Posts by Graham Reid
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Chockasundy you are pretty much right.
Generally, I'd say the average Aussie is readier to have a laugh, come up with a quick quip and not worry too much about inane niceties. (Example: we witnessed a police officer admonishing a jay walker in Sydney. She asked him "Are you going to give me ticket?" He replied no. She said "Well piss off then!" and walked away).
BUT.... the witty replies posted in the discussion forum (of those who got the satirical piece) shows me that there are loads of clever wags here too. Whe need people like that scripting locally made plays, TV dramas and comedies - or writing our politicians' speeches.
Megan (G's wife)
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oh shit
that was so long ago i had forgotten . . .
mea culpa
i guess it proves the only time i ever think of this woman in when these damn anniversaries roll around
i shall get out of here now -
Is it worth me intruding at this late date re The Cure -- and their gig at Mainstreet all those decades ago?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
It might have been in about 1980 (hence my joke in the "review") and the intro-music was the astonishingly loud Psychedelic Furs' first album: I recall going '"ah... fug.. wow" when the Furs' brilliantly cyncial "India" fell out of the soundsystem on my head. (a song i love to this day -- and which i am listening to right now on gloriously party-damaged old vinyl)
I think there were maybe 60 people there at Mainstreet (okay, maybe 70\80, but no more despite what some may claim) and when the pre-show noise went off this huddle of hunched up Poms shuffled on stage and the pre-Goth/underground "crowd" offered what we might charitably call "scattered" and nervous "applause"?
Skinny Robert Smith got to mike stand and offered a distainful: "We haven't done anything yet".
. . . and that shut us up.
After that all I remember is that it was the goddamnloudesfuggintnoise I have ever suffered and I left after about three "songs".
I loved them before the gig and loved them after -- I think I even went into print or some debate about Killing An Arab because, more fool me, I'd actually read Camus at that time -- but the gig was just noise.
Without a word of a lie, that has been the only gig I've ever left because it was too loud.
And I've seen Bailterspace do a mindnumbingly tedious gig at CBGBs -- a space the size of your Grey Lynn villa lounge.
Think about it BS fans!
Of course no one was there erither, but i guess that's another story for another day
Comments on the Cure at Mainstreet welcomed.
Frankly the Knack were much better . . .
And you could learn about that here!
http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/mybackpages/dsp_backpage.cfm?backpageid=21Ho ho ho!!!!!!!!!
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I shall weigh back in briefly to pick up a couple of points.
Simon that was a very generous compliment and I appreciate it. It does raise the question of whether reviewers should implicitly or otherwise be helping sell tickets/CDs etc. I have noticed that younger reviewers/writers quickly fall for being cheerleaders of a genre or an album (remember all the dance music v guitar bands nonsense -- as if you couldn't like both?)
I think I can honestly say I haven't ever tried to "sell" a record to anyone -- although often I would like that to have been a natural consequence of what has been written (If I liked something why would i not want others to share the discovery? etc)
Equally however I don't think I have ever said readers should NOT buy an album. i have edited that out of some writer's copy because I genuinly don't think that is part of the critic's contract with their readers/the public etc.
Someone mentioned putting "I think" into reviews. Nope, if it is under your name then that covers that one and when you have so few words you'll need 'em all.
In that regard, the review space has shrunk to criminally low levels lately in most magazines/papers. An album in 250 words? Tough call, why back in my day you could do 500 - 600 or a whole 1000 word column about an album if you cared too. By the way Lou's comment was more blunt than that, I think he called Christgau (who has that absurd school repiort thing of A and B+ etc) a "toef*****".
Stars? They are just a shorthand but I have always believed that if your review is clear then they aren't needed. but the public seems to like them. People only read and remember one-star and five-star reviews. If too much stuff gets three stars that is simply the bell curve at work I guess.
You can also have fun with them. I savaged a Shania Twain album and gave it two stars but my final line was "a hit probably". (Tragically I was right on all counts: rubbish that went to number one.)
Tall poppy syndrome? It's bullshit and has been used for as long as I can remember to stifle criticism in this country. Is the alternative to let people who have reached a particularly high threshold get away with nonsense -- or not feel they have to prove themselves anew every time? You are only as good as your last hit single, as they say.
And paying for tickets? Yes I know the hand-in-glove that operates but it seems to me that if a theatre company or someone wants to say, "there's no freebies" the obvious solution is for the paper or magazine to buy tickets and send the reviewer along anyway, otherwise you are letting "them" dictate the ground rules for a game they aren't playing. (The critic is paid by the newspaper or magazine, not by the theatre company or record company).
I recall some occasions at the Herald when some theatre group or director tried the embargo thing and we just paid and went about our critical business.
So that's more grist to be milled . . . now I'm back to listen to more Spinal Tap to remind me of what I like and don't like about metal.
Humour will out.
g
(And yes, I did like All Things Must Pass Simon. Although I trashed the third disc of jamming. Even back then I wasn't keen on those noodling jam sessions. Seems I remember it better than Ringo.) -
Much to my amusement and then disappointment I have followed some of the discussion here -- and I guess it proves why we can't seem to have an intelligent and focussed discussion about the New Zealand music industry, expectations etc as I outlined in the original blog.
As someone in the Rutles once said, he got hold of the wrong end of the stick and started beating about the bush with it. (I think it was the Rutles, I stand corrected and doubtless will be)
Anyone like to pick this one up and go back to the original topic? Or are we happy discussing the various merits of Kenny G, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny and others -- who don't seem to have too much to do with NZ music.
Focus people, focus!
Cheers.
(By the way we have a very large cat too. Righto, go for your life on that if you like. Maybe it's a metaphor?) -
Just to keep this one going: i agree with simon, auckland airport can be the worst in the world. that was certainly my experience for many years -- although these days fat women in uniform barking 'stay in line, stay in line' at American airports have now overtaken them.
my objection to auckland these days is not coming in so much (more of that in a minute) but getting out: this under-staffing/two hours beforehand etc seems to me to be all for the convenience of airlines rather than the paying customer.
the other day it was a nightmare, people were loudly swearing and asking why there was one check-in for the few business class folks and only three for the hundreds (and there were literally hunmdreds) waiting to get into cattle class. it was air new zealand.anyway re coming home: here is an extract from the final chapter in my travel book Postcards From Elsewhere, you'll get the drift.
Curiously this piece was first published (in a truncated form) in the Herald when i just got sick of it all. I was never stopped again!
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I have been lucky enough to travel for my work but most of my journeys -- to the surprise of my journalism colleagues who often assumed I was a highly favoured and well-funded travel writer -- have been at my on expense and purely for pleasure. However for a while it was in the nature of my job to travel regularly between New Zealand and Australia, often just for a day or two of interviews.
I mention this because an odd thing happened recently. I arrived back in New Zealand and walked straight through Customs.This had happened only twice before that I could recall, both times when I had young children with me.
Every other time I have endured the customary questions, “Did you pack the bag yourself sir? Are you carrying anything for anyone else?”
This is fair and these people are doing their job, and so I politely anticipate all this and answer courteously. I have tried declaring and not, and patiently endured such questions as why I might have wanted to go to Vietnam (“Because it’s there?”) or whether I took drugs in Amsterdam (“Yes, because it is not illegal. But if you are actually asking if I am carrying any in my bag …”)
Often I have ended up waiting off to the side of other passengers, just me and a few unhappy looking women from Thailand, and have usually waited an hour while my tiny bag is scoured again and my passport taken away for further fruitless scrutiny.
In my experience drug dealers and parrot smugglers don’t look like me -- and I’m weary of having to apologise for a passport which has been well used. I thought that was what it was for.
I assumed my passport must have some invisible stamp on it. Or was it the hair? Or the t-shirt?
So I asked once and was told I had been taken aside for “acting suspiciously by the baggage carousel“. I pointed out quietly that I had just flown direct from London and was in no position to act any other way than very tired and I really just wanted to go home. It made no difference, the process still took an hour. And yes, I did pack the bag myself. And no …
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reece asks where i live.
I am in the large apartments which have just been completed so look brand new (and i'm pleased to note sellers are pricing accordingly)
Thankfully we are not in the ones opposite morningside station which have laughably bad "eaves" put over some of the windows. they look like they have been added by the boys from 3D Gen woodwork class. But no matter, the builders who worked on our place say that if we give it a year that whole block will be uninhabitable and will probably fall down.
Trains? I used to take the train a fair bit when working at the Herald and got used to delays, non-arrivals and so on. What I could never get used to however was the crowding on trains at 8.30am and 4.30-5.30pm.
Now it doesn't take a genius to work out that a train which goes to Newmarket passing St Peters and Auckland Grammar in the morning is going to be full of schoolboys carrying backpacks and bags.
So there is always this Tokyo-styled press of humanity at those times. Maybe just two more cariages in peak periods?
In my original post I was really only talking about the CBD as being a shithole, I find Auckland suburbs kinda nice.
Back in March 2005 I wrote this
http://www.publicaddress.net/default,1935.sm#post1935I think the application of a little logic might be helpful to improve the CBD: close those streets around Chancery, get some foot patrol cops -- the number of drunks and out-of-it people is kinda menacing -- no U-turns on Q St (taxi drivers take note), have an annual window display competition, insist something be done about the reflecting glass on the HSBC building (more distracting and dangerous than any billboard), all commercial deliveries other than couriers to be done before 9am and after 6pm, no heavy vehicles up Q St unless given specific permission etc etc etc
And sorry, I don't get the Carlaw option. The Stanley St motorway entrances are a racetrack and bloody complicated. There are few ways into that entrance to Carlaw (down Parnell Rd!!?? You gotta be kidding!) Access and egress look impossible there. How do you get to Carlaw from coming down the northwestern motorway? The lanes shunt you directly down to the port or up Parnell or along Custom St. Can't see a right turn into a parking area there being viable etc.
And 65,000 people all leaving at the same time into those lanes and narrow streets? Worse than North Harbour Stadium snarl ups.Frankly I'm just happy to be staying at home for a wee while.
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Thanks to Nick who, rather more diligently than me, pursued the on-line thing.
The article I mentioned is here: -
Making up songs isn't easy, but making up a whole band is even harder. I did it -- with the permsssion of the real Ramblers -- in a series of stories which ran in the Herald a couple of years back.
The real Ramblers, which included promoter Brent Eccles, were going to a play a rare gig so we asked if we could kind of extrapolate a bit and write the story of the band, me going to see them record and so on.
As is always the case with such pieces, some people took it at face value -- just as they did when I filed the Amber Riley-Thomson saga, the series about a stroppy 14-year old kid whose family allowed me access to report on their exploits.
That one had talkback lines burning -- and in Oz according to my sister who heard some blatherers nutting off about this horrid and ungrateful little girl.
The Ramblers' story didn't have quite the same effect, but I did get a lot of calls about it. One guy wanted to know how to get hold of their Cheap Muscatel and a Korean Guitar album. (The title of which I made up and is a special favourite of mine).
Anyway, here's the first of the Ramblers stories, you can find the others on-line.http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=0F46E580-39E3-11DA-8E1B-A5B353C55561
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Michael Stevens again, on a roll now . . .
Of course The Swingers had their brief gay phase with "I'm doing the beat",
and Split Enz briefly got caught up in the rogernomics flat tax hysteria of the early 80s with "I hope I never have to file again..."