Posts by Simon Grigg
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Interesting point. i wonder who the first non singing drummer or bass player to be included in this popular choices fest will be.
Frank Gibson Jnr?
Should be Phil Warren....but not for his drumming
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And quite frankly, I'd rather see Murray Cammick in there before half the musicians that owe big slabs of their career to him...oh, and (despite the controversy), Eldred Stebbing
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Martin Phillips or Chris Knox
I'm sure they'll get their turn but these things are all about scratching the right backs....
The thing about Jordan is he means so much to so much of the country, far more than either of those two richly deserving individuals. Sadly, I bet most NZers couldn't name a Knox song beyond Not Given Lightly, and even less a Chills song.
Whereas Jordan's songs, like em or hate em, are national anthems.And, if the rules are the same as the US, you need to wait 25 years from your first album release. I think Knox is ok if you count Toy Love, but Martin has another five years to wait
http://www.discogs.com/release/820704
Steve Gilpin
I think I could find about 300 people I'd put on a list before I got to Steve...he didn't actually do that much in NZ, played a few TV shows, formed a prog band who jumped on the punk bandwagon and then hopped it to Australia where they had a big hit and toured a lot. AFAIR no-one took them that seriously in NZ at the time.
But Dragon...yeah, if only for Rock'n'Roll Ponsonby...now that's an Auckland song.
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Heather, I think the bet was with the rest of the band, who bet him something like $2000 each.
Yep, it was and he did it. His attitude was "I don't have a problem with alcohol, I just like it". He stopped cold turkey the moment he took the bet (about 92/3 I think) and started the day he got paid.
I do remember Jordan drinking about 18 low alcohol beers in a row on a tour about 91, driving from Napier to Wellington or somewhere...he said he liked the taste. The downside was the excessive number of loo stops the rest of us had to endure.
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I remember a bunch of obnoxious kids on stage at a grotty little Chch club called PJs, with a lead singer in a kilt, circa July 81 I think.
You walked in and couldn't move, transfixed by the sheer joyous energy and bratty noise.
The next evening I spent with Jordy. Harry and Dave in their house listening to With The Beatles over and over again all night. I don't know how many bottles of DB Brown went down that night but it wasn't good.Jordan just kept on saying "listen to the chords", over and over again. He'd ripped part the song construction on that album and reassembled it all in his head.
The next year I took them on their first national tour, supporting The Screaming Meemees (and I found a venue placed paper ad from Tauranga for that tour the other day..The Screaming Meemees with support The Dance Explorers....they were hardly household names then and records show they were living on per diems and not much more, they were not a crowd puller and they cost us money, at least for the first part of the tour). Half way thru the tour Victoria was released and you could feel the swell beginning as student radio picked it up and the buzz began.
He's one of New Zealand's greatest songwriters, perhaps the greatest 'pop' writer we've ever had, and, no matter his state, and I've seen him in a few, as have many of us, the ultimate performer....New Zealand (and I mean the parts out there beyond Ponsonby and Cuba Street and The Kings Arms) just love him.
I love him big time and as cynical as I am about this "Hall of Fame" thingy there are few who deserve to be in there more.
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The various subsidies are less attractive when you realise they are almost exclusively for the Malay majority and generally inaccessible to the Chinese, Indian & other minorities.
The time before last I was in KL I had lunch with the family of a Supreme Court judge...all Chinese, at a wonderful Chinese restaurant full of very affluent families, and met a variety of enormously successful businessmen, all Chinese and Indian. The minorities are not as disadvantaged in real terms as one is often led to believe. They've dominated Malaysian economic life since the UK left (and before) and there seems to be a desire by the powers to even the playing field somewhat, albeit a bit heavy handed.
I love Malaysia as a country, its Singapore with it's soul still intact, and is in many ways far more first world now than quite a few first world counties I can think of.
One comment that was thrown at me by a Chinese Malaysian who'd spent some time in NZ was "In this country we all walk on the same path, in your country, no matter what I do, I'm always made to feel like a chink....". It rattles one's cosy preconceptions a tad.
Then again in Indonesia, I'll always be a Bule....after 300 years the Dutch still found that in 1949.
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it was one of the promoters who supplied the substance..therein lies the rub
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and boy did those superstar DJ's get revered.
And paid....
There is the oft repeated story (actually captured on video) of the superstar UK DJ who, two minutes before he was about to earn his $40k fee in Auckland, was offered a short white line of something by somebody and partook, only to immediately pass out (it was not what he thought it was, more fool he). Somebody else had to play the set, although said 'star' still kept his cheque.
Does that sort of rock'n'roll behaviour make him a musician or just a bloody idiot.....
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But I'm guessing he had to share (some of) the wealth on this one:
Just Be Good To Me
don't think he was ever shy about attributing the SOS / Jam & Lewis tie in, that being the whole point of the record, although as I recall Paul Simenon had to go and see the lawyers to get his name on the credits
CBS released quite a groovy Dub Be Good to Me remix of Guns of Brixton thereafter as I recall.
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And then later no one complained when the people in the Gorillaz videos were different from the people who recorded the music.
Hardly a new thing either is it.....the list of records various Led Zeppelin members played on anonymously is incredible, and then we have The Monkees, The Sex Pistols (damn that geetar sounds professional), and the backing vocal). You think Janet Jackson sings all those vox, or Madonna......
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or all that stuff you hear when you see U2 "live" is actually live...There are a few NZ acts who've done a little less on their records than were credited for over the years too.
In the case of MV it was screamingly obvious to the whole world that they didn't make the records, and that was part of what they were, manufactured pop. The record covers even admitted it.
The guy, Frank Farian, who made the MV records probably did deserve a grammy, much more so that half the dross that gets one. He was / is one very clever man even if you hate the end result.