Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
but I believe music sales are still pretty profitable aren't they?
Loathe to start all this again but figures indicate that globally the royalty return from recorded music was the highest in 2009 it's been in years. CD sales are of course in the tank, and will never return, but so are those of sheet music & those preset piano playing things and the recorded world survived those demises as it has the CD.
Does anyone still buy CDs (apart of course from those Fab 4 boxes)?
I do enjoy coming back to NZ though for the the dedicated music retail stores. Auckland still has them and I like a rummage...NZ seems to be one of the last surviving physical media markets where CDs are retailed beyond the odd K-Mart or Best Buy..
They're very rare beasts in Asia. I don't think KL (population some 5m) has a single one, nor Shanghai (20m). I know of about 4 here in Bangkok (10m), 2 in HK (6m) and there are about 3-4 in Jakarta (pop 20-25m, but there are about a billion trestle tables selling dodgy MP3s on CD on the streets). In the US, NYC has no non-niche CD stores left now that Virgin has gone.
-
I'm down with the Willie Mitchell fest. This live (in I think, Hi Studios) take of I Can't Stand The Rain is rather special:
and Syl, who's often left in the Hi shadow of Al and Ann but is something else:
I'd love to post it here, however the f**king laptop is in Nvidia hell right now and I can't find the link, but the original, Willie Mitchell produced take of The Only Flame in Town by Teachers' Edition, as covered by Elvis Costello, is one of those obscure old soul things you wander across sometimes and simply can't work out why it wasn't a worldwide hit.
-
It's just that, fundamentally... we don't care. :)
Like I said, me petty,and lets blame Dionysius Exiguus and his ilk who had no concept of zero.
It is odd to be in a place though where nobody, aside from the expats (who mostly are still staggering around Kao Sahn and the seedy sois with hangovers) think it's anything other than Jan 2, 2553.
At least in Indonesia, where they pay at best token lip service to the Muslim year, its mostly 2010, but Thailand never had the benefit of a western colonial power sorting out their nonsense.
I like it.
The uncomforting thought though is that the 20th century was celebrated across the world (the parts that didn't call the year 2443 or 1319) as beginning on 1/1/1901, and indeed it wasn't until 1990 we jumped a year and talk of the new decade started a year earlier. I just want my year back. You get given parsimoniously few as it is without the media stripping one away.
-
Being the start of a new decade, do we make New Decade's Resolutions?
No, no, no, no..at the risk of repeating myself (which I'm doing) , it's not a new decade. Not yet. Hold your horses. We have another 364 1/4 days before we can raise that glass.
[yes it's a slightly petty hobby horse of mine, but I'm celebrating 2553 where I am anyway, or 2552 if I'm a traditionalist..much less confusing]
-
So last decade.
Except it's not really until 1/1/2011 is it..
-
Myers has a son in the music business and apparently financed "Crazy."
Unless his son is Jeff Antebi, who certainly has the means and contacts to finance Danger Mouse's projects, I'd be inclined to think he's fantasizing some..or being fed a line.
-
Can we agree create a new term, from the root word "titular" and just use "tit" or "non-tit"?
I'm of the opinion that anyone who feels the need to append the word Sir to their name after receiving an honour should be obliged to change their first name to Dick.
Beyond the fact that as a New Zealander abroad, it gave Australians another (brief, before they forgot) reason to poke fun at NZ, I don't care either way whether whether someone feels that they need to use the title. It just seems particularly vacuous (as was the reinstatement by Key and the reasons given at the time, albeit with a self serving shine on the edge).
Although I guess Dougie getting the royal touch on the shoulder may be as good an argument as it gets for not reinstating the titles.
-
It was not a wasted decade at all.
No, not at all. Rather special in fact, but all mine have been so far. Some very bad bits, some thoroughly shitty moments but on reflection at a personal level, yeah fine.
-
Robert, Wendy and Russell,
As much as anything musings like that expressed by Edroso irk me because their horizon seems so limited. As that link is evidence, there is is a big wide world out there that exists beyond the boundaries of the DC Beltway and the East Village, and I'm continually frustrated by the inability of first world observers to recognise this.
I wonder what the half a billion online Chinese think about the fact that some guy in NYC has, even tongue in cheek, opined that their empowering social media has ruined the internet. Or the thousands of bands from Turkey, South Africa and Thailand that've embraced MySpace as a way of bypassing the traditional media machines that have always passed them by, to get fanbase traction..and on and on...
I just quite enjoyed getting the contrary case.
Heh, I knew that, but surely you don't mind if someone bites back :)
-
Sure, but back in the day there were plenty of proto-pundits opining...