Posts by Simon Grigg
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I was especially trying to make it clear that NZoA are not responsible for the whole change, but that they did contribute to it.
Much more than contribute I'd argue. Up until the voluntary quotas were introduced in 2002 (when pop radio jumped from about 4% to 13% overnight) they were a cornerstone of the radio game, and very importantly played a huge role in getting the records we all made out to provincial radio stations that geography dictated were largely ignored by labels pushing their NZ recordings. It was more important as a way of getting to the heartland than any number of tours or Rip It Up stories.
Sadly, I think in the years since they've become increasingly subservient to the needs and demands of commercial radio programmers, who really, if I had my way, which I don't and am unlikely to get, should be kept out of any selection process altogether.
I would rather see a bunch of 15-17 year old kids given the casting votes than any number of PDs who really only care what is going to sell the advertising space between songs, as they are paid to do. I understand that NZOA's brief has been to get records on the airwaves but the cultural imperatives are meant to play a part as well, and I doubt whether network programmers really take those into account when ticking the yes or no boxes.
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started supporting commercial radio to adopt local music which saw that increase from 2% in 1996 to around 20% on air by 2005.
not to take anything away from what NZ on Air did in the years up to 2005, but they were still bashing their head against a much lower figure until the government threatened commercial radio with a legislated compulsory quota unless they introduced a voluntary one, which they fought tooth and nail.
I remember well sitting at early IMNZ meetings, in its first year as we pondered figures sub-10%
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Would that be Eldred Stebbing? Marvellous production, but for me that song will always be the freakishly phenomenal Aphrodite's Child.
Yep, Eldred, who, with the less mentioned, but no less deserving, John Hawkins produced or mentored over 350 singles over a decade and half, so many of which were killers.
He really took that original Aphrodite's Child tune to quite another place.
Hell, he even managed to produce a good Gray Bartlett record or two.
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I hear it in the Patea Maori Club and Little Bushman.
I think we underestimate just how different and odd our indigenous pop, no matter the race, sounds to foreign ears, or at least the stuff that, as Russell points out earlier (did I say that? If I did I agree with myself, and the current batch are getting worse, most of 125 is absolutely awful), is unlikely to make the KHD.
Even some of the hits are uniquely ours. Savage's record sold so many ringtones in the US because it was very odd to American ears and hit the novelty buttons, not because it was carbon copy US hip-hop, which is why the album didn't work.
That difference is our strength and NZ on Air has, by virtue of the way it selects acts to fund, spent most of the 2000s trying to squash that.
How many US produced and utterly bland Boh Runga tracks do we really need on hit discs?
Which is why I also take issue with Mark Kneebone when he says:
You have to match the production levels of Powderfinger, Eskimo Joe, Grinspoon, those big Australian radio bands, Vanessa Amarosi or whatever. You have to have that too.
and I grimace at the endless notes on the KHDs where we are cheerily informed that faceless band x recorded their album in LA with BigNameProducer (insert some inane US band name they've produced) as if it's something that they should be proud of and a reason that radio should play them.
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FWIW, I hear the Fourmyula in Buffalo.
Quite, it's spookily like those wonderful bands that Peter Dawkins, Howard Gable and Alan Galbraith used to produce in EMI's Wellington studio for HMV, or, from Herne Bay, this:
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What is intrinsically 'New Zealand' about New Zealand music--other than te reo Maori and Pacific Island influences, of course?
I defy you to point out a band that sounds like The Phoenix Foundation from anywhere else. Or The Chills for that matter. Or early Enz.
There is a thoroughly unique strand that goes through NZ pop which is almost continuous back to the mid sixties. On the extraordinary new PF album I can hear The Hi Revving Tongues and The Chills and Blam Blam Blam which I doubt is conscious but it's very much us.
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I just can't help but think there are so many, more humble, places in Auckland where you'd find much better food in the same styles, albeit not mashed together
A friend who travels widely in Asia and is a bit of a foodie sent me a txt last year from Auckland's Monsoon Poon saying that they had an incredible range of Pan Asian cuisines and they had managed to do all of them incredibly badly.
I've not been to the Auckland one but the Wellington branch was just gastronomically depressing and the service was absolutely shocking. Point at any one of those cuisines and I could name 20 places that I would rather visit.
But then, despite the aspirations, and with the very rare exception, my rule of thumb has always been that Auckland does higher-end food very, very averagely and lower end food extraordinarily well.
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what do you reckon ?
Well, I reckon this, from Otaki's finest, is about as real as it gets and deserves those bucks far more than those pot addled freaks that normally get to make vids:
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Nice indeed, very well done
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Have NZ schools always had formal balls, or did they come in with the movie Pretty In Pink?
I found my '73 ball photos a while back. I had rather long hair, platforms and an electric blue flared suit. Considering the evidence presented in those now concealed, inc. negs, shots, it may be best if I argue strongly that we didn't.