Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hall-and-fucking-Oates cover.
As a nerd I'd would like to say that first two albums on Atlantic were shit hot. After that, not so much.....
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Will be a hard album to beat for the year
I'd throw into the happy mix: José James, Phoenix Foundation, Caribou, Ikonika, Paul Weller, Panthu Du Prince and Four Tet
We old folks and our albums......
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If your friend Simon's said his bit and he feels he's got nothing to add then let him be silent.
Actually I had / have plenty to say, I just didn't feel like banging my head anymore or listening to the bashing of other heads (on a personal level) that weren't present in the thread. (And I'm not going to do it in this thread either).
All that thread was doing it seemed to me was wandering back down a path that was visited repeatedly a couple of years back and with the same result. I don't really do bagging people that I know deserve better very well.
It just looks like you shut it down cos it was going in a direction you didn't want to hear and this time it seemed you were outnumbered by some well informed govt document quoting theorists.
Reading through, I guess I missed that bit, amongst the morass of misstatements, the attacks on any artist we don't like and the rest.
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this thread has turned into a hammer which pounds on one side of my head then the other, ad infinitum.
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and every regulated period will produce the same quantity of worthy recipients.
You will find, behind the scenes, that songs that were rejected in one round are approved in the next for a variety of reasons. A lot of acts re-apply over and over.
Why it wasn't good last time but is fine this time is beyond me. Radio folks, in my experience, mostly program from offshore data anyway and most wouldn't know a hit that they were not told was a hit if their world depended on it.
Cruel? Yes, but fair.
That does, I guess, swing the argument back around to the gatekeepers.
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I'm sure you said yourself he was a man for his time but that time has been.
I don't recall saying that but really, its got little to do with watching his back. After all these years I think he's tough and thick skinned enough to watch his own. Yes I like him as a person but that's neither here nor there.
However there is also a wealth of knowledge and experience there that I, as a New Zealand taxpayer, don't want to toss away. He knows his stuff and in a nation where civil servants at his level are more often than not muppets that's quite something.
Which is why I agreed with Sacha above:
Focusing on Mr Smyth is like targetting your school principal about national standards rather than the Board that employs her or the Minister and government who make the rules.
Brendan does not exist in a vacuum where he defines the parameters, as much as he may be an easy target. Target those parameters instead. They offer a huge and even easier target.
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What other reason could there be for the inclusion of
My feelings about Soto. I've been there three times, once by choice, twice by others' arrangement, and everytime I've suffered shocking service and faux Japanese food that can be bettered by a dozen other Japanese restaurants within a five km radius, all accompanied by a staggering bill at the end. Never again.
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I should note, its unfair to lay the blame for crap selections totally at the broadcasters/programmers door.
Never forget, they are only playing your record because they have to.
Also, and I need to say it again: I have to admit, as I've said before, that I'm really not at all comfortable with attacks on Brendan per se. Yes I know he directs NZ on Air's music programs and I think we all agree they need radical revision, but his contribution over the last 30 years is monumental and this can never be taken away. I have huge respect for the man and what he's achieved.
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but here's a riff that sounds very much like The Phoenix Foundation's Buffalo.
And I can point you in the direction of a '77 keyboard line from The Subway Sect that sounds very much like The Clean's seminal '81 Tally Ho, but it's not what your influences are, or even what you've borrowed, it's what you do with that surely. Or mostly.
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Without much comment and drifting off-topic a bit (but only a bit because it speaks to the value of the music produced at the edges rather than simply targeted at the centre), this interview with Martin Mills, the owner of the world's most successful indie is pretty good reading.
Oh, and Robbie, I've just found this blog post of mine in response to a question from you back in '06, and I've reposted it. Funny how little has changed, huh?