Dub dot dash

Peanut butter is coming
US DJ Peanut Butter Wolf from Stones Throw Records hits town tonight DJing at 4.20, tomorrow in Wellington. Few interviews with the man below...

Stop Smiling Magazine: Did Stevie Wonder dig Stevie [the album of Wonder covers Madlib released under his Yesterday's New Quintet alias]?

PBW: I'm not sure he ever heard it. I can tell you that once I was eating at a restaurant in Beverly Hills with my sister, and there were celebrities everywhere. We get in the elevator with Keanu Reeves, Charles Barkley's at a table, and, oh shit, there's Stevie Wonder at the next table! I gotta tell him about Madlib's album. He's at the next table, I don't want to interrupt his dinner. I had a copy of Shades of Blue in the car, so I grabbed that.

He gets up to leave with his manger, and I follow him into the bathroom. And there's, Stevie at the urinal. I told his manager, “I have an album that I want Stevie Wonder to hear, a cover album of all his music.” He says, “This isn't the time or place for this.” Then Stevie calls manager over, and the manager leaves. I asked Stevie if he'd heard of Madlib and he said no. But he'd heard of John Faddis [Madlib's uncle]. I told him Madlib's his nephew, that he experimenting with jazz. I showed him the cover of the Blue Note album, then remembered he can't see [laughs]. I never found out if he checked out the record.

SS: What's the best compliment you've received since starting the label?

PBW: Just that The Source won't review our records [laughs]. They reviewed the Lootpack album and gave it a poor mic review. I thought about using that in a promotional campaign: “Zero mics in The Source.” It's two different worlds. We can get 5 or 6 pages in [a rock magazine like] Spin easier than we can get a review in The Source.

We have a lot fans in Europe. Radiohead's complimented us. The guy from Lord of the Rings, Elijah Wood. I ran into him in an airport and he owned all the records. He was asking what it was like to know Madlib and Peanut Butter Wolf [laughs]. Someone like him, I wouldn't think he would even know about indie hip-hop, but he knew more than me. He was talking about David Axelrod, everything.

also, Undercover magazine interview with PB Wolf.

Anybody else think Dick Hubbard's new Council guidelines for inner city buildings is too little, too late? Take a walk up Hobson st and back down Nelson St, and there's your future. Ugly. As. Fuck.

"Institute of Architects president and taskforce member Gordon Moller said that in the two years since the Council set up the urban design panel to vet buildings, 15 per cent of the 250 applications had been outstanding, 15 per cent were rubbish "that should never have been designed" and the rest were a varying degree of mediocrity."- from NZ Herald.
There are currently 10,000 apartments in central Auckland, with another 4,000 under construction (none of which fall under these new guidelines, as I understand it). There is mention in these new guidelines of making a culture change within the planning dept of the Auckland City Council. But then you take in info like this...

"City planning group manager John Duthie, who has just been promoted to the council's top planning job, defended his staff's decision to rubber-stamp so many poorly designed apartment towers without public scrutiny. At the time they complied with bulk, height and other controls that paid little attention to design matters, he said."
How many apartments? 83 since 1998, of which only 2 were notified for public scrutiny. "Council planners decided not to give the public a say on the other 81 projects." And there's your democracy right there. Sorry, but this dude deserves to get the boot, not a promotion. Who promoted him? Dick Hubbard?

And give this fool the boot too.... On the Terry Stringer sculpture in Aotea Square, which the Council have decided to 'decommission' as part of the $50M Square revamp...

"It works well in its situation now," says senior arts planner, Warren Pringle, "but it doesn't have a space within the concept of what the upgrade's happening for. The new thinking is the space needs to be free of objects so people can congregate."

Thankfully the public outcry has saved itfrom such a fate. $50 million upgrade and you can't include this sculpture? It's been there for 25 years and provided a community meeting point for a several generations of skateboarders, who cut their teeth skating up and down the sides of Stringer's mountain. It belongs to the people of Auckland, they've claimed it as their own, especially the skateboarders.

Sculptor Greer Twiss says the council's track record with artworks and historic buildings deters him from making any more public artworks. "I'm just fed up with it. I would never do another public work and I know there's a lot of other sculptors who would never try to do another public work. Not because of the people, and not because there aren't good sites, but just because of the general attitude of the city's fathers towards the whole thing."

Twiss' sculpture on the corner of K Rd and Symonds St has a water component, which hasn't worked properly for 15 years. There's the Council's attitude to public art, in a nutshell.