Public Address - Hard News (Home)

All the cool kids were there | Apr 12, 2008 16:16

I haven't been out much lately, on account of an excess of work and a shortage of recovery time, but with two episodes of the TV show in the bag, it seemed safe enough to join my friends and head for the Friday night show at the King's Arms. Turned out to be a good call.

What made the gig a must was the fact that the first act up was a Mr David Saunders, who is remembered best as a member of the 3Ds; the one who sang 'Outer Space' and 'Hey Seuss'. No one could remember how long it was since Dave had got up on a stage and played music, but a decade is probably a good guess.

He's been writing songs again, and doing a little recording. And when someone asked him if he'd like to do the gig, he said yes. Seated at the front of the stage with his guitar, he was palpably nervous at first, but there was no artifice about it. It all began to fall into place, as he played 'I See A Darkness' ("this song is by my friend Will -- when I first met him I'd been awake for 48 hours"), 'Outer Space' and new songs.

Indeed, it clicked so well that he just kept on playing, and eventually finished with Neil Young's 'Powderfinger', with a mate of his on keyboards and Callum from The Checks volunteering himself mid-song on drums. The addition of the rhythm was nice, and I think Dave would go well with a restrained band around him. But only for half a set, mind: you still want him up there and vulnerable on his own.

I think Dave's got something going here.

By the time he'd finished, the pub was nearly full -- and so was the beer garden outside. This is young, groovy Auckland, where a gig isn't just a show but a social occasion. All the cool kids were there, dressed better than kids were when I was 20, plus my crew, and Mr Litterick, Camilla from Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey, an interesting geezer who's making documentaries for Maori Television, and Ben Howe from Arch Hill Records, who is preparing a live Clean album for release.

Being as how I don't get to gigs as often as I used to, I hadn't seen the Coshercot Honeys for a while. They've come on. They're pure Devonport: knowing pop that draws from everywhere, tricky arrangements, great choruses. They're quite sexy too. (The charging packs of 18 year-old girls, who formed running wedges to deflect unwary men from their paths, knew what they were there for.) The set concluded with their signature song, 'We're All Lions', worked up into a rocked-out epic -- false endings and all. I really liked it.

I'd never seen Collapsing Cities, and had no real idea what to expect. Indeed, I was still trying to triangulate what I was hearing three songs in. Paul McKessar sorted it for me: Headless Chickens, circa 1984, he said. And, at least some of the time, they were like that -- but with more smiles. They played a brilliant instrumental with a sequencer and chiming guitars, and they played some straight-up rock 'n' roll. They were stern and ('Astrology Disaster') very silly. And they were bloody happy.

"Thanks so much everybody for coming," said the singer. "We never expected this."

"This is the best gig ever," added the guitarist.

It was a feel-good end to a feel-good evening. And I can't recall the last time I felt like I'd had so much value out of a ten-buck cover charge. The town is in good health. Now all I need is for Blues to turn on a win for me at Eden Park tonight. I'm not holding my breath.

PS: It worries me how drunk a few people get in public spaces. Including people old enough to know better.

--
Late-breaking announcement:

The people at Portable Film Festival of Melbourne, Australia, have been kind enough to bring their latest guest to New Zealand. That's Ezra Cooperstein, "chief evangelist" for Current TV, the Al Gore-founded citizen journalism and user-generated content network. He's speaking at a free symposium at the Aucland Town Hall, 6pm on Monday.

The event is free, but I gather that it's a good idea to email rsvp@portablefilmfestival.com with "CURRENT NZ" in the subject line to let them know you're coming. I think this will be worth the effort.

(38 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Intellectual Properties | Apr 11, 2008 11:18

Ars Technica has a story on our new copyright law that makes very interesting reading. It underlines the point I made earlier in the week that it could have been worse:

Canadian law professor Michael Geist points out that its anticircumvention rules are quite progressive. Unlike the DMCA in the US, the new law allows people to bypass DRM if the intended use is legitimate, it explicitly allows format shifting and timeshifting, and it refuses to protect region-coding of movies and games.

As Geist puts it, "the anticircumvention provisions are arguably the best of any country, since they are compliant with WIPO, limited in scope, and seek to preserve fair dealing rights."

Back home, Steven Price envisages some obvious problems with the new act's "notice and takedown" provisions.

And John Drinnan reports that the local branch of the Motion Picture Association (er, not the "Movie Producers Association", John) is considering setting up its own legal movie download site. On past form, wholesalers of digital content tend to do a stinking awful job of acting as their own retailers, but I suppose it shows positive intent.

The usual chorus is warming up already over Al Gore's new climate chage presentation, New Thinking on the Climate Crisis, exclusive to Ted.com. I think it's worth watching on that basis alone.

Christchurch's Shocking Pinks seem hipper than ever out there in tastemaker land.

The folks from The Other News, a satirical online newspaper from New Zealand, say they're ready for their close-up now. Go look.

Via WFMU, an amazing exhibition of old blank cassette inlay cards. No, really.

Also on WFMU: links into what looks like an archive created by FolkStreams.net, "a fantastic site generally devoted to the American working class experience as it pertains to music." And the observation that in the chorus of Motorhead's 'Bomber', Lemmy sounds like he's barking "Obama!". Really.

The Auckland gig guide Mukuna is now selling a featured gig listing on its home page for $35 a day. All other listings remain free.

For your pleasure on PA System, the new video for the Phoenix Foundation's 'Bleaching Sun' (featuring a top turn from Dion Nash), and a Public Address Radio interview with Darryn Harkness of New Telepathics.

And just a reminder that if you want to embed any Media7 clips in in your blog, you can grab them from our YouTube channel. Feel free to subscribe to the channel too. The quality of the clips is quite good, so it's a useful alternative channel for those of you struggling with the TVNZ-hosted video for whatever reason.

(39 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Speaking freely | Apr 10, 2008 11:25

It's not every day you get "bullshit" into a front-page headline in the Herald, is it? The editors seem to have backed off a bit and changed the headline in the course of the morning, after padding the top of the story with some waffle from Mike Moore. But I don't think Phil Goff will be terribly unhappy about his epithet being reported in the papers.

John Key seemed to be backing off his concession that Peters could be foreign minister in a government he led (which I think seriously let Labour off the hook in a political sense) in this morning's Havoc interview. But he was pretty sporting about being invited to the Auckland production of The Hollow Men.

Morning Report had a clutch of Wahine Storm reminiscences this morning, so I might as well chip in my own memory of that day. We lived in Christchurch, I was five, and we had the day off school because the winds were so strong. I remember looking out the window, the radio news being on and that something really bad was happening somewhere else. It felt spooky, I remember.

Not much more time for blogging this morning -- I spent an hour and a half on this interesting but ultimately wearying squabble -- but this week's Media7 is online for your perusal. I enjoyed making it, and I hope you enjoy watching it.

The ondemand version is here, but not for those outside New Zealand. The podcast feed is here (the "economy" part goes first, followed by "property" and Simon's excellent Waiheke story) and the Windows media versions are here.

There's also the Media7 blog, which has a few links about the somewhat controversial Newseum project.

(50 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

You can't always get what you want | Apr 09, 2008 10:53

While you probably weren't looking, the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill passed its third reading yesterday. The late changes in a Supplementary Order Paper yesterday are an extension of protection for the recording of material for educational purposes.

Also, ISPs are now required to have a policy for dealing with persistent copyright infringers, but it has been made clearer that in practice the key factor in whether an ISP "knows or has reason to believe that material infringes copyright" will be the receipt of a properly constituted infringement notice from the copyright owner. (An earlier amendment made it an offence to falsely claim copyright infringement.)

The wording on who can circumvent a Technical Protection Measure has been somewhat revised, but the "qualified person" silliness has been retained. (Short version: you have the right to format-shift music you have purchased to another device for personal use -- but if a music company has borked the CD so you can't rip it, you can take the CD to a librarian or a teacher who, providing she has been authorised by an Order in Council from the Governor General, will use a TPM circumvention device to rip it for you. But only after you have written to the copyright owner and received either a refusal to help or no reply within a reasonable time. But the copyright owner can still contract out of format-shifting on a basis that remains untested and hazy. Got that?)

I won't be able to help you though. I think …

(3) A person (A) must not publish information enabling or assisting another person to circumvent a technological protection measure if A intends that the information will be used to infringe copyright in a TPM work.

For reasons that aren't clear to me, the name of the bill was also changed, from the windier Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill.

I'm sure all parties to debate around the bill will be thinking that it could have been worse, but it could have been better too. The essential aim of creating technology-neutral copyright law is laudable, and it's perhaps the inevitable fate of copyright law that it will neither fully deliver on the expectations of copyright owners or tally with the real-world experience of users. Whatever. It's done.

Meanwhile, I find it amusing that the New Zealand Institute's FibreCo proposal, which has won the backing of David Farrar, Bernard Hickey and Rod Drury seems a bit, well, socialist to me.

Its emphasis on a single, monopoly provider of fibre-optic cable is surely not the only way to the prize -- what's wrong with multiple owners interconnecting on (if necessary) regulated terms? Still, it's not a showstopper. Any proposal that could leapfrog the present market impediments to a better telecommunications infrastructure is better than what we have now. And I'd like to hear what the respective Parliamentary parties have to say about it.

Further on the fibre fo' yo' mama tip, I suspect that David Cunliffe already had the publicly-owned Kordia on his mind when he promised government backing for a new trans-Tasman cable last year. The company's announcement of just such a project is, naturally, very welcome, both because it will finally provide real competition in international bandwidth, and for the security of supply it will bring. Officially, government support is not a done deal, but I doubt Cunliffe would have said what he did last year if the government did not intend to follow through.

Meanwhile, Peter Griffin's blog raises questions about whether Kordia should still be owning a retail ISP -- Orcon -- given its proposed expansion into the wholesale market. I gather there are a few Orcon customers having a bad time switching to its new unbundled services who don't real care who owns the company, they just want their internet back.

And finally, Freeview users can tonight (9.30, TVNZ7) see the second Media7, which features a panel discussion with Ganesh Nana, Bernard Hickey and Barry Colman (who is positively oracular these days) on the way the mainstream media report the economy, and a great little report by Simon Pound on the Waiheke Island media war. I'll put up the links tomorrow.

(70 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Piled in bins like summer fruit | Apr 08, 2008 07:12

This is the world we live in: on Saturday morning I hit Glenfield and bought a selection of electronic goods -- two 4GB USB flash drives, a decent name-brand cordless phone and a Remington trimmer set -- for less than a modest trip to the supermarket cost later in the day.

The goods, at two adjacent shops, were piled in bins like summer fruit. The phone (carton damage) cost about the same as a kilo of basic cheese.

Yesterday's China trade deal really only formalises where we are now. It's not just cheap electronics -- it's expensive food. One story that seems to be have been oddly missing from local news is the global food shock.

The Daily Telegraph says Gordon Brown has been warned that rising food prices could trigger riots. The Christian Science Monitor points out that while we mutter darkly at the checkout, in some countries, people are already rioting.

In part, the crop switch to biofuels is to blame. The cost of petroleum for transport adds some more. But there's also the weird weather.

It would clearly be premature to attribute a couple of strange seasons to climate change, but the disruption of normal crop production is certainly a potential problem with climate change. Further, the financial climate is driving up investment in commodities -- because people still have to eat.

And not the least of the drivers is the simple fact that the people of emerging economies are keen for a place at the table. China and India want meat and dairy products (if not the diseases of affluence that come with their consumption). After a couple of decades of beating up on ourselves for our reliance on commodity exports, we find that those commodities are a sound business. We might also be eating more mince than steak now.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned at the prospect of the world's economic axis swinging to countries where individual rights may matter less. We'll have to find out whether the MOU in the China trade deal on environment and labour standards means much and will be effective. But I really wish that Russel Norman of the Greens would stop speaking as if every Chinese factory is staffed by 12 year-old slaves. People in China have a right to better themselves, to escape rural poverty and to earn themselves more choices. The wage gap will close and the yuan will have to rise.

Not all trade agreements are equal. The Australians prostrated themselves and changed important laws to get their US free trade deal. Our agreement with China seems fairer, more open -- and more exciting.

--

I have five double passes to the recording of Media7 in central Auckland this evening. You'll get to see a TV show made and still have time for dinner afterwards. Just hit "Reply" below and let me know. UPDATE: All gone! I'll make the offer at a different time next week.

And if you all haven't, feel free to vote for us in the NetGuide Awards. I'm thinking Public Address in the blog site category, and Public Address System in the redesign/relaunch category.

(125 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!