Posts by philipmatthews
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Socialism with Chinese characteristics: not so much quashing dissent, as overpricing it.
With piracy acting as samizdat?
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We tend, in New Zealand, to imagine that architecture happens elsewhere. And with our rather smug anti-elitism we congratulate ourselves for this. For it is a sign of our sensibleness, our moderation, our lack of pretension. A shadow cast, perhaps, by the belief that ours is an egalitarian society.
I'm not sure you can generalise as broadly as this. In Christchurch, for example, it is very widely understood that the Gothic revival buildings designed by Benjamin Mountfort are great architecture -- which is why the city also has great parochial stoushes anytime someone, even Miles Warren, wants to modify them or pull them down. Hence the current Arts Centre stoush. I'd also say that the modernist buildings -- homes, commercial buildings and public buildings -- designed in the city a century later by Warren, Beaven and others are also recognised as architecture, even if they are not yet as widely loved as those from the Gothic era.
It's likely that residents of other New Zealand cities that weren't as flattened during the 1980s of speculation and development as Auckland and Wellington were feel similarly about their architectural traditions.
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His use of the term "counter-culture" just reveals how much his argument owes to the book Rebel Sell (which he does cite). Is it a term that gets used in NZ much, especially within discussion about alternative music? I wouldn't have thought so. It's a term that came with the argument he borrowed from the US.
Anyway. I've seen Gladiator -- my money's on Crowey.
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Anyone see Devendra Banhart? He's the one I was most curious about.
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It has momentum and lots of grubby sex but it could have done with a stern editorial hand.
There was a very prissy review on Nine to Noon last year -- the reviewer, whose name escapes me, said that he and his wife were both big Nick Cave fans but were just appalled by all the grubby sex in this book. I thought: Really? So where were you during No Pussy Blues, Hard On for Love, Stagger Lee, etc etc?
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New Order notoriously made virtually nothing from Blue Monday in the 1980s (or from their records)
The story is that they actually lost money on Blue Monday because of the expense of printing the sleeve. Or so the typically Tony Wilson legend goes ... That might have just been the first pressing.
You'd have to say that Blue Monday was one of the game-changing -- terrible phrase, that -- electronic singles of the 1980s in a line-up that would also take in The Message, Pump Up the Volume, Voodoo Ray and/or Pacific State and probably a bunch of other, less obvious things.
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In actual fact, it was a very thinly veiled "question" on his blog that confirmed the identity for me.
Ditto.
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You're sailing very close to the edge there, Alien Lizard.
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Is that Jeff Mangum aka Neutral Milk Hotel?
Yep. Have to admit I don't really know his/their stuff, but a lot of people rave about him ...
Back to the festival thread. As an older punter, Laneways tempts me more than BDO this year although I won't be making either. I was pretty sure that in their day -- c1992, 93, 94 -- the 3Ds were the best live band in NZ, largely thanks to the barely contained -- and sometimes not contained -- mania of the great David Mitchell.
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Oh, and I forgot to put this in the post: it looks like Stroke has shipped 12,000 copies in NZ, making it gold.
Would be interesting to know if any Knox solo album has ever sold more?
The US launch will be a gig in New York, featuring several of the acts who've contributed recordings. Nice.
Apparently the US release has an extra track -- Jeff Mangum doing "Sign the Dotted Line". As it's off Weeville, it would go on disc 2 (yes, I'm still in the CD age). I guess it makes sense that the Americans seem to be doing more of the 90s Tall Dwarfs and solo stuff. But my current favourite on that record is Peter Gutteridge's "Don't Catch Fire". Lovely. Didn't know Gutteridge could sound like that ...