Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to BenWilson,
If I agree with him in any way it's that I don't see major trends seizing such a large share of public listening so much
Once again - dubstep. it's transformed and penetrated the way popular music is made, both inside and outside it's own narrow genre. We just don't know it often because we hear it as the norm now after it wriggled in from the creative edges.
Other niche forms also radically reinvented the mainstream in the past 20 or so years, but - likewise - we often simply don't get that because the adaption and adoption of the peripheral styles is gradual and they simply become an accepted part of the enjoyable noise around us.
Will we ever see another Elvis or Beatles? I think we might. Actually, I think we will. If we do, it will likely come when we least expect it and from a place that we simply don't have on our immediate radar.
Like Liverpool.
I'd also argue that both hip-hop and house/electronica were Elvises in their own radical wee ways. They both globally revolutionised popular culture and the sounds made. 'Elvis' does not need to be defined as a single person or group, surely.
All it takes is a contemporary heir to Rick Rubin or Brian Epstein. And there are countless aspirings out there.
One needs to remember how unlikely The Beatles were when they arrived.
vinyls
Yeech - hobby horse - vinyl is the plural when applied to the round black things we play on turntables. Pedantic. Sorry.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Matthew Steindl,
Rather it was an attempt to flag the importance of communication, co-operation and hopefully collaboration on these projects; to help them be a success.
Thanks, Matthew. Maximising the resources and integration of these are crucial, especially in a small nation such as ours (we have, after all, largely built a music industry by backing massive natural talent with - on international terms - smoke, mirrors and a few pennies).
We are all working towards connected targets here.
Love to see that report when done. My email is on the post and my site.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Russell Brown,
if it didn't seem to be all about funding.
I also think that it's perhaps worth mentioning that, if the DB is done as it should be, a digital front end for New Zealand music and musical culture has the potential to play a major part in the generation of fairly substantial export returns for the nation - dwarfing any investment. The earning potential of our music offshore and the part it would and can play in the sustainability of the NZ industry cannot be understated.
To realize that potential, it needs to have an approach, look and feel that is arguably only understood by those working to maximise that - and its potential audiences.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Matthew Steindl,
Likewise Simon, I am immensely grateful that private collectors such as yourself exist
With respect, Matthew, nothing I've written above has anything to do with my or anyone else's collections. Edit: I see the reference earlier: no-one has contacted me or others. That was an aside to the main topic, but, yes I get your point.
I personally applaud Mike Chunn, and those behind the NZ Music Archive for their initiative
Mike's recent initiative too, as far as I know, is quite another thing to the NZMA as mentioned upthread. It's an attempt to gather together imagery fast disappearing while we still can. He and I have talked about a fusion of resources and content.
Andrew Schmidt has posted on all this at Mysterex.
a recent experience suggests the degree of institutional opposition to Simon’s initiative may be being under-estimated
Indeed.
What bemuses is that having authored, with some fairly strong and informed input from others, a 70 page proposal (on these pages I think only Russell has seen any great part of this), I'm repeatedly being told by those who've not seen it and have only an overview of parts of it, that they can do it all.
I really don't think this forum is the correct place to start detailing what I - and others who do have a pretty wide and coalface overview of what is needed/wanted - are asking for but it may suffice to say that the inability to grasp the bigger picture I'm seeing doesn't fill me with much confidence.
I'm not lacking respect for what NatLib and ATL do and will do, very much the opposite, but many of the posts in this thread seem to me to underline exactly why a database such as is being suggested, needs to be both dedicated and standalone.
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...humbled - but thank you.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I'm with Paynter and Tamsin6 in that there's nothing to prevent librarians from doing this. In my previous job I used to have to get copyright and other clearances for artworks, cartoons, pieces of text.
That rather misses the point of what many of us think is needed, and being requested, as I'd argue do parts of the the above posts from Paynter and Tamsin6.
At the risk of repeating myself again, and repeating what Russell has said too, we - as in those who have and are closely involved in the local music industry - are not looking for a filing, collating or collecting process as an archive, nor a way of making recordings publicly available.
A two pronged entity is desirable. One is simply a repository of what has been recorded by record labels and studios etc - a physical and digital vault if you will. This is first and foremost to retrieve, preserve and prevent decay. It has much in common with what has been done by the film archive.
The second part, which will perhaps come first, and operate at arms length to the other, is a living database of the people, the music and the cultures. It operates almost as a front end to the last 70 years of New Zealand music and also to the future.
It has no exact parallel in New Zealand to date but has elements of NZ on Screen, Wikipedia, Facebook, the All Music Guide, the work of people like Chris Bourke, John Dix & Andrew Schmidt, and Rock's Back Pages mixed in. I'm very uncomfortable using the word archive for this, as it's not.
By it's very nature, it needs to be created, melded and directed by those that create the music and the cultures that surround that music if it's to fulfil its primary role.
Archives that are able to make their materials available to the public in the ways that are being talked about here cost a lot of money.
Both sides may well encourage commercial exploitation and the availability of musics, but that is not a primary focus as above.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think all those three would have a lot to contribute to a music archive.
The contribution of what we're calling Genre or Style Curators - very much people like the above three, plus many others with the necessary expertise in their fields - is central to the detail of my proposal.
It simply can't work without it.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to Russell Brown,
NZ On Screen, of course, only does the digitisation and access part, not the preservation, but I strongly suspect something similar would apply to Simon's project.
Indeed, for the reasons you mentioned in the post, I think it's wise right now to separate the - both vital - functions, as the in-depth preservation part of what we are trying to achieve is likely to stymie the other if we tie these things too closely. It's not a divide I want to see, but realities force it.
That said, a film archive styled repository of recordings is in desperate, desperate need too, and quickly.
Stebbings are doing a pretty amazing job of preserving large bits of what was being lost, but in 2011 we no longer have the bulk of the master-tapes, multi-tracks, and digital data recorded over the previous decades, including the 2000s. What is there, is often spread around the world and only survives at the whim of the current guardians or their estates and heirs when they pass.
The stuff that sits in boxes in old garages is terrifying (and I'm not just talking indie stuff - many of the major label recordings over the years have end up dumped or in some soon forgotten warehouse).
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to David,
focusing on the papers and sounds of NZ musicians of all forms
David, I own, control or have been involved with some fairly large parts of what we call our musical past - much of it very important.
I also work closely with many of the most important label owners, musicians and private curators of our musical history. We have volumes of tapes, papers, imagery, and much, much more. To date the most active attempts to preserve the musical past that we have experienced and helped create - the data, the stories, the wider culture - has all been done privately.
Legal deposit aside, our relationship with the NZ Music Archive is and has been nil and sadly we have already lost so very much.
Perhaps that will change as time goes on, but there is no indication to date that is going to be the case.
I do think you are rather missing the point/s.
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Hard News: Introducing: The New Zealand…, in reply to David,
But, further to the note about the existing NZ Music Archive some recent interesting accessions have included audio archives of Radio Active live music, audio archives of Happy alternative music venue, further additions of audio to the Huggard Jazz archive, further papers of Richard Nunns.
All of which is valuable, but the wider idea that is being talked about - as Russell set out above - is two pronged:
1) a physical archive of master recordings - tapes including multi-tracks and other data which is fast disappearing - in other words a repository.
2) The public database/gathering of our music and the related cultures as above from both Russell and myself.Whenever either of these are touted there always seems to be somebody - who may or may not be related to the Turnbull archive (and no offence meant at all, David) - who pops up somewhat protectively and says we already possess a music archive. We do, but not doing what is desperately needed, and, regardless of the funding, seemingly unlikely to do so, given it's focus and terms of reference.
An accessible - populist even - wide-ranging online database/gathering point for NZ's musical culture is unlikely to ever come from the librarians at the current archive.