Hard News by Russell Brown

Back in the old days, – and I'm talking the 1990s here, kids – we used to talk about "internet time" and "internet years" as an expression of how fast change could manifest in a low-friction, connected world. Every day, a crazy new idea, an old way disrupted and a fresh, flaky build of Netscape.

But more than once in the past decade I've reminded geek audiences that their sector has changed far less quickly and precipitously than some of those they like to mock as dinosaurs. Trust me on this, I'm a journalist. 

Further evidence: this week's figures from Recorded Music NZ, showing that in 2016 streaming accounted for half of recorded music revenue. Three years ago, when Pure Heroine came out, the figure was 7%.  Lorde's second album will earn its keep in a very different way to the first.

Moreover, the 700% growth in streaming revenue – from $5m in 2013 to $43.3m in 2016 – has helped the industry to a second year of growth, after a long decline. And, because people still like to buy things, vinyl now accounts for 14% of sales – $2.5m in 2016, up from $1.6m the year before. Public performance income (mainly licensing revenue from sound recordings aired on TV and radio, and public performance of recordings in bars, gyms and the like) is up too, at $14.2m, from $13.7m in 2015 and $11.6m in 2013.

RMNZ hasn't released a breakout for local artists as opposed to the local industry, but I'll see if I can get that. It remains true that unless you're a creative director or a screen producer (in which case, sync local!), the best way to support local artists is to pay to get into their gigs and buy their recordings in any format. You could listen to nothing but local indie bands on Spotify and your money would still go mostly to Ed Sheeran and Drake. That's how this works.

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My friend Mark Peterson, who has manned the sound desk at the King's Arms Tavern for the last hundred years or so, posted a Facebook live video of the unusual events at the bar last Saturday, when the council, acting on a noise complaint from a local resident, summoned a crew of police officers to close down a gig by visiting American doom metallers Windhand. He and dozens of his Facebook friends were understandably appalled.

The fact that the show was able to be summarily closed down, rather than turned down, was a matter of interpretation by noise control officers. They had issued a warning after a complaint about the gig the night before, and decided that the fact that another show took place the next night – as had been advertised for weeks – amounted to non-compliance. So they called in the cops and left with "a speaker and a mixer" to make sure no more music could be played.

In this Stuff story, the promoter who brought Windhand here slates the King Arms management, but I'm not sure that's fair. Even if venue management were aware of the council's interpretation (which isn't clear), what were they supposed to do? Cancel the show? And I'm also not sure that staging the gig earlier would have helped – the Saturday complaint was received well before midnight.

Look, we're in the midst of change in the Newton area. It was dense with housing until the 1960s and is beginning to be reoccupied. It was the emptying-out associated with the motorway junction that created the space for a live music venue to operate. The pub itself has been sold for residential redevelopment and will close down next year. But it would be a shame if this storied venue's life ended with a whimper.

And really ... dear resident, if you didn't want to live near a live music venue, you shouldn't have bought or rented a place next to a live music venue. The KA has spent more than $100,000 on sound mitigation over the years and, frankly, it's not really that loud outside. Some people should stick to the suburbs.

There is a petition calling on the council to protect the future of live music in the central city and I think that's an entirely reasonable request. A city full of flash pads and empty of culture isn't much of a city at all.

UPDATE: Helmet’s promoter has pulled their show out of the King’s Arms and moved it to Galatos, understandably unwilling to bear the risk of the council shutting it down on the night. This is really sad.

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Whoa. Turns out that shitty Pepsi ad was anticipated 18 years ago by the video for the Chemical Brothers' 'Out of Control'. And the original director, W.I.Z.  was frankly appalled to see satire become reality:

He explains the video was originally inspired from a lyric from The Clash’s ‘White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)’, “Huh, you think it’s funny turning rebellion into money.” 

The video, which he calls a self-fulfilling prophecy, was meant to show that nothing is sacred when it comes to profit margins, “not even heartfelt expressions for social justice.”

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If you're out on the town tomorrow night in Auckland, there's a lot to see: Nadia Reid at the Tuning Fork, Delaney Davidson at Freida Margolis (actually, that's sold out), Ijebu Pleasure Club at the Portland ...

And, yes, a bunch of rascals young and old at the King's Arms for Punk It Up. Please don't let this be closed down. Please.

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Me? I'll be dancing in a forest at Oro Festival.

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Tunes!

I posted a couple of things from the Parisian DJ Florent F recently, but I don't think I shared this, which I've been loving. Hit that free download button!

And one for the wedding DJs! A pretty cool rework of 'Grease', with the drums brought to the fore. Click through for a free WAV download:

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The Friday Music Post is sponsored by:

Representing New Zealand music

There are many ways to illustrate Auckland: houses and dollar signs, motorways full of traffic, the irrelevant and unreal adventures of its "real" housewives and bogus bachelors on television. I prefer to take visiting friends to Avondale Markets on a Sunday morning, to shop for old books and bok choi.

I wasn't born in this city, but I feel at home when I'm standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Chinese matrons, eyeballing each chilli or tomato before either dropping it in the bag or flicking it back contemptuously to the pile. I learned from watching them that it was okay to do this.

It's an example of the way food provides for commonality in modern Auckland – not in the banal "thanks for all the takeaways" sense, but where we're sharing practices. And so, in a different way, is the annual Auckland International Cultural Festival at Mt Roskill's War Memorial Park, where there is food and dancing.

Mum happened to be in town during the festival weekend a couple of years ago, so I took her along. She lives  in a retirement village on the Kapiti coast and I wasn't quite sure what she'd make of all this diversity. She loved it – it was a world she literally had not seen.

This year's festival took place on Sunday, when it was warm and occasionally sunny. It seemed bigger and brighter than ever and nearly everyone was smiling. And I enjoyed being in a space where, as an Aucklander of European heritage, I wasn't part of a majority (although probably still a plurality). But more than that, there's something grounding about people looking different but doing the same things. Like, for example, dancing:

As Vaughn Davis noted in his post on Monday, Auckland isn't a racial or social paradise, however much we might like that idea. But Sunday was a happy time and I only wish I'd stayed longer, taken more photographs, eaten more food and and locked up my bike and danced. If you have images from the day, do feel free to share them here – just use the "upload file" button by the comment box. You'll need to have typed something in the box for it to work, and 500k to 1MB is a good size.

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Fred died last week. He was my mate Shane's dad, having come into his life 50 years ago when Shane was three. I hadn't known Fred well, but I'd seen a bit of him over the years and I so I went to the family gathering to see him off, to be there for my friend.

They're a colourful, slightly complicated family and a few drinks had been supped by the time I arrived at Fred and Trish's Housing New Zealand place in Freeman's Bay. Fred was there out in the garden; at peace in his Chelsea shirt (and, I gather, his treasured Union Jack undies).

I gave Shane a hug and he got me a beer. "Do you want some food?" he said, and pointed the table. There was a big pot of biryani, a vegetable curry and what proved to be a delicious spicy salad.

"It's from the Muslim family next door," he said. "It's amazing. They've been feeding us all for the past four days."

I realised I'd seen the family arrive, just ahead of me. They looked a little nervous about going in and, I confess, I was surprised to see them.

It came time for friends and family to stand and speak. Sasha, the teenage daughter from the family next door, was one of the first. She'd written a short, lovely speech about how nice Fred had always been to her and her brother Umer, from the day they'd arrived in their new neighbourhood.

Sam, a member of Fred's extended family who is on the autism spectrum and about the same age as my boys, spoke with clarity and maturity. Margaret, who I think is Tongan, talked about the way Fred had put up with her and Trish's adventures, then moved to his coffin and, because he'd always liked a song, sang the old standard 'You Belong to Me' while she cradled Fred's head in her hands.

It was beautiful and I thought of the photomontage Shane and the others had put up on the living room wall, wherein some of those adventures over the years were captured.

Eventually, Malik, the Pakistani Muslim father from next door, stood to speak. Even though his own funeral traditions do not include the deceased being returned to the home, or viewing of the body at all, he walked over and placed his hand on Fred's open coffin while he talked about "the meaning of VIP". Some people, he explained in halting English, thought that VIP was about having money or flash cars, but it was really about a person's character. And Fred, he said, was a true VIP.

I was in tears by this point, not only because it had been a fine send-off for a good man, but because I've been spending a bit of time lately looking into Twitter's void of bigotry; bleakly butting heads with people, mostly Americans, who had been sold a story of Muslim inhumanity, who genuinely believed that all Muslims were conspirators to murder. Some of them even muttered about getting in a first strike. It had seemed dark and intractable and I'd brooded on how it could ever be changed.

There, joining everyone in remembering Fred, I felt some of that bleakness lift. Two very different families were interacting in a way that was about the  basic goodness of people. Trish told me she'd never realised how much Fred's openness and willingness to take his time with people had meant to Malik and his family. They shared the loss of his passing.

I talked to Sasha and Umer for a while before they and their dad went back to their home, then had another glass of wine, signed the lid of Fred's coffin, hugged my buddy again and rode off into a world a little better than it had been before.

It's hard to overstate the significance of The Clean's Boodle Boodle Boodle in the history of Flying Nun, the label that released it, and in the context of New Zealand music in general. In some ways, it's the reason there is a Flying Nun – in that while two other releases preceded it, Boodle's commercial success was what convinced Roger Shepherd that running a record label might actually be viable.

The five-track EP (the first Flying Nun release to appear in the 12" EP format that became a hallmark of the label's early years) vaulted into the national singles chart on release in November 1981 – and stayed in the charts for a further six months. (It would eventually, years later, go platinum.) Although the charts were accessible to local indie releases in a way they are not now, it was still a remarkable result.

Yet more remarkable are the circumstances of its creation. It was recorded over three days in a rundown hall in Bond Street, Auckland, by people who barely knew what they were doing.

The Frontiersmen's Hall, Bond Street. Pic by Jonathan Ganley.

The record was captured on the four-track TEAC recorder that Chris Knox had bought with a $400 inheritance from his grandmother. At the controls was Doug Hood, who had some chops as a live soundman but very little experience of recording. But he had recently recorded The Techtones' TT23 album on the TEAC and, as Robert Scott explains in this excerpt from the 95bFM/RNZ series Extended Play (the full Boodle episode is here), the band really liked how that sounded.

Chris Knox is formally listed as Boodle's producer, but I think Doug's experience of live mixing helped the record work just as much. Because Boodle is played live –mostly. In Singing g against the E chord, his short essay about Boodle for Grant Smithies' anthology Soundtrack, Graeme Downes notes almost regretfully that for 'Point That Thing Somewhere Else', David Kilgour, who could give the miraculous impression of "two guitars in the music but only one guitarist on stage ... felt compelled to somehow replicate [that] here with an overdub."

'Point That Thing', played a million times since, each time different (it being "more a procedure than a fixed song," Downes observes), is the undoubted opus of the EP. It remains one of my favourite pieces of music and, like some other classic Nun songs ('Skin', by Bailter Space, for example) seems to conjure geography. David once told me it made him think of belting across the plains of Central Otago in a fast car.

But the other four songs have their magic too. The wonky 'Sad Eyed Lady', the bustling 'Billy Two' (the twinkle of backwards guitar in the bridge being, you'd think, the influence of the Beatles-loving Knox), the infectious 'Thumbs Off' (the first Robert Scott song on record!) and 'Anything Could Happen', with its ringing opening chords. The themes of these songs are surprisingly dark – 'Anything Could Happen' is about trying to score drugs from a suspicious doctor, 'Billy Two' is about an alienated loser and 'Point that Thing' is plain paranoid – but the music is full of life.

The original EP goes for quite a lot of money on Discogs, and Boodle itself isn't available as a digital release, but you can hear the five songs, in their original order, on The Clean's Anthology compilation, which is on the streaming service of your choice. They still sound fresh.

The reason you're reading this is that this week Boodle Boodle Boodle was named as the recipient of Independent Music NZ's Classic Record award, as part of the 2017 Taite Music Prize. I strongly approve of this choice.

 

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On a totally different note, Oro Festival's timetable for next Saturday is out:

I'm actually looking forward to being bussed out to Woodhill from town. I think those trips will be quite amusing, the return especially.

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In a celebration of the joys of the album cover, Tasman District Library in Richmond asked my friends Pete Darlington and Jo Skinner to select the sleeves of their favourite vinyl records for an exhibition.

The Friday Music Post is sponsored by:

Representing New Zealand music

The government's announcement that e-cigarettes and the vaping liquid to go with them will be legalised and regulated is welcome. But it doesn't change as much as it might at first appear. And some of the changes it does make may not be the right ones.

A "nicotine e-cigarette", which is the phrase Minister Nicky Wagner has used, is exactly the same thing as a non-nicotine e-cigarette – and those have never been illegal. And even nicotine e-liquid has been on display and for sale in places like Karangahape Road for years. One of Shosha's Vapor World "concept stores" opened recently in the local laundromat here in Point Chevalier. No one has been prosecuted.

The decision not to apply an excise tax is welcome. Vaping isn't entirely harmless, but the evidence that is it vastly less harmful than smoking tobacco is now compelling. Harm-reduction principles dictate that it is a poor idea to penalise a much less harmful option.

But I'm less convinced by the decision to allow the sale of e-cigs and consumables from any retail premises. There's actually a humdrum reason for them to be available only from specialist premises and that's that keeping a vape in good order is a bit of a hobby. This is not perfect technology: batteries fail, coils get dirty and vapes leak. 

If your intention is to get people to switch from smoking, then it's important that the alternative actually works for them. Any current vape seller will tell you that customers returning to complain that their gear isn't working is quite a burden. A dairy owner's not going to be interested in offering the necessary advice.

A study published in the British Medical Journal last year found that e-cig use was reducing smoking prevelance in Britain. New data this month showed British smoking rates lower than ever – but also found that there are three times as many former e-cig users as current. Some of those will be people who've given up nicotine altogether, but responses suggest that most people try vaping as an alternative to smoking. You want it to stick for them.

There's also the issue that a vape used wrongly (eg, when near-empty, so the glycerol burns rather than vaporises) is more harmful than one used properly.

But there are other reasons. I get that there's more chance of a smoker switching if the alternative is widely availabe and visible, but it's still selling – and displaying – drugs in dairies. In Britain last year, four in 10 retailers were found to be selling e-cigarette products  to under 18 year-olds. (And yes, it is true that many young people are more interested in vapour than in nicotine and some prefer zero-nicotine liquids. They just like doing tricks with vapour.)

Yet the decision to allow display of e-cigarette products, rather than hide them like cigarettes is a sensible and practical one. You only need to step into a Shosha store to get an idea of the range of devices and consumables already on display. There's a reason for that. You can't buy a device without seeing and ideally touching it. And the differentiation of consumables – perhaps half a dozen brands, each with as many as 30 flavours and six concentrations (from zero to 24mg nicotine) – would make a display ban difficult.

But, as Professor Marewa Glover notes in the Science Media Centre's expert opinion roundup, the blanket decision to ban vaping wherever smoking is banned isn't entirely logical: it "sends a mixed message that vaping must be similarly dangerous which it is not." Wellington and Christchurch council housing tenancies are smokefree; so we'd be selling e-cigs in dairies to encourage smokers to quit – but not allowing those tenants the very real incentive of being able to use indoors?

One dimension of the debate that isn't getting a lot of air at the moment is that vaporising is potentially about more than cigarette replacement. If inhaling vapour is less harmful than inhaling burning tobacco smoke, then the same applies to cannabis smoke. The respective devices already sit next to each other on the shelves of vape stores.

It seems likely that for medical use at least, weed vaping will eventually be permitted in New Zealand. And perhaps sooner than you think: the Ministry of Health is looking at products from the Dutch-Canadian company Bedrocan, which offers both concentrated and whole-flower products, along with recommended vaporisers.

And there's more. Dr Paul Quigley at Wellington Hospital last year told me his team was seeing some meth and opiate users vaporising their drugs after dissolving them in e-liquid. It was, he thought, a reasonable form of harm reduction, esecially for the opiate users.

That could be where we get to in the long term: vaping as means of delivery for other drugs. And that would take us to the core question of all this: leaving all else aside, which path leads to the least harm?