Posts by Simon Grigg
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Of course Chavez and his apologists are alleging much the same sort of thing.
I don't like Chavez much either but I wonder why all the attention is given to him when Columbia's much nastier boss man enjoys the Bush arm around the shoulder.
I guess the answer is that one's primary export is black, the other's white.
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Say, what is 'Pacifics Triple Star' anyway?
North, South and Stewart
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But there's a reason why we don't have any kind of analogue to the Shankill Road or the Kuta Beach bombings or Kosovo in our history books. And I'd argue that's in large part due to the fact that we never quite took the turn into sectarian politics or sectarian violence and terrorism.
And to take my turn in the queue of pedants...the 2002 bomb was not on Kuta Beach, rather it was on Jalan Legian, some 2km or so away from the waves. And i don't think it was one attack that could be in fairness be described as sectarian. Whilst the reasoning behind the bombers' thinking remains cloudy, the best evidence seems to suggest a two pronged logic. Firstly there was the obvious strike against the west, post 9/11, and in particular Australia who was then lining up to go into Iraq. The surviving bombers have given this, several times, as their primary rationale. Secondly, there was a blowback against the inescapable notion that amongst Australia's successful exports to the rest of the world was Kings Cross. The area around JL Legian that was demolished was, even to my eyes, tainted with years of High Street, offensively, and drunkenly sleazy, with one bar having a no Indonesians apart from staff and hookers policy. And it goes on, last Saturday night I drove past the memorial and it was covered in drunken, shirtless goons holding Bintangs.
You could perhaps apply the sectarian word to the Ambon and Poso bloodshed, a long long way from here, but even then the Western media has tended to use an easy answer to the question why, ignoring the reality of the political, economic factors and outside fermentation of these to advantage.
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Nice piece Russell, and I had to smile at Adam's brutal honesty about having to hire some people who understand the modern world, and the irony, as mentioned before, that only two of the NZ majors actually have websites
It bought to mind a marketing plan I saw for an act recently where the plan consisted of two singles, a video or two, getting radio and retailers on board, and....oh perhaps a myspace page, but the band could do that themselves maybe.....
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How many accidents caused by drivers just under the limit?
Once again, from afar, I drove, at what I assume would have been over the limit in NZ terms last night, simply because there are no drink driving laws here. I do it rarely. But, it happens (and I was in no way drunk).
However, drink driving is not a problem (apart from the odd drunken expat, but these are the same people who career around the roads sober too), and Balinese (and many Javanese) do like to drink, so I can't help thinking that there is something else in the psyche, missing here, that relentlessly testing, and lowering the limit misses. It's the same question that is raised by the fact that drinking seems to lead to excessive violence in Western cultures but not in the East (at least in my experience).....
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Fighting the Shakes
great name.......
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It depends on the setup. Not sure if the name would have much value now, and I would have thought the IRD would have first dibs on the assets, unless they've simply handed it to the receiver and said get what you can for them. The assets of DR would, I think, be in the masters (very low value) and the contracts, assuming their were no liquidation clauses in the contracts, which there probably were (I think Mr Hocquard drew them up, in which case they'll be good). If these clauses do in fact exist then the artists likely are free to walk.
So they could then re-sign the same acts to a new company..but I reckon you'd have to be nuts to consider it.
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I'll go right back to Russell's first post. The charts now include downloads.
....include a very few of the downloads if we are being realistic
In real terms though in 2007 radio is less and less important to record sales and downloads. And TV is almost marginal. Last week in the US the number one airplay song couldn't even make the US top 50 selling singles, and in NZ radio has less and less effect on what is purchased and downloaded. Having a massive radio record no longer translates to sales. Then again NZ is notable for having had a ton of successful records over the years that have broken through without notable airplay on mainstream stations...the screamingly obvious one being Bob Marley who had single hit after single hit with virtually no airplay...it used to drive Festival nuts at the time, that radio would not touch him as he didn't research, but he was on the way to becoming a national icon.
Andrew I actually disagree with the statement that Gnarls and AMs are the only through to have broken through off the web. They are in old fashioned terms, but every act relies upon web buzz now to get any traction, radio only being one small part of the picture. And there are countless acts in an increasingly nichified market (niches within niches, which is the reality in 2007) that are doing very well globally courtesy of the net and live performance, without the need to break into traditional forms of marketing, including acts tht have sold hundreds of thousands of CDs worldwide.
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Moreover such a move would only give the practice perceived legitimacy, which is the last thing they want.
yes but that perceived legitimacy already exists with the customer base, ignoring that won't make it go away. It's all becoming slowly little more than academic, as the EMI deal shows, anyway.
There was a time when everybody under 30 knew what the number one was, now virtually nobody does. God, in the UK, almost everybody under 50 knew, Top of The Pops was a religion
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Is this a measure of actual, active popularity, or more the flippancy over over-accessibility?
all of the above in various mixes, depending on the song and the artist.
In the same way that a burnt CD is not a lost sale, a downloaded copy of a track does not necessarily mean a person would now no longer buy the record, and If I get a track off the net that I like I always buy a copy (although I tend to sample off mp3 sites rather than p2p). Its hard to measure but the obvious other side to online piracy is also a bonus to the artist in that the online buzz (read: "piracy") is a huge factor in that act's profile. The electronic musical forms have know that for a long time, as has hip hop.
But asking them to publish them as official charts is a wee bit of a stretch just yet, I think ...
of course, but to mix metaphors terribly, year zero is already here and the horse has truly bolted. The sooner they come to terms with that the better. P2p is not going away, and there is only so much effort that should be put into fine tuning the past in the vague hope that it will return. At some stage the recognition has to come that the control no longer lies with record companies. The web always threatened that, but now it's delivering.
Trent Reznor speaks