Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Incidentally Fat Freddies dropped out of the Top 40 albums today after two years plus. The last few months have been down the bottom where it really only means someone has merely thought about buying you to get a place, but quite an achievement.
-
Stephen...what school was it? Sometimes we used to just turn up in the morning and offer to play that day. We used to take $100 for PA & Petrol and give anything over that to the Student council as I recall...but it was about the fanbase. And that's still the key...radio is a poor second...most NZ acts have forgotten that. Arcade Fire broke in the US recently because they play and play, and pamper their fans
Scribe...new album has a name now...Rhymemaker or something like that, but no release date I think. But whatever fanbase he had has gone, and his BDO comeback was the final nail..he should have had another album out ten months after The Crusader, and single after single. It's pop and pop is bang bang bang singles.
But he's on Warners and I think Edgar Bronfman is about to announce huge worldwide layoffs and roster cuts so who knows what will happen
Scribe hasn't had a working web site for two years
-
I always feel inadequate in these discussions...I've never Subwayed and have only Starbucked once (in Bangkok which gave me hours of guilt (and flatulence)....there is nowhere good to eat or drink in BKK).
Solidarity..I began my preemptive boycott years ago
-
Everybody wrote the riff for See Me Go, you know, hell I did, Peter just got there first <sardonic grin>.
There is a lawyer in Chicago who does all the music festivals and hands out T shirts to bands with "Sue The Bastards" on the front, and his phone number on the back....I think you need his services.
See Me Go..wasn't that Daydream Believer? Or was that Sunday Boys....no....that was I Will Follow....
-
the old man (me) says....bands used to tour relentlessly and New Zealand had a viable touring circuit which did make money for the acts throughout the eighties and into the nineties...most of the records from that era we love were financed by live shows and it was feasible, if you were smart, to arrive back home with a few grand tucked away after a five week tour (where you played every little town on the map in every province...its called building a fan base). We used to do two week tours of the Church Halls of Auckland or two weeks of school lunchtimes, ot two week of small towns in Taranaki.
If you don't want to do that, don't complain about a) sales, or b) having to get a day job.
The kids these days......
-
I'd love to hear a sound engineers take on that.
you don't need to....grab a Kiwi Hit Disc...listen....then put on, say the new Arctic Monkeys, or even that wonderful recent live Neil Young album (mouldy old tapes revived via wizardry) and listen to the sonic gulf.
-
Graham...
My belief is that too often artists here -- and I am listening to two local albums at the moment which, while well intentioned, I wouldn’t give you tuppence for -- don’t have their work critiqued at every step of the process: in the writing, the recording, production, even the running order on an album.
bang on....and the mastering...generally..oh dear....hate to kick a man when they are down, but the mastering on the Dawn Raid material was appalling....flat, lifeless...it's a New Zealand issue and it's so important
-
Yep 3 The Hard Way....had a friendship with those guys going back to the early 90s....and I always liked first album (which incidentally I'm told sold some 25000 with little airplay). It was Alan Jansson's project basically but it came out on my label and I worked on it and we had some fun. The album was not credible in a time when NZ had this almost cartoonish credibilty thing happening with hip hop. First single...number one..massive airplay, and huge enthusiasm from Sony Australia, but for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the statement from the kiwi programmer of an important OZ station, that "we don't play NZ records", they went very cold very fast...and Australia was our target market.
Second single...we did a mix under instruction from a important radio PD....what a mess...he oversaw the mix and then wouldn't play it. I let radio overrule my instinct to say "fuck off", which I think is the only time. Rule #1...never tailor a single to radio...you lead them.
Album reached 14 but didn't do much more. But it was a lesson repeated over and over again....big hit (s), albums, flop. 3THW was the first really, so we were flying blind, but it happened to all the hip-hoppers (Scribe aside) that came after. We made the decision to make a radio targeted pop record...and in a nation of 4 million its not enough.
I don't think copying is a black / brown thing. Hip hop / r'n'b in NZ is a song thing, it's pop....the compilations sell vast quantities..as Sir Vere knows. There have been hip hop albums that have sold in big numbers in NZ (last Outkast did 45,000..and look at Akon) but it's a song genre, like dance music. When did the last House album sell quantities.
Even in the US the sales tend to be first week sales, then , with the rare exception its gone...
-
What is it with skinheads ruining other people's parties? And then they complain about having nothing to do ... I risked a thumping a couple of times in Auckland (does Auckland still even have skinheads any more?) just telling them to fuck off, but it seemed to work. They were born followers.
I remember a particularly bright one, named Rocky, at the AK Uni Cafe about 83...stomping up and down the stage chanting "kill all blacks"...he was a Maori.
It was a thing though...go to a party...wait for the skins to come and beat the crap out of some of the guests...wait for the police to come and beat the crap out of the skins...go home...repeat the next week...
-
I agree with everything you say Russell, and I do give NZoA credit. I don't want to come across as attacking either Brendan or the agency, there has been phenomenal progress in the last thirty years in the way the music is presented and perceived in this country, and credit and kudos are due, and correctly, I think, given.
I do feel that commercial radio were riding the wave of that perception rather than creating it....Rob is right, a whole variety of factors created that wave and if commercial radio is anything it's populist, so putting Goldenhorse on radio during NZMM is perfectly riding that populist wave...even in the bad old days radio always had a local hero or two....the ones they played. I'm just not sure if I'd give radio credit for much more than playing a few records when it seemed smart to do so...which brings me to..
The problem, again, is that NZ On Air is a broadcast funding agency. Its targets are all about hours on radio, and things get tricky when it goes beyond that.
which to me is the problem....it comes down to one word..sustainability. The model we have now is to driven by that simple airplay target, and airplay on its own does not lead to a thriving ongoing industry. We've had countless singles in recent times, huge on radio, with albums that have had funding and videos but have flopped massively (I released one myself..and one which should have been a pointer to the way it was going but was ignored), or second albums that have completely turkeyed because massive radio play might sell some albums but does not generate a loyal fanbase....which to me indicates that A&R became radio obsessed. Think of someone like Dei Hamo...huge singles, all over radio, got the funding, but a massive sales flop. There are many. Radio play became the driving force, and killed sustainability.
Incidentally, as fine as that figure for the D4 is, it was a part of the problem....wasn't the over-ship in the US a major issue.
APRA....for sure.....and that Nature's Best concept, as much as people mumbled about the selection, was an incredible coup, and I think a wake-up call for radio too. Many of the tracks on there received little airplay but it gave the whole thing that is NZ music an historic validity in the mainstream media beyond the odd hit single.
It's a shame TVNZ were not able to treat the Give It A Whirl series with the same respect.