It is a longstanding editorial policy of this blog that Ladi 6 is a star. So I was a little bit surprised and wholly delighted when she was named as the winner of the 2011 Taite Music Prize last night, for her album The Liberation Of …, which you doubtless all purchased when I recommended it as the record of the coming summer, last November.
Ladi and Parks weren't present to pick up the prize last night, because they were en route to another busy season in Europe, but it was a fun night and I was pleased to be the MC -- although I fear that the people at the back missed my killer musician jokes.
I really wanted to share a performance clip, but the recent ones on YouTube are a bit ropey. This one, with Ladi and MC Silva tearing it up at last year's brilliant album launch show at the Powerstation, is the best of the bunch:
Oddly enough, Ladi turns up in a sparky protest performance captured in Operation 8: Deep in the Forest, whose directors I'd interviewed for Media7 shortly before coming down the hill to Sale Street for the Taite. The programme, which screens at 9.05pm tonight on TVNZ 7, also features an interview with media lawyer Tracey Walker about matters of sub judice and the file sharing bill. I think it's useful television and I hope you find it so.
And with that, I am become unserious. Well, about everything but music. People seemed to love the Saints clip last week, so here's another one I've used to win late-night games of YouTube Throwdown. It's from the Wailers' incredible 1973 performance for Old Grey Whistle Test. Peter Tosh stars as The Coolest Man on Earth, and harmonises like a Beach Boy:
Staying in London, Husker Du do 'Eight Miles High' in 1985. Intense.
A nice, and surprising, rework of a classic from Leftside Wobble:
Leftside Wobble - Still Goin' On by Leftside Wobble
And because Ima be there on Saturday night, Mr George Clinton, earlier this year on the Late Late Show.
I do believe the country would be a better place if we were indeed all getting down just for the funk of it every now and then ...
PS: On Twitter? Tweet something with the words "George Clinton" in it and see what happens.
PPS: So I'm going to a wake tomorrow -- BYO at a pub! -- and Mr Clinton on Saturday. What are you doing at Easter?