Hard News by Russell Brown

A fascinating interview – well, two interviews – with Auckland City Limits promoter Campbell Smith on The Spinoff – which reveals that the one more international headliner the show seems to be missing was real. And it was Beck.

They couldn't make it work, but that explains a lot about the way the lineup announcements played out.

That Grace Jones and the Stevie Wonder remixes are rather delicious - thanks Russ. Notice a bit of hubby DJ Dick Johnson's influence in Anna's new track too.

Plastic Zapper & The Mothers of Inscryption*

the ‘HD Vinyl’ process involves 3D-based topographical mapping combined with laser inscription technology to more quickly generate a far superior product.

Aha, so it cuts out the mother and goes straight to the stamper of biscuits! (those vinyl patties always looked like dog turds to me...)
Wonder how many pressings they'll get from each stamper - used to be about a 1000 - 1500.

Background reading:
http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/113.html
and lets not forget NZ's own lathe wizard:
http://peterkinglathecutrecords.co.nz/
and the rest of the world's access to the vinyl solution:
https://vinyl-pressing-plants.com/all-vinyl-pressing-plants-list/

*Inscryption: Be nice to use this spelling to make spies nervous and people think it's somehow digital - when it's really just good vibrations!

:- )

the one that got away...
speaking of 'lost records' - this story in The Guardian was interesting:

Lost HP Lovecraft work commissioned by Houdini escapes shackles of history.
Manuscript for The Cancer of Superstition, requested shortly before escapologist’s death, is discovered in memorabilia collection

dig this...
And I'm holding great hopes that the hidden rooms in King Tutankhamun's tomb might really be the lost Hall of Records buried by Thoth/Hermes - I greatly enjoyed Graham Hancock's new book Magicians of the Gods which mentions it in passing while presenting some fine reasoning for a pre-neolithic lost civilisation
see: https://grahamhancock.com/magicians/
The stuff on Gobekli Tepe is fascinating, and now that so called legendary cities of India have now been discovered off shore it seems time to cast aside preconceptions and re-examine the genesis of places like Pumapunku, etc...

forthcoming new Underworld album…

..doesn’t sound a million miles removed from The Fall to me
I am Kurious Oranj comes to mind

..doesn’t sound a million miles removed from The Fall to me

Not just you. I thought the same thing.

Does anyone know if there is any way to retrieve earlier iterations of Stuff and Herald stories that have been updated over the day?
I'd like to get screen shots of the first appearance of a story that started today.

Either post here or email me via the wee envelope above.

Legendary cities of the Indus - fascinating! Thnx Mr D :)

Eta: the dating seems to be questionable. Still: so much we don't know about how we got here.

If anyone here has read the full press release from Flying Nun about the new Street Chant album, there is actually a link at the end that has the full album available for streaming or download on the Flying Out website.

I informed Flying Out via their Facebook page but they deleted my comment.

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet but on Friday, RDU began celebrating its 40th anniversary, setting the scene for, a five month party at Canterbury Museum. There’s a link in there to the Squirm doco, Gone with the Weird from 2011

What do we get? Live gigs, music and broadcasts, Four formal showcase events starting April 29 with Feeding the Natives. Described as ‘a night of “folk-noir”’ in which Lawrence Arabia is partaking, watching him the other night at the Wunderbar, he quipped he was more ‘folk-blanc’! Delaney Davidson and Nadia Reid round out that show.

And of course there’s the exhibition itself running until August charting 40 years of RDU. At the outset, they were warned off any political broadcasting and nearly got chucked off air for debating the ’76 All Black tour to South Africa. Other ‘older and wiser’ readers will know more about these nuances than me!

Russell, are you included as part of any events? Like last year’s CPIT talk? Otherwise you'll just have to put on the Travelling Shoes and come on down and catch some of this!

At the outset, they were warned off any political broadcasting and nearly got chucked off air for debating the ’76 All Black tour to South Africa.

In 1976, when the Chch Star was a proper newspaper with a cover price, one Colonel Elderton regularly appeared in its letter columns politely promoting the imagined virtues of apartheid. Early in that year the Star recorded how the Colonel provoked derision from UC students in a public debate by claiming that the "different toilet habits" of blacks justified segregated public facilities. Happy days.

Oh yes, I can imagine. And plenty more of it as we went into the 80s. I can recall one Roy Montgomery having a good crack at (then NZ Cricket Chair) Walter Hadlee when he spoke at the Lower Common Room trying to defend the 1981 Springbok Tour on the basis of that old 'sports and politics don't mix' chestnut.

Dux Redux!
My end of an era comment about the closing of Dux Live in a recent music post may have been a premature extrapolation!
I see a letter from owner Richard Sinke in Saturday's Press basically saying the Addington iteration was only ever a temporary thing and they would like to be back in town but like everything else to do with progress in the inner city, those plans are on hold.

Dux plans on hold.
I would like to correct the impression that may have been left on your readers regarding the sale of our business Dux Live (March 16).
We sold the business because the plan for Dux Live was four years in Addington and by then the CBD would be back in operation and we would move to town.
Accordingly we took only a four-year lease which was expiring in mid-December. We did not wish to renew in that location as the council has signalled a changing hospitality landscape with its stalled, badly thought out LAP (Local Alcohol Policy). To reopen Dux Live in town we would need clear signals from the council on its plans. At present our plans are on hold. A minor part of the decision to close was due to lack of local bands that could play and draw a crowd of more than 200 people to make it viable. The younger market follows DJs. Smaller venues can barely survive on the live music market.
Richard Sinke.

So there's hope, but like everything else in Chchch it's SNAFU....
(Situation Normal All Fucked Up!)