Hard News by Russell Brown

On Friday night, I closed a long, occasionally difficult but undoubtedly valuable discussion thread spawned by my post about incidents of sexual harassment at the Laneway festival. There were two main reasons for doing so.

The first was that the thread had become quite nasty and personalised. I asked everyone, including some people who are not regular contributors here, to pull back and was ignored. People screenshotting each other is not a discussion; or at least, not the kind of discussion I want to host. Some past threads may have run on in a similar state, but literally only because for years I didn't have the ability to close threads.

Moreover, some of what was happening seemed to be the exercising of old and not-so-old enmities from Twitter, which is unfair to people commenting here, especially those who aren't on Twitter themselves. (I've felt the need to talk directly to a couple of people in the past few months when they've discovered themselves being talked about elsewhere and were understandably upset.) The sometimes-difficult relationship between this place and Twitter was well and truly surfaced.

The other reason was me. Moderation, at least the way I've chosen to do it over the years, can be emotionally exhausting. I'd put a lot of time and thought into the thread – even deliberately removing myself for a while on the hunch that I'd had enough to say, especially to other dudes. Fretting about it literally had me lying awake on Thursday night. I'd tried not to look at any comments elsewhere, but it's hard to avoid seeing sneering comments about yourself on Twitter sometimes, and I did find that upsetting. The death of a friend and some emotionally challenging stuff with my sons were also part of the picture. It was a pretty hard week.

I thought the discussion had got to a decent place on Friday afternoon, but when it turned to shit in the evening, I just had nothing. I needed to be able to just spend some time with my family and not worry. I needed to sleep. I was worried about my blood pressure, but a bit too scared to take it. So my mental and physical health and my family life took priority. I'm not public property.

But part of the thread had gradually evolved into a discussion of why some women were no longer comfortable, or at least less comfortable, commenting here. I do care about that and I understand why some people were unhappy at the loss of that discussion. I suggested to Emma Hart that she could reboot things and moderate a new thread on the topic, but she responded: "Jesus no. Fuck no. The last two pages of that thread were insane." Which is pretty much the reason I won't be reopening the thread either.

But there's more than one way to do this, and perhaps a way that doesn't hang people out to dry is better anyway. I've already had a number of sympathetic messages about the thread, all but one from women,  and some of those have also contained some useful tips. I'd like to hear from more members of our reader community – and women in particular – about how they feel about discussions here and what they think could be improved. I don't think the answer is as simple as a formal code of conduct – anyone explicitly abusive or threatening is generally swiftly removed anyway and regular readers know how to use the "report post" button. It's a bit more nuanced than that.

But I would like to hear about it. You can email me by clicking the little icon below this post.

Anyway, I hope you all have a happy and fulfilling week. I felt a lot better after I took some action and went to find some people in real life on Sunday. You might enjoy the blog post I made of it.

Although I'm fond of the place, I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the wrangle over the closing to motor traffic of the access road to the summit of Mt Eden.

The car ban has been discussed for years, as part of an imperative to protect the physical cone – buses were mercifully banned in 2011 – but the idea gained momentum in 2014, when the Tāmaki Collective Settlement became law, and care of 14 Auckland volcanoes thus passed to local iwi, via the Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau Authority.

The maunga authority's strong view was that the tihi, or summit, should be clear of traffic as a matter of respect for its spiritual and cultural significance to mana whenua and, in the words of authority chair Paul Majurey, as "a key measure to protect this taonga, and to reflect the mana whenua and community aspirations of their living connections with this taonga."

The Eden-Albert local board agreed, as did Friends of Maungawhau. A Digipoll survey commissioned by the Herald found strong support.

The most organised opposition came from Act's MP David Seymour, who set up a website soliciting submissions to Auckland Council and the authority. Affordable Auckland's Stephen Berry also took some time away from the important job of hating Len Brown to issue a release declaring that "such a move verges on lunacy".

Neither of them was successful and at the end of last month, bollards were put in place to block the road. Access arrangements for motorists are now what they have been for buses since 2011: there is parking and a roundabout for turning part way up the mountain and visitors can either walk up the short way – a little over 200 metres – or take the longer path that winds around the mountain.

Visitors with limited mobility can call the Auckland Council customer service centre ahead of time to obtain a temporary code to lower the bollards so they can drive up – although they will need to be able to quote a mobility card number. Frequent visitors can apply by email for a permanent code.

Well, that's the detail. But the detail doesn't really capture what's happened here. Yesterday – which was, fittingly, the first Mondayised Waitangi Day – I rode my bike over to Mt Eden and came up the summit road. And it was ... beautiful.

What had been a narrow one-way road was now flocked with Aucklanders walking, cycling and running their ways up and down.

Groups of people from buses parked below trailed over the paths around the cone. And it seemed more possible now to pause on the access road rather than get out of the way lest a car come. One the way down, I stopped to take in a view I'd never really considered before.

And at the summit? It was wide and clear. There were, as ever, plenty of tourists, but there was space for everyone.

One Twitter correspondent told me that the first time he'd been up, there were "people literally singing up there". Another paid tribute to the "great atmosphere" at the tihi a few evenings back – "I'd love to see a summer festival up there one day," she said. "Stalls in the middle of the old car park."

My only reservation is that already having a mobility card is a fairly high bar for people who might be mobile on the flat but can't manage the climb and perhaps a way could be found to accommodate them without letting that concession be abused. But otherwise, what I saw yesterday was a near-miraculous illustration of what happens when you give a space back to people, and not cars. It's not a closing, it's an opening.

So kia ora and thank you to the Tāmaki iwi. Your manaakitanga does not go unnoticed.

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Here's one more good thing. Work has begun on the Waterview shared path, which covers the same stretch as the Waterview Connection tunnel and effectively makes it possible to walk or ride across the motu, from harbour to harbour – if by a somewhat less direct route than the tunnel.

NZTA had to be pretty much boxed around the ears by the Waterview Board of Inquiry to take on the job, but it's begun now and it's good thing.  As a bonus, it connects a string of reserves and public spaces that are currently isolated from one another. In doing so, it enhances each of those spaces.

Jessica Rose has a lovely piece over at Bike Auckland on what the project means to her.

With one thing or another, including some challenging family stuff and a death in my peer group, I had a rough week and wound up neither communicating or sleeping well. Speechless, sleepless and exhausted. I woke at 5am today and eventually gave up on getting unconscious again.

After a cup of tea and a half-hearted look through the papers, I decided what I needed instead of sitting around feeling anxious was a ride to Avondale markets. I'd be back in time for Sunday poached eggs.

As I waited on the centre line to turn right from Carrington Road into the cycleway, a car came past to my left; too close, too fast, its horn blaring.

"Oh, fuck off," I said, loudly.

"Good morning!" I bid the pack of Sunday road riders who'd been watching.

"Ooh, naughty," laughed one. "You rode on the road!'

It seemed to make sense to make an effort to talk to people, face to face, in real life, so when I pulled up to lock my bike to the fence at Avondale Raceway, I smiled at the guy on the other side, who'd pulled up with an incredible-looking electric cargo bike arrangement.

"Where'd you ride from?" I asked him.

"Onehunga," he panted. "And the power ran out at New Windsor."

I came around inside the fence and asked if I could take his picture with my phone. He said sure. I decided I'd take more pictures ...

The music post here is usually a break from politics, but I was amused this morning by Prime Minister John Key's declaration that he would be forsaking Waitangi tomorrow for somewhere "festive and unconflicted" to spend Waitangi Day – because it immediately suggested one of those "By coincidence that's the title of my forthcoming album" jokes of which I will never tire.

And, indeed, when Key was among party leaders set a cultural questionaire in 2011, he declared his favourite music not to be that of any particular artist, but "easy listening music". Festive and Unconflicted sounds like a great easy listening album.

Of course, the PM's expressed preferences have moved around a little over the years, or between elections. In 2008, he professed to be a fan of Nesian Mystik and OpShop, but when pressed on his favourite OpShop tune said: "You, know, their big hit... hmm... well I don't know them by name, I just know what I like to listen to." In 2014, he told a group of schoolkids, improbably, that his favourite music was now One Direction.

But it is all about theatre. Helen Clark's goverment might have provided crucial support for New Zealand popular music, but each year at the Music Awards, she basically pretended through gritted teeth to enjoy the music itself. It manifested in the speeches – or, rather, The Speech, which she insisted on writing herself (over the entreaties of advisors) and delivered a little more loudly and less convincingly each year.

Not every senior politician can be a Grant Robertson – who, when asked for his favourite music will likely respond with a Top 10, a two-hour Spotify playlist and an offer to write a series of blog posts – and that's a reasonable reflection of the public itself. Not everyone is lost in music.

But I will say this: when I noticed and greeted James Dann in the crowd for Battles at Laneway on Monday, I turned around to my buddy and said: "That was Labour's candidate in Ilam at the last election."

"Wow," said my friend.

Indeed. Should James eventually achieve higher political honours, the Parliament's knowledge of the works of Lady Gaga and Grimes will have increased considerably. There are others in the House: Jacinda Ardern is famously a DJ and, I'm told, National's Chris Bishop has his roots in goth.

Actually, where am I even going with this? I'm really not sure. But ... Vaclav Havel. There was a politician who knew the power of music to disrupt, rather than soothe and sedate. He might sometimes have been festive, but I don't think he was ever much a fan of the unconflicted.

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Speaking of Laneway: Jackson has yet again taken some great pictures of the performers and the punters.

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A bit of a video feast this week. The BBC three-partner Music Moguls is on YouTube. Episode two, on producers, is narrated by Nile Rodgers and it's really interesting. It includes Tony Visconti's recreation of the way Bowie's 'Heroes' was built up from the original bare-bones band recording:

There's also Part One, on managers, and Part Three, on music PR.

The Phoenix Foundation have a nice live session for Findspire Studios in France. ("Bonjour, nous sommes le Phoenix Foundation ...")

And thanks heaps to Public Address reader David for the tip on This Is Ska, a remarkable 1964 BBC documentary featuring everyone from Byron Lee and The Dragonaires to Jimmy Cliff, Prince Buster and Stranger Cole.

The comments on this blog have some useful detail on the film, including this:

If the presenter looks vaguely familiar to anyone, that's probably because it is Edward Seaga who later went on to become Jamaica's fifth Prime Minister (JLP - Jamaican Labour Party). But in the 60's Seaga was a music promoter and the owner of the West Indies Records Ltd (WIRL) label which he sold on to Byron Lee (the band leader in the video) in 1968. Most non-Jamaican reggae fans' overriding memory of Seaga will be from the 1978 One Love Concert when Bob Marley got Seaga and his rival, Michael Manley, to shake hands on stage in front of the whole nation.

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 Tunes!

Still mo' Bowie. A remix of Big Daddy Kane's 'Good Times', with 'Sound and Vision' mashed into the mix. Free download with a bit of account-following palaver.

This week's Lontalius album teaser. Official site here.

And ... there was going to be more, but HearThis has packed a sad and is throwing up database errors. So later for that ...

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The Hard News Friday Music Post is kindly sponsored by:

I was standing watching Beach House's spellbinding performance at Laneway on Monday when I thought about how remarkable it is that this annual new music festival has become so much about women. Beach House's Victoria Le Grand was commanding the stage. We'd just come over from Grimes' wild pop show, and before that, Courtney Barnett leading her rock n' roll band. We would move on to QT playing her crazy beats in the Thunderdome, then stroll past Lauren Mayberry leading Churches before a rapturous crowd.

How great, I thought, that all the young women in the crowd could see themselves reflected in the headliners, and dance and sing back the words they heard.

I carried on thinking like that until yesterday when I saw the fallout from TV3 reporter Kim Vinnell's live cross, when two yobs gatecrashed yelling "Fuck her right in the pussy" (it's a particularly sad and unfunny meme that began as a hoax). She was shocked, understandably – the first response of a reporter in that situation is that they've exposed their employer to trouble – and somewhat intimidated.

But she was able to identify the young men and yesterday tracked them down to ask what the hell they were thinking. Spoiler alert: they weren't thinking much. "After a 12-box of Billy Mavericks, those sort of things aren't being processed properly through my head," explained one of them.

"Teenage brains, they don't, y'know ..." added his mate, helpfully.

You may not have ever encountered it, but Billy Maverick Bourbon and Cola, described in marketing material as a "no nonsense drink", is a 7% alcohol premix made by Lion Nathan. The company used to ship this particular alcopop at a staggering 9%, but reduced its strength a couple of years ago as part of an industry attempt to fend off stricter regulation. These men and their friends had preloaded.

When Vinnell pointed out that, alcohol or no, this kind of behaviour was threatening to women, the slightly taller dullard said this:

"Yeah, but next time have a male presenter if you're going to a Laneway festival, because shit like that gets pretty hectic."

Staggeringly, whoever was at the editing controls at Stuff thought this view was worthy of a reader poll in this story (thanks to Jessica McAllen for the screenshot):

I'm deeply disappointed that someone who is allegedly a journalist would even have considered publishing that, let alone actually done it. Someone with judgement apparently became aware of it and the poll was eventually removed from the story.

 I was still thinking about it this morning when I saw this comment by my friend Jean Hughes about what happened to her on Monday at Laneway. Jean is an older woman. She's also a music fan – to an extent that sometimes puts me, the music blogger, to shame – which is why I asked her to write up her Laneway tips for Friday's music post. She was so up for Monday, and then her day was ruined:

By then it was time to get a good position for Courtney and in doing so were close to Hermitude who I did like more than I thought I would. 
Then it all got a bit messy and my day was kinda spoiled.

A young arrogant out of it man and his female sidekicks thought it would be fun to bully a couple of older women – me especially. Not content to trying to grab me about my person, calling me Grandma, he tried to simulate sexual goings on with me and asked the young equally out of it lads around us who wanted to “fuck Grandma” Not nice when you are all so close to each other. He stopped when my friend, turned and punched him in the stomach, totally surprised a ‘Grandma’ could do such a thing, after nicely asking him to cease. And his gal mates laughed and giggled along with the play – female solidarity obviously unheard of.

We moved away and almost immediately another young, out of it idiot set his sights on us – heckling, poking, pointing and coming up really close – no amount of ignoring him would get him to stop. Again he had the backing of his mates, male and female and they just went on and on. By then Courtney was on and we did really want to listen and enjoy and happily she was not their cup of tea or they found someone even older or more female to bully and off they went, not before pointing two fingers at me and saying ’"we will be back"- bullies to the end.

After this, even though Courtney had done her best, I felt old, tired and slightly emotional and went and sat down. Never in all the events I have been to (and there have been quite a few) have I been treated so meanly and unnecessarily so.

To say I'm angry about this is an understatement. But sadly, it's not unique. I've heard via Genny Stevens on Twitter about this happening at Rhythm & Vines. Same pattern: an older woman victim, drunk, out-of-it young men, the women with them not intervening. She in turn had heard about a separate incident – again, the sexual harassment of an older woman – on Monday.

I understand and applaud the protests against the Return of Kings "pro-rape" creeps, but for me, there's a more pervasive, much more mainstreamed problem here than those self-mythologising freaks.

I don't blame the promoters. It's hard to screen for pre-loading, drinking water was freely available everywhere and the onsite bars seemed properly run and suitably priced (they were almost idle by 7pm anyway). The group that harassed Jean and her friend evidently had other drugs too, but it's impossible to aggressively body-search for those at the gate and, for a number of reasons, not even a good idea.

It's also very difficult for venue security or police to see these things and intervene when they happen deep in the crowd. You rely on the decency of the crowd – which, for most of us, was well in evidence on Monday. Jean agreed that the vibe was generally very nice ("I enjoy seeing people enjoy themselves"). Even people relatively nearby in the crowd wouldn't have been aware of what was happening, she said. But, she added:

I was astounded that they would pick on older women in such a sexual way – we even asked them if they treated their mother and grandmother this way – and I am sorry to say they didn’t look that ashamed. I think they are a product of a political leadership that puts down women and cracks cheap bullying comments at will.

The young men who harassed Kim Vinnell were, when confronted after the fact, suitably contrite (well, one was – the other had by that point fled the camera). I suspect Jean's bullies would meekly do the same in the cold light of day. But that's not good enough.

It's not good enough for women to feel at risk because of their age or gender. I understand that's a fact not just at annual music festivals. But there's a nasty undertone of exclusion when it happens in this kind of environment – which can only function on trust. When women who love the music these events are supposed to be about can't trust that they can safely enjoy it. It's already happened to some extent at Rhythm & Vines. What that appalling Stuff poll really said was that we should countenance some cultural events being no-go areas for women.

Fix up, young men. It's no good apologising afterwards for something you knew was wrong, or blaming the booze no one made you drink. And until you can fix up, kindly stay the fuck out of my and Jean's music festival.