Posts by Robbie Siataga
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Has anyone explained the rationale behind exempting private schools from the standards?
or kura kaupapa maori ?
my guess is tit for tat.
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OK i'll drop it, suffice to say i 've heard a fair amount of stories, most not fit for print mind you, but the thing is, i do think there are valuable lessons to be learnt from the truth and that whatever that is, it should come out.
if not here, then somewhere in the non printable blogosphere and in due time, possibly in your memoirs ?
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family bias you reckon Simon ?..but still, benefit of the doubt must be given.
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How Bizarre the single and album sold more than four million copies and netted $11 million in royalties. Pauly said in 2007 he received $5 million of that.
He splashed out on rock star trappings like a Hummer, and gave vehicles and cash to friends and family. But Pauly was hit with huge bills from overseas tours and was involved in a feud over his percentage of the royalties.
In 2006, he was declared bankrupt. Liquidators said Pauly and Kirstene's "lavish lifestyle had not contracted when the royalties began to diminish".
But Kirstene said her husband, who was earning $15,000-a-year before his hit, measured wealth in family and friends, not in money.
"He was like, 'That is life'. He always said thank God he had his family and that was far more important to him. He had come from having very little so he lived how he wanted to live. He was going to enjoy every second of it and he did. He had a very good time of it all and he still had his family.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/3301104/Pauly-Fuemana-The-real-story
Lots of lessons there to be learnt, but it speaks to the character of the man that he never sold out his family values for more money and that money didnt seem to change him.
i remember having a chat with Phil Fuemana back in the late 90's about artistic integrity versus selling out and he said something to the effect of...
"forget artistic integrity. if it is your calling in life to make music, you need to make money from it to survive and such is the nature of the industry that you do what is needed to stay in the game"
i agreed, but thought there are still some things one shouldn't do and that players distracted by the illusion of the game, don't realise when to give up and get out while the getting's good, or when they haven't got what it truly takes to succeed.
guess it comes down to surrounding yourself with good honest people in whose advice you trust. don't know if there are that many in the music biz though and with family there is often a bias ?
everyone though i reckon, has one great song in them.
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Fair enough, cheers.
Just wanted to know if there were any lessons from his tragic passing that youngers wishing to follow in his footsteps might learn from.
Got any good advice...anybody ?
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What was DLT talking about on 3 news ? Something about being disgusted with how Pauly was treated by the music industry and in particular his record company ?
He didnt want to elaborate, which is unlike him :), so was wondering if anybody knew what he was on about...Simon ?
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fear not for i am not Robbery, though we do chat every now and then :)
re : te Maori flag
this is funny as all hell considering...
Don't be surprised if the flag that wins is the one that your kids and mine have been wearing for the past 10 years - seems they may have already worked this thing out long before us ...
...and it wouldnt have taken him long to figure out theres money to be made from it either
http://www.tokerau.co.nz/index.php?pag=cms&id=233&p=flag-it-shane.html
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I'd been blagged backstage to see my buddies, and the headliners didn't really make much sense to me from the side of the stage?
drunk all their rider by then huh :)
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Sad news alright.
OMC was the support act, and out came a fearsome looking man, dressed in traditional polynesian garb, brandishing a machete and rapping a fairly hardcore song with the refrain "I'm just another coconut"
ahhh the good old days, but that sounds like it might have been Pasifikan Descendents rather than OMC, although ermehn, the other founding member of OMC before 'how bizarre' blew up, does have a propensity for playing with knives.
That PROUD tour is stuff of legend. Phil was the man and he used to say the craziest shit...
"I am pretty sure that most of us - like me, in our mid-to-late thirties - we remember what our parents gave up for us ... The shit that they had to go through was unbelievable. They had the whole dawn raid thing. My Dad got put in prison 'cause they thought he was Samoan overstayer.
I remember walking into a shop and him getting chased and running away. Cops running past us and grabbing him. I was just standing there - I was probably about seven, just watching this go down and thinking 'what tha?' He came back a few hours later, but that distress, it makes you think of that Bowling in Columbine movie - living in fear. Now, whenever I walk into a restaurant, everyone's all - 'fuck I'd better watch out' - ya know? I'm the last person to bloody beat you up. Probably some other dopey egg is gonna do it. Like I wanna jeopardise my life like that - but that's the way it's perceived ...
When me and my crew started out in the music biz we never wanted to save the world. We didn't say - 'let's save everyone, lets lead the way for PIs' - fuck off! We were trying to make money and dissing everyone else along the way - 'they're fuckin' useless, we'll do a better R'n'B track than them, we'll do a better hip hop track than them.' We were as arrogant as anyone else, but that's what happens on nearly all projects that are inspirational to people - they just happen. They're driven and then you think - fuck I'm gonna be like that.
Now I read an article in Real Groove and Andy [Murnane, from Dawnraid] mentions me and I remember it was Andy's job carrying the bags - he was just this white guy, who was Danny's mate and now he's one of the leading hip hop innovators for our country. I didn't even know him. That's what inspiration is - him and Danny have gone on to inspire heaps of people ... Some people in the media did used to pick on us because they thought we were trying to be American, but then they'd fuckin' eat KFC and McDonalds like everyone else. But all they saw was these brownies - who are perceived to be the ones who do all the trouble - choosing a genre that's equal to trouble in the States.
I wouldn't even believe what you hear from the States. I mean, there's probably a million times more black people not into hip hop, ya know? There 's a whole heap of black people in the US who are middle class and they probably like country music or soul music ... So as far as that argument about us in the media - it just seems like something to look at ... At the same time, we're lucky because as PIs, our hip hop does have a PI flavour and gives us a unique point of difference.
And in the end, as Kiwis - whether that be Coconuts, Maoris, Pakehas, or whatever - we have our flavour and that's gonna be what gets us to wherever we're going . And I am happy with how things have turned out over the years, because these days I can look at the charts and see a group like Nesian Mystik on there and I know it 's been worthwhile.
The Fuemana's truly were 'Pioneers of a Pasifikan frontier' and my hope now is that Chrissy doesnt die anytime soon...much love