Monday, April 30, 2007



Just like Scarlett

Jesus and Mary Chain are playing at Coachella music fest in the States, Scott Kara from NZ Herald is blogging it. Scarlett Johansson sang backup during "Just Like Honey" for JAMC... more pics here.
Ring The Alarm playlist, BaseFM, April 28
James Brown - Blind man can see it
Grant Green - I don't want nobody to give me nothing...
Jacksons - ABC (Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra rework)
The Dynamics - Miss you
Mighty Two - Peeping tom
Stephen Marley - Traffic jam
Keith Mansfield - Crash course (Wai wan remix)
Breakestra - Family rap
JB's - The grunt
SOS Band - Just be good to me
Skuff -The Jamaicans vs the good foot
Courtney Melody and Buster Rhymes - Dangerous bad boy (Flex edit)
Maxwell implosion - Upper left hand corner of the sky
Sly and Family Stone - Smilin'
Bronx river prkway - La valla
Bamboos - Tighten up
Tanya Stephens - Need you tonight
Keith Lawrence - Bad bwoy skank
Romanowski - Days and daze
Ripple - I don't know what it is...
General Levy - The wig (Chaos mix)
Mr Vegas - Heads high
Dawn Penn - To sir with love
Gary Clail - Privatise the air Pt1
Jungle bro and Ernest Ranglin - Funky Bond st (Flex edit)
Yabby You - Conquering lion (Smith and Mighty remix)

best text I got all morning, from one keen listener... "Dope tunes man. You got me lighting up already". Nice.


Ring The Alarm playlist, BaseFM, April 21
Curtis Mayfield - Right on for the darkness
Keith Lawrence - Whoa whoa
Nightmares on wax - The sweetest
Phillis Dillion - Rocksteady
Karl Bryan and the afrokats - Money generator
Stevie Wonder -Masterblaster (dub)
Al Green - Love and happiness (Shoes edit)
Shinehead - Raggamuffin
Turbulence - Ethiopia awakes
Lalo Schifrin - Bullitt (Black Dog remix)
Wiseguys - Too easy
Migs and Jelly - Dub selecta
Maceo and the Macks - Cross the tracks
Butch Cassidy Sound System - Rockers galore
Jungle bro and Ernest Ranglin - Funky Bond st (Flex edit)
Schoolly D and Joe Delia - The player (Ganja Kru remix)
Rob Base - Turn it out (go Base) Meltdown mix
DJ Smash - Light em up
Graham cnetral station -The jam
Society's bag - Let it crawl
Jackie Mittoo - Ska-culation
Scientist - Pick up the dub
Romanowski - The train story
El Chicano - Viva tirado
Love unlimited orchestra - Strange games and things
Stargard - Which way is up?
Fatback band - Yum yum
The Dynamics -90% of me is you







Saturday, April 28, 2007

Auckland Uki Uki Band
Check out the Auckland ukulele night... at Gyoza King, 107 Ponsonby rd (next to Owens bookshop, George FM) Sunday 29th April, 7pm. Bookings - phone 360 8638. All welcome!

Also, the Wellington Ukulele Orchestra will be playing in AK on May 5, at the Schooner Tavern, with Chris Knox, and the following day at the Museum. Details soon.


Further to the Dawn Raid news, the first report from the liquidators following the collapse of Dawn Raid, "Universal and Warner are owed $320,000, but it is not known if they will pursue the debt now entertainment company Dawn Raid has gone into liquidation owing just over $1 million. Debts to the music companies make up the bulk of $518,819 owed to unsecured creditors. Inland Revenue, a preferential creditor, is owed $410,000 and secured creditors, who are first in line for any pay-out, are owed $140,000.

The liquidation report says [Dawn Raid founders] Murnane and Leaosavai'i sold their homes and invested more than $200,000 as Dawn Raid struggled.They tried to negotiate a deal with Inland Revenue to settle outstanding taxes, but their offer was rejected, forcing them to place the companies in liquidation." More here. It seems unclear whether their artists will remain tied to Dawn Raid, but up to 10 interested parties are looking to purchase the assets of Dawn Raid.


Also, there's a funny little story buried in the back of the Weekend Herald today, in the Careers section, which is an interview with an NZSO flute player, Bridget Douglas, and Nathan Haines, on the viability of music as a career - best quote...

"Haines has some advice for musicians looking for their first record deal. Don't bother. He is self-funding the production of his next album, recording it in his own studio and paying for CD production and artwork himself. Traditionally, record companies pay for these things.

Haines says doing it himself will mean he'll get three times more money from each sale of his new CD than if it was produced under contract to a record company.

"Technology now puts the power into the hands of the musicians and you don't need a big record company any more," he says. "The stranglehold the record companies have on artists is dwindling."

Young people, he says, now need to know as much about the music industry as the music itself."

Oh yeah, the article is called "Jazzing up your career options" Heh heh...


Monday, April 23, 2007

Good to go go - Chuck Brown is bustin' loose
Everything goes better with a bit of Go go - get these tunes down ya. Via Idolator. Listen to a bit of Joe Tex while you're there, maybe?

ADDED: " A few months ago, we tipped our readers to a Firefox extension called Downthemall. While its name sounds like one for an organization devoted to fighting suburban sprawl, it's actually a neat little download accelerator that allows users to snag all the MP3s on a Web page with just one click, and it's become somewhat crucial to our blog-appreciation efforts. We were reminded of its utility today, when Spine Magazine linked to the Wu-Tang Clan's recently updated downloads page; someone within the Wu-Tang camp has put up a whopping 215 MP3s of unreleased, rare, and demo tracks from the group. Seriously, this is the sort of thing Downthemall was made for, so get clicking before the bandwidth police rush the party." more from Idolator.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Stop, drop and roll.
Sad news this morning; Dawn Raid have gone into voluntary liquidation, following rumours of financial difficulties surfacing in the Sunday Star Times a few weeks back.

"They cite, a downturn in the label's revenues as the reason resulting from a shift in the local urban music market, compounded by the label's high overhead structure and increased activity in illegal downloads."

Dawn Raid did a lot of good for the folks of South Auckland, so it's a shame to see them go under. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dawn Raid founders Andy and Danny several years ago for NZ Musician magazine - I took a bus out to Papatoetoe to meet them at their office/studio. They were both very enthusiastic, but also very serious -they met while doing a business course. They had both been involved in the Proud compilation of South Auckland music, but that had been done in a central Auckland studio. They wanted something that the local teens could use, so, after one particularly sucessful Xmas season selling their t-shirts at the markets, they found themselves with a pile of cash, going, what do we do? Let's open our own recording studio! Great way to develop local talent for the label. Now that's all gone. What went wrong? It seemed like they had a lot of knowledge and advice at their disposal.

Rev Mua Strickson-Pua was interviewed about the collapse on Breakfast (TVOne) this morning (he is one of the organisers of the Pacific Island Music Awards late next month). Pua noted that the company had done a lot of good for the community in South Auckland, but that they seem to have over-extended themselves. Check TVNZ's site for a video of the interview later.

From a statement released by the company... "The music industry has experienced rapid change in the last two years with the new digital-driven content formats. Unfortunately we were expanding into Australia at a time that we should have be consolidating our local operation," states Andy Murnane.

NZ Herald reports that "A liquidator said it was too early to say how many unsecured creditors were owed money and whether they would see any funds. The Inland Revenue Department - which has previously applied to liquidate the companies - is the preferential creditor, with a number of secured creditors next in line for any payout from assets.

Liquidator Peri Finnigan said any pay day for creditors would depend "very much" on the ability to sell assets such as sound equipment, musical instruments and computers. Physical assets removed from the company in March were in safe storage and insured. The liquidation would also explore the possibility of assigning the existing artists' contracts to another company." The first report from the Liquidator is due April 27.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Jam Master Jay
Finally, 5 years after his tragic shooting, someone gets charged over it... Link.

"... In court papers, the prosecutors identify Ronald "Tenad" Washington as the armed accomplice of a second unidentified gunman who shot Jay, whose real name was Jason Mizell, inside his New York recording studio in 2002. They say Washington also is a suspect in the 1995 fatal shooting of Randy Walker, a close associate of the late rapper Tupac Shakur.

The papers were filed earlier this month in the federal trial of Washington, who was convicted in a string of armed robberies that occurred just after Jay was killed. Prosecutors declined to discuss the unsolved slayings.

A Mizell family spokesperson welcomed news that authorities had for the first time publicly identified a suspect, saying "We're relieved there's some information coming out, although we understand that it's not the full story."

Washington, 45, has denied any connection to either the Mizell or Walker cases. In a sworn statement, he claimed hostile detectives had hounded him about the slaying of his "childhood friend" Mizell and other crimes. Washington's criminal record dates to 1982, and includes convictions for assault, drugs and grand larceny, authorities said."

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The "death" of vinyl, part 647

"The vinyl record was supposed to be dead by now, long since swept away by the powerful winds of new technology. If it wasn't the low-quality but highly portable cassette, then surely the CD or mp3 should have finished off the bulky, scratch-prone relics of an earlier era.

The vinyl record appears to have found a welcoming audience lately, however, at least in the Brooklyn hipster havens of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. No less than six new music shops have opened in recent years, including four that specialize in vinyl."

Link (via Coolfer)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

The joy of email

From NZ Musician... "Oh my gawd... the Broadcast button on the computer of EMI's Publicity Mangler Lauren W must have got stuck down with Easter chocolate, cos this morning most of the country's media got to read her email dialogue trying to get a phone interview with anyone attached to the Arctic Monkeys.

Proving that just one embarrassing clanger a day is never enough, poor Lauren then repeated the exercise, sharing the love from Opshop's management with the rest of the world.

Sorry but no Lauren, Real Groove is really not equivalent to Rolling Stone in the US and Q in the UK - even if you are guaranteed the front cover as well as the feature article."

Ring The Alarm playlist, BaseFM, April 7
Tony Allen - Isle Nla (Wareika Hill Sounds remix)
Temptations - Plastic man
Willie Mitchell - 20-75
Booker T and the MGs - Melting pot
Lyn Collins - Give it up or turn it loose
Charles Mingus - II BS (RZA remix)
The Midnights - Outside looking in (Dub Asylum remix)
Timmy Thomas - Why can't we live together? (Shoes edit)
Ludacris vs Jackson 5 - Slap
Cool calm Pete -Wind sprints
Robert Johnson - They're red hot
Sylvia - Pussycat
Tyra and the tornadoes - Hui hui
BT Express - Express (Kenny Dope remix)
Nomo - Hand and mouth
Commodores - Rapid fire
Speedometer - Soul safari
Amerie -Gotta work
Nite blues steel band - Mongoose
Bonga - Balumukeno
Lee Dorsey - Get out of my life woman
JBs - Hot pants road
Dixie cups - Iko iko
Skull snaps - It's a new day
Al Green - Can't get next to you
DJ Spinna - Everybody get down
Big bud - Bubblin dub
Ludacris vs Jackson 5 - Ultimate satisfaction
LCD Soundsystem - North American scum
Mantronix - Who is it?

I'm off to Queenstown for the weekend, so spot you on the wireless next saturday.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007



Walk away in silence
Stupid-ass sneakers for Joy Division fans here...

Alanis and her lady lumps... Ms Morrissette covers My Humps.... video

The CliffsNotes of commentary: (via Popnography)
Pitchfork: "Morissette can barely keep a straight face in this quick, one-off video, so we're happy to see that she's in on the joke from the beginning."
Amy @ PopGurls: "Her voice has this way of illustrating the inanity of each lyric, her video mocks the ridiculousness of each bend-over, booty shake."
Idolator: Download the mp3, and "just think of the looks that will come over your friends' faces when they slowly realize just what song they're hearing."

JJ Brown mashes Ludacris and Jackson 5.

That is all.

Monday, April 02, 2007

In love with these times
So, NZ musicians are in the crapper, (NZ Herald article here) thanks to you nasty, illegal-downloading 50 year old Bic Runga fans. Yes, they may go to wineries in their hoards to see her play, but they also know how to use P2P networks, apparently. How exactly is Bic Runga a victim, when she has one of the biggest selling local albums of 2006, followed by a winery tour that featured numerous sell-out shows? Not to mention owning two houses in Ponsonby (which effectively makes her a millionaire)?

Read El Sid's reaction at Simon Grigg's blog... snip... "Bic is an interesting phenomenon. Campbell Smith was handed Bic on a plate and all credit due, they put the hard yards in overseas. Back then Campbell said that Bic on p2p sites was the best guerrilla marketing they had in certain territories..." Bob Daktari is worth a read too..

The NZ Herald readers throw down at Smith's statements, calling out NZ music as not even being worth downloading, let alone buying. Ouch. Let's call it a market adjustment to the recent hype of how great NZ music is. Not the best lead-in to NZ Music Month in May, is it?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, NZ acts hold down the number one single and album slots on the charts. And kiwi musicians come home from their day jobs, eat their instant noodles and race off to band practise. Same as it ever was....