Dub dot dash

Never mind the bollocks, here's the New Zealand Music Awards
Headed up to Real Groovy last night for Gareth Shute's book launch, and detoured via Aotea Square, to catch the Exciting Red Carpet Action outside the Aotea Centre. There was an outdoor PA system blaring away with a couple of excitable announcers commenting on each new arrival, as yet another stretch limo drove onto the Square... "and look, coming up the red carpet, it's Blindspott and Debbie Harwood!".

You can laugh at this all tonight on C4 from 8.30pm, with their Red Carpet Special prior to their Musc Awards coverage. That shtick may work in Hollywood, but really, these cats are musicians, not celebrities, and that whole red carpet crap is about a million miles away from the reality of the NZ music scene. The above photo is Mr Chris Knox of Grey Lynn being interviewed by Camilla Martin. Mr Knox is wearing a fetching dalmatian-patterned fur coat. Also saw Don Brash (loser) talking to some tv crew, with a blond woman in tow - not his wife (she's from Singapore, you know). Robyn thought this red carpet scenario was "... someone was trying to make like it was the Grammys. A case of "fake it till you make it," perhaps?" On the nail.

Congrats to Fat Freddy's Drop for their multiple wins - Mu's comment was "This helps Wellington's bad NPC year - this will sort of smooth it over." In a more serious vein, the band members noted that "We're more like the grand-children [of roots music] it's been going on for along time - there were the Herbs." Respect to your elders - nice one, fellas.

The Winners...
Album of the Year: Based On A True Story - Fat Freddy's Drop
Single of the Year: The Otherside - Breaks Co-op
Best Group: Based On A True Story - Fat Freddy's Drop
Breakthrough Artist of the Year: What Your Heard - The Checks
Best Male Solo Artist: Magic City - P-Money
Best Female Solo Artist: Into the West - Yulia
Songwriter of the Year: Welcome Home - Dave Dobbyn
Highest Selling NZ Album: Into The West - Yulia
Highest Selling NZ Single: We Gon Ride - Dei Hamo
Best Rock Album: Love Is The New Hate - Shihad
Best Urban/Hip-Hop Album: Magic City - P-Money
Best Dance/Electronica Album: Del Ray System - Del Ray System
Best Music Video: We Gon Ride - Chris Graham & Dei Hamo
Best Aotearoa Roots Album: Based On A True Story - Fat Freddy's Drop
Best Classical Album: The Complete Piano Music of Douglas Lilburn, Volume - Dan Poynton & Opera Arias - Jonathan Lemalu
People's Choice Award: Based On A True Story - Fat Freddy's Drop
International Achievement Awards: Scribe, Evermore, Finn Brothers

The book launch was fun - Gareth's band Ryan McPhun and the Ruby Suns played a few songs, then stopped, as Ryan said they were having tuning problems, and Gareth added that it was probably him - to fill in time, the drummer pipes up with "How about that Gareth Shute, aye?" And the bass player adds "great writer, bad tuner". Then Gareth decides to tell a joke, which makes the rest of the band groan. He's a fine writer, talented musician, but his jokes are really, really bad. Go and buy his book and perhaps we can keep him gainfully employed as a writer, not a comedian.


new toy... Akai MPC2500 sampler. Oooohhhhh...
"On August 31, 2005 I was going on a trip to Tokyo, for the labor day weekend, to buy some gear and see what's new in Akihabara, it's a town in Tokyo that has nothing but electronics, it's about 15 blocks from computers to computer parts to memory to musical gear I love that town.

"So as I always do I called my friend Mr. Nakamura to see what up, he's the head engineer and designer for AKAI. He tells me he just got back in town and to come see the new MPC 2500. So the next day I went to AKAI headquarters in Yokohama City and when I saw it all I could say was "PHATT". We sat down and I asked a lot of questions and he filled me in on everything we played with it for about an hour. It's got a 64-Track MIDI Sequencer and a 32-voice 16bit Stereo Digital Sampler. They moved the pads in the center and their rock solid with velocity and pressure sensitive..."

Find out more here.

Via Boing boing... I always thought the Doors were a bunch of overblown rock crud, but this story is alright...

"Doors drummer won't allow songs to played
Mark Frauenfelder: The LA Times has an article about Doors' drummer John Densmore's refusal to allow Doors' songs to be used in TV commercials.

"People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music," Densmore said. "I've had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn't commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That's not for rent."

When Cadillac offered $15 million for the rights to use "Break On Through," the surviving members of the band wanted the money, but Densmore held out.

"Everyone wanted him to do it," said John Branca, an attorney who worked on the Cadillac proposal. "I told him that, really, people don't frown on this anymore. It's considered a branding exercise for the music. He told me he just couldn't sell a song to a company that was polluting the world.

WTF is a "branding exercise?" Link"