Posts by Russell Brown
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I'd be interested to see whether Tibet will simply disappear in the long run, or if the native Tibetan people and their descendants will eventually come back to haunt the presiding Chinese overlords 50 or 100 years from now if and when the majority attitudes change. Time will tell, I guess.
It's hard to see how that could not be messy. Ethnic Tibetans are spread through several Chinese provinces. But who knows what will happen to the shape of China in that time period?
The major difference that I can see between the two is that the descendants of most Maori people had an agreement in writing, however ambiguous, and that might be what's helped them the most in the long run for getting recognition.
The Tibetans have a agreement too: the Dalai Lama formally accepted Chinese rule in 1951. Religious freedom was protected in the agreement, but unfortunately, Mao was a sociopath.
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And then there's the video karaoke wave ...
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And OMFG, the Teletubbies version ...
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So someone gets Savage's 'Swing' onto the Knocked Up soundtrack and it's a bottom-up (so to speak) hit on iTunes.
Meanwhile, the song goes crazy on YouTube, leading to ...
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A few years ago an American interwebs friend of mine said he had eaten "your kind of food" after a night out at the Outback Steakhouse.
Which is funny really, because that huge plate of chips with squeezy cheese and ranch dressing slathered all over it could only come from America.
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I've met a few underground fans here who speak of the man and his music in hushed, reverent tones. But this is clearly a breakthrough moment for him, and well-earned too.
There's a good story here: Tegel offered a swag of money for the use of the same song, provoking something of a crisis of conscience, given that Chris and Barbara are both vegetarians, and not at all fond of Tegel's practices. But also not exactly rich and not getting any younger ...
And then came Heineken Premium Light. Chris says that made the decision to turn down Tegel a whole lot easier.
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i vote for Seamus's blog post to be made into a PA Speaker post.
what do others think?
I think it has a home already, but I'll link to it too. I'm also paying for a Chinese translation of Keith's post.
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My fave NZ musician is Steve Hill but I bet they won't play any of his stuff in NZ music month.
Who's "they"?
Do you have to still live here to be an "NZ musician"?
No, not for NZ On Air support, which is largely radio-focused and includes radio plugging, the Kiwi (and Indie and Iwi) Hit Discs for radio, $5k video grants, plus small and a few larger recording grants. I don't know anything about the Phase 5 export scheme.
Creative NZ gives grants to less commercial projects. There's a little, matchable, TradeNZ support, I think. And of course you do have to be in the country and demonstrating progress in your chosen field to qualify for a PACE scheme.
And there's the NZ Music Commission, a busy little agency that gets by on a few hundred thousand a year, and in turn helps support Independent Music NZ, which (aside from lining up with RIANZ on the Copyright Amendment Bill) is a pretty sound outfit.
Or does your music have to be in a supported genre - downbeat, dub, indy, maybe psytrance but definitely *not* hard trance?
I think the key thing is that you apply for it. I suspect it's that Steve didn't, rather than because there's a "no hard trance" rule (I mean, like most people could tell you the difference between that and psytrance). I think the music that gets funded most often is radio-friendly rock. The downbeat people are usually fairly good at business.
I thought Chris Chetland at Kog had a legitimate grievance when they were putting out so many records and kept falling through the cracks, but that's a function of NZ On Air having become the default delivery mechanism.
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strong stuff. i wonder if a generic kiwi whitey could've written this article without being accused of being xenophobic.
I think a kiwi whitey who could read the banners and place the whole thing in a nuanced historical context would still have been on fairly strong ground.
Keith, is there any sense in Chinese nationalism of an equivalent to American exceptionalism -- of manifest destiny? Is China supposed to be destined to save the world? Or just China?
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Thanks Keith: informed, thoughtful and relevant.
Clever headline too ...
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