Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
50m daily users seems a lot
I understand the impending third tranche of charges against Kim firmly places him on the Grassy Knoll and as team leader onboard United 93.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
They hadn't properly launched Megabox yet and had only started talking about it in November IIRC.
Coupled with the fact that Megabox was not really offering anything more than that offered by iTunes and a 1000 other sites.
These wacky conspiracy theories have yet to explain exactly why the music industry saw Megabox as a threat.
I doubt it had even noticed...
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Hard News: CELEBRITY DRUG SHOCK NEWS! AGAIN., in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I was in a house (not mine) where CNN was playing in the background. They ran wall to wall Whitney for the best part of three hours (at which time our host turned the TV off).
After Piers Morgan had finished equating Whitney, more or less, with The Beatles, Spector, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Sinatra, they seemed able to find a steady stream of talking heads to waffle endlessly supporting this equation, pausing only to say how much they loved her.
None of whom, of course, had been available to Whitney the night before when she was drowning in her bath or in the years before.
The death of a junkie is always tragic but the inevitable rush to bathe in and bleed the passing by the media when said junkie is famous (and in this case was blessed with a fabulous voice) always accentuates the awfulness of such human waste.
But they always do, and Sony's now infamous and 'accidental' (read: they got caught - they did the same with Jacko but got away with it) raising of the price of her music the day after, merely underlines the true value the media corporations intend to extract from her after her death.
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Hard News: A right old Barney, in reply to Stephen Glaister,
A number of people gave up and left (some had last buses or ferries to catch) before NO came on so that NO actually played for a smaller crowd than Cooper Clarke had had.
I do remember a fairly thin crowd, but I also remember an incredibly enthusiastic crowd.
For a bunch of us it did feel like the second coming AFAICR. I don't think I was ever more excited before a gig and, happily afterwards (unlike The Birthday Party at the same venue around the same time).
Yes they were remote, but that was rather the point and expected, no?
. All of that 'straight from NYC clubs' music was fairly alien at the time
Unless you found yourself at A Certain Bar, up there on the corner of Albert and Wellesley on a weekend night.
I look at an album like the Strut Disco Not Disco comp. and see a large part of the soundtrack of the times.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to linger,
As one specific example, usually the stories chosen for publication about China in Japan play up crime, fraud, or pollution.
It's fascinating to see shows on Chinese channels playing up the horrific conditions in US jails and the lack of access to heathcare for so many workers in the US. I saw both in Guangzhou a couple of years back.
I guess selective reinforcement of stereotypes and gross generalisations about what are both inconceivably massive nations goes both ways.
As I think Chris has repeatedly, and somewhat bravely given the way the nation is portrayed westwards, tried to point out upthread it really isn't that simple (an almost offensively huge understatement in itself).
You'd be forgiven for thinking, reading the MSM (and even a couple of comments here too) that it is though.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
But you did have basic labour standards.
Hell, we had Lofty Urlich and Frank Barnard dragging us into the central courtyard at least once a week telling us to down tools and head home over what always seemed to be a slight infraction by the management.
I can still fondly hear the growing chants of 'homa-homa-homa' that always followed a rousing tirade by brother Lofty.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It’s just possible that a shirt manufactured in the EU is more expensive than one made in a sweatshop because (surprise!) an atelier in Paris or a plant in Milan can’t pay its workers a few Euros a day for 14 hour shifts; meeting OSH and environmental standards isn’t cheap.
It’s also a huge jump to assume that because something is cheap it comes from a ‘sweatshop’.
I have no experience of manufacturing in China but I do have some experience in Thailand and extensive experience in Indonesia. The latter nation in particular is tainted with the same sorts of labour charges as China, with some past substance I think.
However my experience, which isn’t insubstantial, is of factories little different to the places I worked when I was student making holiday bucks in South Auckland – and of labour laws that are strong, free health and childcare etc.
The reason, primarily, that the shirt you buy from Milan would be vastly more expensive has as much to do with the simple fact that everything, society wide, is vastly more expensive in Milan – wages, rent, food, transport, schooling, health and so on, as anything else. And of productivity levels and efficiencies that we can no longer attain in the west of course.
Sure it can be gruelling, hard, and mostly faceless work, but so was the packing floor at Westfield when I was a lad. And we were not well paid mostly – even for the compulsory overtime hours we had to work.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Mick Jagger, using his LSE credentials no doubt, took the bull by the horns and gained control of the Rolling Stones music thus paving the way for other artists to get a fair suck of the sav.
That's an interesting re-reading. The Rolling Stones were one of the most screwed acts of all time after their manager, Allen Klein (yes - the Allen Klein) stripped them of both their masters and publishing on the Decca era materiel.
They own their recordings post '70 when Decca contract expired and they set up Rolling Stones Records, via Atlantic, but it wasn't some grand inspired move - many acts were doing exactly what they were doing at the time, mostly inspired by Apple Records (even though The Beatles didn't ever acquire more than veto control over the use of their masters, instead of ownership).
And the drive for the Rolling Stones to do that - aside from the Apple inspiration - came from Ahmet Ertegun and Prince Rupert Loewenstein, their financial advisor from 1970 to 1986.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The aim is clearly to have these guys convicted before they ever get near a judge and jury.
TVNZ's 6.00 news last night produced a filmmaker from Christchurch who breathlessly told us how many thousands she had lost to Kim. No evidence to support this of course.
Will they televise the hanging?
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
I'm surprised it's taken so long for the US to have a go at the cyber-lockers.
I agree, Mark. I've long been surprised at how little noise has been made by the mega-content owners over these.
That said, as Russell says, these sorts of sites are extensively used by the artists and creators contracted to these companies, and there will no doubt be grumbling. I've lost several uploads myself in this - all legit.
And this does feel to me like another building PR disaster on the part of the MPAA and RIAA. Aside from the assets seized, there doesn't seem to be an upside in this for them.