Posts by Simon Grigg
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This post: iTunes sales collapsing...has caused massive industry talk over the past couple of days. Some sites suggest that because it excludes dec 06 sales (ie. Xmas when people get their iPods and tend to buy a tune or two) it is skewered. But there is little doubt that legit downloads have plateaued. CD sales fell another 5% year or year in the US this week though (and more globally), whilst pirated MP3 downloads are still rocketing. The per track payment model is clearly not working (DRM is a disaster as many predicted..it was always going to be) and the move to a blanket performance fee that will cover P2P sites too is,in my opinion, inevitable. It was always the way through the morass. Which a) takes the major record companies even more out of the mix and b) gives new meaning to the long tail. iTunes was alays an interim step on the road to the future.
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If I recall correctly, the prize money was weirdly structured. A lot of it had to be spent on marketing, rather than actually recording, which wasn't really what they needed.
trying to remember who the judges were...Doug Hood and Colin Hogg come to mind but I can't remember who else
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But it seemed to us that synths and samplers weren't really a part of either mainstream pop or the FN sound. The cool kids were turning up the treble on their guitars and gazing at their shoes, not sitting at home programming a step sequencer and listening to Kraftwerk.
I may get in trouble for saying this but there was certainly a belief, fairly commonly held, in Ak by the mid to late eighties that FN represented the conservative side of what was being created in the NZ homegrown industry. It was something you heard said a lot.The Chooks were largely seen as a the exception to this perceived conservatism. Things moved very fast in the eighties, partially as a result of the massive changes in NZ, and partially as the result of the huge musical revolutions that followed the punk and post-punk electronic and rhythmic (including the things happening in Detroit & Chicago) explosions.And then there was hip hop too, which had a huge effect on white indie rock'n'roll. What was radical in 82 was very old school in 85.
They were heady times around the world, NZ included.
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Still, the 80s in NZ were a tough time for anyone who didn't like guitars. We had all those local equivalents of Joy Division or the Smiths, but where were the local equivalents of Depeche Mode or Art of Noise?
They were called Car Crash Set, Body Electric, Marginal Era, Ballare and dozens of other bands pulling quite good crowds. The tough time they were having was getting much coverage in the media. There was a huge swell in electronic music happening.
I remember the Headless Chooks getting the Rheineck award too. I was at the ceremony. There was a big fuss, but there had been as much of a fuss when Adijah won the year before. I think the biggest problem was that Lion wanted a Dudes or instant Split Enz to sell their beer.
I'd also question whether all acts were singing in imported accents prior to FN. I think its a little bit of revisionism to say that and unfair. Go and listen to The Features 12" (Jed Town's vocal on Victim is pure North Shore), most of Ak79, Mental Notes ("even his friend, the hippie man" by Judd in pure enzildspeak), or anything by The Blams or Hercos. All of these predate FN and I think, not trying to take anything away from FN at all, but the already thriving indie sector (at least in Ak which was my experience) had long since moved away from that by the time FN came along.
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Body Electric is back anyway it seems, or as we used to say back then, Gordon Bennett!
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god my spelling is atrosious
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and you, Mr Raby, produced a killer 7" single about 1981. Its a lost classic that should be on soem compliation. I played it to death for months and still pull it out regularly.
Russell...I think Alan might be persuaded now. He's less precious about it now. Body Electric do need to loose the vocal. Greg Churchill was asking about it a while back and Roger Perry has been angling to do sometime with CCS for a long time.
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The other scene that needs documenting is the eighties post punk electronic one. Andrew White, Tevor Reekie and myself all talked about it at some stage, going as far as doing a track listing.
As Bob Dakatari so correctly points out on his blog, there were countless other indie lables and scenes going on at the same time as FN throughout the eighties, they just didn't have the same profile. And its easier for the media to get all misty eyed about FN than look a little deeper. Trevor Reekie was doing some incredible stuff throughout the decade..his Obscure Desire single sounds, if you remaster and trim the vocal, as if it could've been released in Europe in 2006. The Car Crash Set tracks are incredible, easily the most revolutionary stuff being produced in AK in the mid eighties. Then there were labels like Unsung, Walking Monk (cassette only).
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I've often thought someone should put a lot of those old compilations onto CD.
I've thought about it now and then. We put Bigger Than Both of Us on CD a couple of years back, and of course we did AK79 a few years back.
The one that gets the most requests by a country mile is Class of 81, mostly from Germans and the like.
Maybe one day...
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No, NZ..the Australian had Bongos, Dabs, No Tag, Blams, Meemees and (I think) Newmatics