Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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On another note entirely, however (and I know this contradicts pretty much my entire comment above), look! Siltbreeze just released a Victor Dimisich Band retrospective. Download those "Native Waiter" MP3s today!
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Then there’s the case of Spotify, which apparently pays less than 0.4p per stream. A song that receives a million streams therefore gets around £3800. Hardly any song, other than current top-40 pop or classic-rock back catalogue, can expect to get that sort of play. So, paradoxically, we end up with a system of remuneration for musicians that’s far more hostile to the non-omnipresently-popular and mainstream even than the pre-internet music business, even though it’s still largely controlled by the same people. As ever, this is not the shining internet future we were promised.
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Getting back to the Labour leadership, I thought this Harvard Business Review piece on the gendered nature of leadership failure was interesting, especially in light of (1) the all-male nature of the choices available, (2) Shane Jones’s … interesting … approach to differentiating his brand, and (3) the history of the prime-ministership in NZ over the past five years. “Why do so many incompetent men become leaders?”
… there is no denying that women’s path to leadership positions is paved with many barriers … But a much bigger problem is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men, and the fact that we tend to equate leadership with the very psychological features that make the average man a more inept leader than the average woman. The result is a pathological system that rewards men for their incompetence while punishing women for their competence, to everybody’s detriment.
[via Metafilter.]
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Hard News: Political Idol, or whatever…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And that’s where Labour should start saying “fuckity-byes” to Cunliffe ... [gratuitous Sarah Palin analogy] ...
STOP PRESS. Craig Ranapia inadvertently endorses David Cunliffe as potential Labour leader most likely to cause to serious headaches for National. :P
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Hard News: Friday Music: Outwards and Upwards, in reply to Sacha,
She has probably influenced more people already than you or I ever will. That deserves respect, not sneering.
You know who also influenced more people than any of us here ever will? That's right: HITLER.
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I guess I'm too old -- or too young -- to be Lorde's target audience. It just sounds like shoe-store music to me. That it's already being used to mass-market fast food seems entirely appropriate.
This week, on the other hand, has been all about the new True Widow release. As someone put it over at Metafilter, "such good fuzzy sludgery":
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Is anyone else getting a sense from that logo that there may be other startling revelations about PRISM waiting to be deciphered in certain Lady Gaga music videos?
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I've been sick in bed all Bank Holiday weekend, so I decided I might as well see if I've been missing any decent Auckland/NZ bands since I left. What the hell, right? Fired up the links here and then the various bfm Youtube channels and then moved to bandcamp ... Crawling out of the rabbit hole a day later, I can say I really like Evil Twins/Las Tetas, Mellow Grave, Paquin, Ghost Wave, bits and pieces of Astro Children and Sunken Seas, and Cat Venom. Maybe I'm just an easy mark because I'm feverish and my faculties aren't running at full strength ... but that looks like a healthy and diverse scene ...
Judging by the "In Session" clips, though, there are a lot of bands that really do have to lay off the Iron & Wine influences ...
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Jangling most certainly is back. Viz:
We went up to Islington with a just-arrived Wellington friend week before last to see Veronica Falls. Great gig, but man they sounded like The Chills. The illusion of being in Dunedin in the mid-80s was only shattered during song breaks, when the band mumbled at us in Glaswegian. So good.
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In terms of the week's music, Esben and the Witch and Thoughtforms at Scala on Tuesday night were pretty hard to beat. Ears are still ringing. Four Tet on Thursday was OK as well ...