanded in custody after the stabbing of Pihema Cameron. And Clayton Weatherston appeared in court charged with the murder of Sophie Elliot.

Although the monthly total was in no way out of line with long-term trends, especially for the summer months, the narrative took hold. Perfectly sensible people became convinced that we were teetering on the abyss.

So what of this summer? Dean Brown, reputed to be a bad bugger, has been found dead in a Taranaki garage. Elizabeth White was allegedly battered to death by her neighbour. On December 23, Pomare Mason's adoptive brother stove in his skull, cut his throat and stuffed him in a wheelie bin. Lola Paraha of Kaikohe died after a domestic violence assault. An unnamed man was killed in Orewa. A 19 year-old was charged the death of Tauranga artist Harry Faulkner. A 15 year-old girl is said to have stabbed her sister at Ruakaka on New Year's Eve.

And the mysterious death of Darren Grace on a yacht at the Viaduct Harbour is still, so far as I can tell, being investigated as a homicide.

I make that eight since Christmas week, with a few alarming instances of potentially deadly violence, including the shooting of a policeman. And yet the Herald is not asking its readers Do you accept the reasons given for the high number of murders?, or Is increased violence damaging NZ's image abroad?, and the Minister of Police is not being held responsible for it all.

The obvious difference between then and now is that most or all of this summer's toll are essentially episodes of family violence: the victims have been known to the accused. There are no courageous shopkeepers or innocent backpackers amongst the dead to make headlines.

And it does seem that Labour is much less inclined to use fear of crime as a political weapon. Ironically, the sequel to Simon Power's flaying of King seems to come from the new Police minister herself, who made an extraordinary attack on prison officers who expressed understandable concern about having to manage prisoners who had no prospect of parole under the government's proposed three-strikes gimmick. Perhaps the release of the revised proposal was actually intended as an inoculation against any summer crime blip.

This much remains: In the summer of 2010, people still died at each other's hand, but we thought about other things, and talked about the weather.

(140 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Space for Ol Dat I See | Jan 22, 2010 12:42

I've been riding this summer, on the road and elsewhere. And although the blessed Auckland exodus made the roads a quieter place this month, elsewhere is still often a more pleasant option. A network of largely unused paths winds through the city's parks and reserves; unmarked on council maps because they're not dedicated cycling paths.

Meola Reef, the Oakley Creek Walkway, Western Springs Park (the track down from West View Road will test your stuff): The Chev is adjacent to some good turf. It's now also home to Rode, a new cycle store at the corner of Great North and Carrington roads.

The gaffer there, Tim Welch, is a very nice chap, and tipped me off to the winding gravel path through Alan Wood Park, on the future motorway route.

Sadly, you can only get there off New North Road -- the railway line and Pak 'n' Save break what would otherwise be one long, fun ride up the course of Oakley Creek, from the bottom of the walkway at Waterview through a succession of parks and reserves to the far side of War Memorial Park in Mt Roskill.

Turns out, these things are mapped. Via Twitter (he's here) Tim sent me a link to this map tracing the Roy Clements Treeway, a pretty but obscure boardwalk that runs behind Mt Albert Grammar. He and others have been using OpenStreetMap.org to fill in paths not marked on most maps – they're the dotted red lines.

I link up to it by nipping down the hill from Mt Albert Road, just before Plant and Food Research, and it makes a good round trip back from Roskill.

The view is excellent. Depending on whether I actually tackle Mt Albert itself (only once, and not directly up Summit Drive), I can pass state houses, mansions, villas and swish apartments in the space of a few minutes. It's immensely informative. And I can barely begin to express how much more interesting it is than going to the sodding gym.

(I should note that I'm really liking my choice of a hybrid bike: road tires, MTB bars, lockable front suspension. It's pretty much perfect for what I want to do.)

---

Other mentions for holiday-season customer service: White Cross St Lukes Dental (Boxing Day, again); White Cross St Lukes A&E (Fiona ruptured her Achilles playing tennis, they were nice to us); and the folks at EB Games St Lukes, who calmly facilitated a trade to rescue a crisis that saw both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 die, provoking a critical shortage of game and DVD platforms in the house, at or around Christmas. And no, we couldn't go to the beach …

As you might guess, it has been a challenging summer.

---

The last of the Media7 Summer Editions screened last night, and focused on music. It's here online

I interviewed Roger Shepherd about his re-acquisition of Flying Nun Records (I didn't go into his business dispute with would-be partner Ben Howe of Arch Hill Music, but I think he and Roger need to talk, and that Roger should make the approach); with IMNZ's Damian Vaughan and TVNZ's Cameron Bennett about the late Dylan Taite, on occasion of the new Taite Music Prize (Jose Barbosa did us a great little backgrounder on Dylan too).

And the show concluded with a chat with Dave Dobbyn, about the neat Paul Casserly-directed film 30 Years on the Road that comes with his new best-of CD, and about music, the internet, and passion. I have a lot of time for Dave. He was also kind enough to play us out of the show. The clip is at the bottom of this post.

__

More rock 'n' roll! The Checks' manager, Phil Moore, tells me that they're playing the Leigh Sawmill Café on Waitangi Day, with Artisan Guns. Advance tickets are $20 from Moshtix.

But I also have a double pass (you +1 on the door) for the reader who can tell me what band Phil Moore himself used to be in. Put your answer in the subject line.

And for everyone else, The Checks are giving Public Address readers an MP3 copy of their new single, 'Ballroom Baby' – right-click here to download, jus' like that. They have a video for the song, directed by Ben Rood, out soon.

Some bass for your face: Hamilton dubstep outfit Knights of the Dub Table have put together a remix EP for their track 'Sing It To Me' – and it's free to download, here at Amplifier.The Tiki Taane mix is particularly good.

Also free via Amplifier: Miho Wada's 'Piss Off (Such A Loser!)'. Um Japanese jazz ska?

I really like 'There's Space for Ol Dat I See', the trippy new track previewed via her Twitter account by M.I.A.. Here's the video:

And there's an a fairly scratchy MP3 lifted from the video here, to tide you over till her album comes.

---

Even more rock 'n' roll! Auckland City's Music in Parks kicks off tomorrow with a pretty choice show at Coyle Park in Pt Chevalier: Dimmer, SJD, LA Mitchell and Computers Want Me Dead, from 1pm.. You can follow Music in Parks on Twitter.

---

And finally, some "bogan wordplay", snapped on the northwestern motorway by Vaughn Davis.

How … literate.

--

FRESHLY UPLOADED:

Dave sings us out of Media7:

(95 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Feminist as crazy old man | Jan 08, 2010 15:39

I have properly discovered Julie Bindel, via this unintentionally amusing Comment is Free piece on the Guardian website. Bindel, who spends most of her time in 1978, breaks the cheering news that not all men are bad and some may even provide real friendship to women.

Previously, she shares, "I knew there were good men, but I had no time for them and often found that they felt threatened by my lesbianism and hardline politics." On the other hand, she may simply have been too annoying -- but now, "I like being close to a few good men, but I will continue to give the bad ones a really hard time. It is my job."

Intriguingly, one of the men sufficiently unthreatened as to provide male friendship for Bindel was a radical psychiatrist. Radical psychiatry was conceived by Claude Steiner and others in late 60s Berkley.

Radical psychiatry is "a political theory of psychiatric disturbance and a political practice of soul healing," holding that "the language of soul healing has been infiltrated with irrelevant medical concepts and terms," yet "most psychiatric conditions are in no way the province of medicine" and "People's troubles have their cause not within them but in their alienated relationships, in their exploitation, in polluted environments, in war, and in the profit motive."

Remarkably, its manifesto says:

Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions. Those who are at ease are insensitive.

You can see how radical psychiatrists could easily be the most annoying people in the world. And also how they might have a good time with Julie Bindel, given their shared interest in outsourcing all subjective experience to the dictates of a narrow and declamatory political philosophy.

This allows Bindel to dismiss the experiences of others at the same time as she elevates anecdotes from her own experience to the status of received knowledge. For instance, as a "political lesbian", she tends to regard women who are lesbians merely because they feel love and attraction towards other women, as frivolous backsliders.

And if becoming a lesbian was a choice for her, it must be just a matter of personal preference for everyone. She concluded a now somewhat infamous Guardian column with the invitation: "Come on sisters, you know it makes sense. Stop pretending you think lesbianism is an exclusive members' club, and join the ranks. I promise that you will not regret it."

Over at Lesbilicious ("the web's tastiest lesbian magazine"), regular readers felt just a tad patronised by all this, but it's one of Bindel's regular themes. So many people, she despaired in another column "[refuse] to accept that sexuality and sexual desire are social constructs, not biological or genetically determined." She doesn't actually present an argument, just makes fun of what she finds in "various science magazines." And then there's this:

Many lesbians and gays want to believe we were "born that way" to provoke sympathy and understanding. In the mid-1980s, during the kerfuffle around Section 28, I dared to write in a gay publication that being lesbian or gay was a positive choice. I was inundated with letters telling me what trouble I had caused, because if heteros thought we were choosing to be deviant, that means we are responsible, not our genes. Some said: "I have known I was gay since I was three months old. How can it be a choice?" Obviously she was exaggerating.

Yes, obviously. Although I'm sure if she emailed Bindel asking to have her experience negated in an even more patronising way, I'm sure Julie would find time to help. Treating other women like infants is her job too.

But if you really want to see Bindel get her judgeypants on, you need to see her stuff on transsexual rights. She kicks off one column thus:

I am not the only one who worried that the introduction of the Human Rights Act might backfire on those of us who worry about little things like rape, murder, child abuse and prostitution.

She struggles on through a couple of weirdly confused paragraphs about men sunbathing in their backyards or something before triumphantly declaring: "It's not all bad news, however."

The good news being the overturning in Canada of a order to modestly compensate a post-op transsexual who was prevented from training as a rape victim counsellor. The rest of the column is largely taken up with apparently wilfully nasty comments about sexual reassignment surgery and those who seek it.

As the Liberal Conspiracy blog noted with some despair, she has recently reprised the transphobia theme, picking up and putting down the idea of biological determinism like it was a phone in a call centre. Another blogger wondered whether she understood the concept of human rights at all (she doesn't, in my opinion, and doesn't wish to).

But I think the issue was best covered in Julie Bindel: Trannies nicked my paper on the Tube:

I believe in share and share alike, but this morning I put my copy of Transsexuals: The "Women" Behind Hitler down on the seat opposite and someone who looked like a bearded man but was far too pretty to be one by birth — men do nothing for me, so this was obviously a woman — just leaned over and took it. Damned cheek! I called it a penis-wielding misogynist magazine rapist, but it just looked at me oddly, so obviously didn't have a penis.

Does this happen to you or do I just look like a mug or soft touch? Don't they know I work hard at discussing serious feminist issues and gender determinism in society?

I believe they do. Transsexuals have been hounding me for years, just because I quite objectively described them as misbegotten scum who should be put out of our ideological misery. Hideous twilight in-betweeners, trying to hijack female privilege from real women. Vile and odious halfling monsters oppressing women and children, particularly me, by their mere existence and interrupting my important journalistic work and committing the misogynistic hate crime of interfering with my speaking fee income. Hell, I bet they'd question Julie Burchill's feminist cred.

Oh yes! That brings us nicely around to one of Bindel's most infamous works – a luvvy-drenched "email interview" with Julie Burchill, which features such cracking "questions" as this:

Bindel: I know you get really pissed off with what seems to be a liberal consensus which results in a love-relationship between the British left and fascist Muslim fundamentalists. Is the Guardian also guilty of this?

Frankly, I think the Guardian is "guilty" lately of surrendering a proud tradition of women writing about women to a group of smug ideologues (yes, I also think Tanya Gold writes like a twit on a range of subjects). I'll cheerfully read Burchill writing tripe, because she does so in sizzling prose, is madly funny and will occasionally conjure a brilliant thought. None of these things are true of Bindel's work, with its "radical" certainties and its monochromatic ideas on sexuality and gender.

So why I have written a whole blog post about it? Because Danielle told me to finish it because apparently we can never have too many threads about gender; and because Bindel intrigues me in the same way that Garth George does. It just seems ironic that the packages respectively marked "radical feminist" and "grumpy old Christian bigot" appear to hold such similar contents.

(500 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

You've got to listen to the music | Jan 06, 2010 11:55

The schedule for the Big Day Out 2010 is here, as a jpeg or a PDF. And on reading it, I'm a bit … ambivalent. In one sense, that's silly: a festival featuring Groove Armada, Lilly Allen, Dizzee Rascal, Peaches, The Veils, Dimmer, The Decemberists, The Horrors, Kora, Ladyhawke, Simian Mobile Disco and others playing in a single day ought to be much to my taste.

But there's sense of this year's lineup being slightly out of whack; or at least out of step with the rhythm the promoters have established in recent years. There's no feelgood experience to close the alternative stages; no Flaming Lips, Joe Strummer or Headless Chickens. The last two acts are a warmed-up Head Like a Hole and the frankly irksome Fear Factory.

In the day's most jarring handover, Gin Wigmore gives way to Dead Prez at 9pm, while down in the stadium, the headliners are those mild monsters of rock, Muse. I have seen, en passant, Muse play twice at the Big Day Out, and I have looked at some of their live videos on YouTube. It would be fair to say I don't get what the fuss is about. This Radiohead-meets-Queen thing was never my music. Just me? Fine.

Meanwhile, DJ Sasha starts just before Muse, up in the Boiler Room. Perhaps he'll be good value – he's certainly been doing it for long enough – but I suspect it will be a little trancey for my taste. Well, a lot trancey. So what do I do? Dead Prez? Have a lie-down? Take in some Muse after all?

But then it's Groove Armada, who I think will be the first real house party act to close the Boiler Room since Basement Jaxx. Their DJ sets at festivals in 2009 look to have been great fun and, judging by what they've released in advance of the new Black Light album, I can't see their live incarnation being any different. So for those who can navigate a slightly lumpy day's schedule to get there, there'll be a party at the end. (Assuming they can be heard over the bass bins from the tent, Opensouls are on at the same time on the Local Produce stage. It might have been nice to hear them on the Green Stage. Just sayin'.)

Earlier in the day, there are the inevitable unfortunate clashes. Seeing Kora – playing in the Shihad slot and well-poised to make the most of that – means missing Ladyhawke on the top field. Then The Veils and Peaches play at the same time on different stages. I suspect some folk will be distressed to find Kasabian and The Horrors clashing.

But you get that. The oddest – or most intriguing – point on the schedule is Dimmer playing in the tent at 1.30pm, between Dick Johnson and Concord Dawn. I'll try and be there for that; can't promise to stay if it seems too weird. The Turnaround crew will bring their crowd to Lilyworld at 3.30pm, and that'll be nice.

Overall? Nothing I'd sell my granny to see, but it's okay. As the list shows, some years are better than others, and this isn't the worst.

I do think the local promoters need to freshen up the event. It's a shame there isn't anything that really passes for a chillout area on the current site: there's nowhere that's not loud.

But even though Rhythm and Vines looked this bloody gorgeous (from Thomas Scovell's useful review here) the prospects for a change to a new and prettier venue for the Big Day Out are negligible. The event works on a technical level, everyone involved knows how it works, and that's why it works.

The biggest change for the festival – by far – has been the rise of illegal party drugs, and the music associated with them. A stadium full of people on E will produce its complications, but it's way, way, way better than tens of thousands of drunk people.

Which isn't to say that the event hasn't evolved locally too. Stages have moved, the stadium has become bigger and better, and access and egress for the major zones are far better than they used to be. Now, in Auckland, the Big Day Out is beginning to face what it's faced for some years in Australia – the rise of well-managed, more targeted summer festivals. These not only claim punters, but acts – had Shapeshifter not headlined Coromandel Gold, you'd think they'd have been due a good slot at the BDO.

And had I been in a position to be there, Rhythm & Vines' accommodation/VIP packages would have been within my means, and to my liking. But part of the BDO brand has long been to discourage the growth of "special" areas or experiences, because, like, we're all in this together. There's something in that. (Ironically, this year I was, for the first time, in a position to buy some lounge tickets for myself.)

The founders of the Big Day Out, Ken Lees and Vivian West, are proper rock 'n' roll people. They, via Doug Hood, brought some of us John Cale, Nico, the Birthday Party (as a disastrous financial loss) and the Violent Femmes in the 1980s. They've treated the event with some care over the years. But, every year, their key decisions are made for Australian audiences. Who aren't quite us.

On the other hand, we're not missing out on any major acts the the Aussie shows are getting this year. And in surveying the subtle differences – in Perth, Powderfinger are second headliners on the main stage, and Peaches closes the alternative stages; in Sydney it's Powderfinger then Grinspoon – I prefer ours.

---

I can't really get my head around Laneway until I see a schedule, but I'll go to that too. And I'm keenly anticipating the return of the 3Ds, whose reuniting members seem to be in pretty good form.

What there won't be, unfortunately, is any 3Ds recordings in the shops that week. Like most of the Flying Nun catalogue under Warners, the 3Ds are out of print, and the Laneway show has come just a little too quickly for Flying Nun's new (old) owner, Roger Shepherd, to fix that.

I had a chat to Roger last weekend, and I can see he's trying to do this properly. The re-releases of catalogue will take place under new agreements with each band or artist. We're hoping to get Roger on one of this month's Media7 summer series programmes to discuss his plans for the label he founded in more depth.

---

Epsilon Blue is making good use of Bandcamp, with several name-your-price offerings, including The Art of Recycling Vol 1, which contains a variety of remixes and alternative versions of some of Leyton's best tracks. I like the deep-house take on 'The Sweetest Sound' with Sandy Mill, and the two versions of 'U Are a Star' are both luscious. Downloads are available in FLAC format and high-bitrate MP3 and AAC.

Leyton would also like you to think about visiting the Save Copenhagen website.

---

95bFM's 40th anniversary oral history series, the bFM Historical Society, wound up with pretty much the perfect number 40: former station manager Debbi Gibbs. As much as anyone else, Debbi forged what we now know as bFM, by getting the station to the FM band, and away from short-term broadcast licences and on to a permanent footing – and she did most of it when she was 18 or 19.

Intriguingly, she suspects the AUSA executive appointed her in the hope of moving the station away from what some members saw as middle-class white male fixation on music. She later essentially faced down the exec by drawing a big crowd to a special meeting to vote down a proposal to rein in the station and make it more subject to political direction.

The other Historical Society interviews are here.

---

Hype Machine has done a lot with its annual Music Blog Zeitgeist this year. The Zeitgeist lists are automatically generated from music blogs tracked by Hype Machine.

There's a radio show made from the Top 50 songs.

A list of the most-mentioned albums, fully playable, with links to buy to Amazon MP3. (Whuch is presumably cutting Hypem a sweeter affiliate deal than iTunes was prepared to, but it ain't much good in New Zealand.) The album covers are accompanied by Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr.

The Top 50 artists for 2009 are represented by works from 50 individual visual artists. Nice idea.

One day, before too long hopefully, this kind of rich fandom and sheer usability will deliver more revenue in more ways. For now, I can only advise that you use these services for what they do so well – but keep buying music.

(245 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!