Dub dot dash

Wicked mathematics
About two months from now, watch out for the local media to start doing their end of year reviews - you'll see the same line repeated from last year - "2004 was the best year ever for NZ music". That's true, but it's more accurate to say that 2004 was the best year for commercial NZ music, but that doesn't make as good a headline.
Truth is, if you were out on the fringes, that's where you stayed. Just ask Auckland metal band Subtract - their debut album Formula One features a delightful song called NZOA. If you're in a CD shop, pick it up and read the lyrics, they are amusingly direct. It's a concise rendering of the difficulties faced by the band as they try (unsuccessfully) to fit into the mold for funding. They are very disparaging of NZ On Air providing grants to its mates at record companies. Which means they swear.

Where's Radar?
TV One has Mark Sainsbury running round the US during the leadup to the US elections - he was last spotted in Louisiana. TV3 has been following ITV's Nick Robertson driving round in a campervan meeting up with ordinary folk. But some bright sparks at the NZ Herald and National Radio have sent comedian/columnist Radar off to Pahrump, Nevada. He'll be doing some reports for NatRad and no doubt some interesting columns for the Herald. Pahrump is a town of 33,000 people, about 60 miles from Las Vegas, formerly known as the town with the brothels, is about 91% white, and supposedly a bit more liberal than surrounding areas. Should be interesting to see what he comes up with.
UPDATE: Radar's first column is here.
Opening line: "You boys here for the hookers?" is the most persistent phrase I have heard in the past week....

Also, look out for my cousin Rob Warner on Soundlab on C4 tonight (Wed 27th Oct, 10.30pm) - he's interviewed by Nick D in Thailand; Rob is up there DJing at the mo. He and Josh Webb did the What the Funk remix for me that's on the Fashion Week CD 'Off the cuff', alongside Minuit, Fat Freddy's Drop, Nathan Haines, Soane, One Million Dollars, Baitercell & Timmy Schumacher, Concord Dawn and more.


More Peel..
tip of the hat to Peter Hoar...

From: Tim Wall
To: RADIO-STUDIES@jiscmail.ac.uk
Date: Wednesday - October 27, 2004 6:41 AM
Subject: Death of John Peel

"Many of you will have heard about the sudden death of the British Music radio presenter, John Peel. In an aspect of radio that is often seen as trivial and common denominator, or trite and formulaic Peel did something rather surprising: he played records that interested him. He didn't always like them, but they sounded a bit different and so thought you might like to hear them.

He was a mainstay of BBC Radio One's evening broadcasts for over thirty years, but not in the way you would guess if you haven't ever heard one of his shows.

British radio has been full of elegies this afternoon, but many of them sounded like the easy clichés he tried to avoid. I hope this personal view doesn't sound the same. Otherwise I didn't learn enough from him.

I only had lengthy conversations with him on a couple of occasions. The first was 25 years ago when I was a student (and a student broadcaster) and he was the visiting National- Radio-One- DJ- come- to- play- some- punk- records- to- some- drunk- students. But he was willing to give up an hour to come and talk to me in the radio station. I had been expecting him to be critical about the late 1970s music scene and music radio in general. But he wasn't. On this, and the later occasion ten years later, I found him very non-judgemental, and I like to think he remained like that. He just liked what he liked, was interested in different sounds, and hoped we might like them as well. He just wanted a bit of space for music radio like this.

There's been a lot about him contributing to the art of radio, but that's tosh. He was anti-the-art -of-radio. He constantly made rather obvious mistakes, like paying a record at the wrong speed, or playing the wrong track, but he always treated the music with respect, and he joked about
himself.

There have been some interesting early sound clips of him being interviewed in the late 1960s (I doubt there is much of him presenting a show, because music radio just isn't archived enough) and he sounds so BBC middleclass. But by the 1970s he had taken on a rather lugubrious personality distinct from the laid-back Rock DJ style that dominated evening radio in Britain, and of course as the advocate of punk (and Reggae, and various forms of African pop, and blues, and hip hop, and almost anything) he established himself as an institution with his listeners, and later with his station.

I say later with his station because the corporation management which spent a decade trying to marginalise, and even make him disappear was replaced before he was. And I was always impressed that he never tried to become a presenter for an older age group of listeners. He didn't carve up music like that. He even sort of made it possible to still be interested in music after you were 25. That's helpful in my job.

In a way his idea of playing music he had just heard became the aspiration of Radio One as a whole. His version of public service broadcasting, sort of, became that of Radio One. Almost while no one was listening.

I learnt a lot about music radio from John Peel. A lot about presenting (although I always tried to play the record at the right speed). A lot about playing music, and what was important about music.

John I'll miss your shows. And I'll miss you. That's the funny thing about radio, isn't it. Only talked to him twice at any length. But I got to listen to him almost every week for thirty years.

No longer teen age kicks."