When the second Soulfest concert at Western Springs was cancelled only two weeks before show day in 2015, fans who'd been looking forward to seeing Mary J Blige, Lauryn Hill and De la Soul were told a story. Ticket sales…
On 14 July 1997, in a provincial New Zealand town, a mother killed her 17-year-old autistic daughter, Casey Albury. Suddenly the spotlight was on autism as a policy problem in New Zealand. At that time autism was considered a rare…
I've noted here before my bemusement at self-professed conservatives who don't seem to mind the way first Donald Trump the candidate and President of the US Donald Trump has been determined to throw onto a bonfire the institutions and principles…
The author of this post, Veronica Stevenson, is a filmmaker who has launched a PledgeMe crowdfunding project with Victoria Catherwood to make an educational documentary to raise awareness about medical cannabis among doctors. Victoria explains her goals and motivations in…
Spurred by Donald Trump's recent executive order, I have written a thing for The Spinoff about a still live part of New Zealand's immigration past. The Spinoff has no comments facilities, so I'm making the opportunity available here. ¶
My mother Jeanette was probably crafting haiku when the stroke caught up with her. My daughter and I found her a few hours later lying on the floor beside her chair. A gold-covered notebook with her poetry jottings was beside…
Looking back, my weird food habits started long before they officially became a “thing” that needed fixing. My Plunket book is filled with notes on my inability to take milk or the majority of the alternatives. I couldn't stand bananas…
I look out the window of the Hägglund – a vehicle resembling a little train on bulldozer tracks – and begin to cry. Towering above me, out the window, is a turquoise cliff some fifty metres high. It’s the Barne Glacier. Finally…
American film director Mitch Stein recently arrived in New Zealand along with his wife for a three week holiday, including a visit with his stepson on Waiheke Island. Instead, he was held for 12 hours, interviewed and put on a…
Albert Park has a long history as a music venue, so those of you used to the 95bFM Summer Series, or perhaps veterans of Dragon playing in the Rotunda in 1975 (see AudioCulture), will have felt quite comfortable about the…
It may have been around for almost forty years, but as a rock venue there's nothing inspiring about the Logan Campbell Centre in Auckland. The venue's reputation as a dank concrete barn in the middle of a carpark, with bad…
New Zealand is again atop the Transparency International list of countries with the lowest perceived corruption. ¶ With an index score of 90 out of a possible 100, the perception of non-corruption has also increased (last year, when New Zealand ranked…
My friend Andrew Dubber revealed in a blog post this week that he's working on a book he envisages as "a sociology of music curation" – or, to put it more prosaically: "Mixtapes. Playlists. Compilations." ¶ As Andrew notes, he has some…
Last week, my e-bike finally arrived, having gone missing for nearly a month on what turned out to be a mistaken courier trip to Taupo. But it's here now, it's SmartMotion's Pacer model and I am impressed. ¶ I am also…
Just Like Heaven? Well, pretty close. The ever popular, and insanely loud Dinosaur Jr, with Hex, at the Studio, Auckland, on Monday 23 January 2017. ¶
National probably made the right call when it declined to contest the Mount Albert by-election. After wheeling in the big guns in Roskill last year and getting thrashed, it would not have relished the prospect of Bill English's election year…
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Vector Arena 18th Jan 2017 In an out of character move for Vector concerts, I decided to get tickets in GA. Usually nowadays I can manage about half a set standing up and then need…
And so, tomorrow, the United States of America will inaugurate a new President. I've been meaning to write about what that portends, but it's surprisingly difficult. Each of the last few dozen mornings has brought a fresh basket of outrages…
It’s been a couple of weeks since we all stopped pretending that 2017 was going to be any better than 2016. I mean, yeah, it was shitty that all those much-loved celebrities died, but what made last year such a…
The key barrier to the use of medical cannabis – or to even discovering what its uses might be – has long been marijuana's illegality under the Misuse of Drugs Act. But what if it transpired that a key component of cannabis…
Here's a thing about dance music: half the time, it's in an identity crisis. Its founding myths are in dark little clubs full of the marginalised, but it reaches the masses as risible stadium EDM. This isn't exactly new: as…
In a story cross-posted from Newstalk ZB today, the Herald reports that it has "been revealed the New Zealand Government has paid a foundation owned by Hillary Clinton $7.7 million," going on to note that "in November it became apparent…
Shenzhen is a city with about twice the population of New Zealand. Forty years ago it virtually didn't exist. ¶ Back then, it was a market town of 30,000 on China's border with Hong Kong. Now, it's new, it's growing fast…
Weediquette, the marijuana magazine series you can see on the Viceland channel on Sky, is a TV show for its times. As the law, social attitudes, economy and science relating to cannabis evolve rapidly in the US, stories are proliferating.…
A month ago, I retracted a piece I wrote in 2015 looking at the first five years of the three strikes sentencing regime for serious violent crime, attempting to see how the first five years after three strikes compared to…