Posts by Simon Grigg
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And right on time
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I am not entirely without sympathy for his argument.
His post is fairly American centric though,which I guess is understandable. In Indonesia I watched fascinated as Facebook gave real voice to the hitherto completely voiceless 220 odd million who are not part of the political elite and made not one but two radical realignments in the way the political processes happen. The first was the nation rushing to the defense of a woman who was being squashed under a defamation case by a hospital because they had fucked up her treatment. She was convicted by clearly corrupt court proceedings and fined $20,000. The Facebook flurry not only raised the money but also caused the courts to back track and overturn the verdict.
The second was the attempt by the police and the attorney generals to bring down the anti corruption body by framing it's leaders. The furor driven via Facebook primarily, and Twitter, not only killed the charges but forced the hand of the stunned President.
It's little commented in the broadband available first world but one of the most defining things of the 2000s for me is the way silly-cheap 3G and social networking (read: Facebook), accessed on Blackberry clones mostly, has swept through and given voice to parts of the world that have not only had no internet before but often had no phones, and perhaps only a single generator in the village (that's about 50% of Indonesia for a start, and large parts of Africa). You want a revolution? This is it and it hasn't even begun to play out.
And Iran, well it may still be a dictatorship but twitter played it's part in completely smothering any claim the 'elected' government may have to legitimacy and being a democracy, far more than innumerable rants in the Murdoch media could have. It opened a lot of eyes. It was never going to change regime..please...
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Snap. I had a similar thought. The quickest and easiest way to do it would be as Amplifier digital bundles, but full releases would be nice.
I think full releases is essential, if only to justify the liner notes that these things demand. The box set was notable mostly for it's special essays and the good bits in the booklet (let's forget the awful box artwork, the broken CD cases, and the price), plus the track-list, which I though was wonderful. I played it to death.
Of course, when it went up on iTunes it was without the box, the essays or anything else, and still $150 or so (it's still there but just as individual tracks now..still $150). I guess that's all on Roger's things that need fixing list, but way down.
Gill Civil in New Zealand
Can I put my hand up and say that her first releases were on Propeller ;))
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The speed of this Mac screams.
Unless you're trying to run an Adobe CS4 hog, which slooowwwws it down dreadfully over time, which a reboot only seems to fix.
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Stuff world peace, the world needs vinyl re-issues - with orignal liner notes/comics etc
For vinyl, Roger may be best to let the Europeans handle it under license. They do these things pretty bloody well..or a label like Sundazed in the US.
New Zealand mostly has a very bad track record when it comes to reissuing it's past. There are exceptions...EMI for example has done sterling job with their 60's catalogue, although that's ground to a halt (as has EMI more or less), and I'm quite proud of my Ak79, Bigger Than Both of Us and Give It A Whirl comps, and the deleted one I did for Th'Dudes (apols. for the gratuitous plugs), but aside from the FN catalogue, where are the remastered Hello Sailor albums, or the Car Crash Set album, Exponents albums, or all the early DeepGrooves bits? The Enz albums were remastered but packaged in half baked versions of their sleeves with no information and bugger all in out-takes or extra bits, no recording info etc. The Mockers package was shite, there are no remastered Supergroove albums, aside from a hits, and the original Zodiac La De Das and Underdogs albums, all NZ landmarks, have been unavailable since the 1970s.
Only Rob Mayes, bless him (it is Xmas after all) has put any real effort into a careful revisiting of the lost past. His label is like our Sundazed.
It's a shitty situation.
Myself I'd love to see Roger pick half a dozen people straight off, and get them to do a FN Back To MIne type album each, just to get the flavours back into the market place, at least.
Oh, and one more gratuitous plug to go, there is now a remastered Screaming Meemees album, with bonus tracks (digital only so far) at Amplifier and iTunes ;-)
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Saw Roger Shepherd tonight, and confirmed that it is indeed a 100% acquisition of Flying Nun, with Warner distribution in New Zealand as part of the deal.
That is thoroughly wonderful news....
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This is simply industry inertia
Indeed. I was cut off from eMusic earlier this year. I received an email saying I was being deactivated as i was outside the US or Europe. An email to their support got no response.
The major labels really can't grizzle at all about piracy when they are responsible for this sort of artist unfriendly bullshit. If they can work out an IP address they can allocate income to the correct rights holders. It's lazy, and I feel no twinges of guilt about downloading illegally something they won't let me buy.
eMusic made a major mistake letting the big boys dictate a bunch of rules that ran counter to their core philosophy although I guess it's too early to work out whether it's had a negative effect, but I for one no longer bother to recommend them.
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recalls Sandinista era Clash
And for we ageing ex punks, it's 7 years today:
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Whilst it was a chore to narrow it down, I blogged my best albums of 2009 here. There have been a couple of late comers since but they can slip into 2010's list.
Tracks of the year? To many I think for me to list as I tend to go through tunes at a heady rate and they likely number in their hundreds, so I won't even try.
Roger re-asserting control over FN is a wonderful thing (and I note, not being privy to the deal, that the release is carefully worded to sidestep who still actually owns the label, and I'm guessing Warners still have a share) and you'd hope that the potential of what could be achieved with the catalogue and the slight mess it's become in recent years, will be resolved by that personal touch.
What a convoluted journey that's been, though.
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Complete threadjack but this is rather cool:
Merry Xmas y'all