Posts by Grant McDougall
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Warning - the following may contain traces of cantankerousoldgrumpitis:
I'm surprised at how many people are excited by the JAMC re-heating Psychocandy. It's the very antithesis of what it was about at the time: boring, retro, nostalgia for "classic" acts.
I thought it was - still is - a great album, but they quickly turned pretty dull after that, I reckon.
I saw them in London in 1998 at the Royal Festival Hall at the John Peel-curated Meltdown Festival and it was one of the most mediocre gigs I've ever seen.
And don't get me started on the even-worse Primal Scream...
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Perhaps Key reasons that giving the Auckland centre-right a leg-up would complicate the internal balance of the National Party. Morely likely, he realises that Goff already has a considerable head start and it would be better to work with him than to have to deal with a political neophyte, or worse, a flaming nutbar.
True, but ya gotta admit, the rest of the country would find a fair amount of comedic value in it, if this turned out to be the case.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And while he’s still a Member of Parliament (and, as far as I’m aware, still his party’s “spokesman for Auckland issues”), he might want to think very carefully about whether it’s wise to start laying down the law.
Andrew Little said on RNZ Nat yesterday that Goff has been relieved of that and it's been given to, er, someone else.
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Speaker: Hall of Memories, in reply to Shaun Scott,
3Ds/Puddle/Street Chant gig (flying nun 30th?)...I too remember being misty eyed seeing the Clean for the first time ever there (Vehicle album release),
The 3Ds' gig was their early 2010 reunion gig, but it was just them and Street Chant, the Puddle didn't play.
The Clean played their first ever reunion show at Sammy's on May 4*, 1989, Vehicle came out in 1990, so I assume they would've done Sammy's that year, too.
The 1989 gig remains my #1 gig in terms of how electric the atmosphere in the venue was: it was packed to the gunnels and the place just went mental, when they came on and 'Tally Ho' started.
*I know, because I managed to rip a poster of a wall with "Sammy's, May 4" written on it.
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I saw the 1993 Pavement gig Grant refers to and I beg to differ - they were bloody superb.
Unfortunately, when they came through a year later they were, indeed, pretty poor. In mitigation, the four NZ gigs were the last four gigs in a 100 gig world tour.
As a result, they were clearing sick of it all, on auto-pilot and just desperate to get home and off-tour. -
Speaker: Hall of Memories, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
I’m pretty sure Fugazi didn’t ever play at Sammys (they have an “all ages” policy for their gigs, so generally don’t play at licensed venues).
They definitely did play Sammy’s; I know, because I was there. I thought they were boring as hell and was mystified by the fact their drummer had a bell on a stand next to him, which I don’t recall him even hitting / ringing.
Edit: just remembered that Fugazi came through NZ at least twice in the '90s: in '94 it was at Sammy's, then the next time around at the venue Andrew mentions, presumably.
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Kurt Vile is also playing Queenstown on Jan 14 and Dunedin on Jan 15. (Bloody JAFAs, always ignoring the South Island, grumble, grumble...).
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Slightly off-topic, but: Michael Woodhouse has repeatedly said that Chris Brown has yet to apply for an exemption. Could it be that his management are under the illusion, as a lot of Americans, Brits and Europeans, than piddly, little NZ is part of Australia, so having applied to go to Australia, there's no need to apply to go to NZ as well ?
They quite possibly may try to fly out of Sydney / Melbourne / Brisbane, then find, oops, we can't. Or they will fly out, but won't make it past customs.
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I suspect that in the past, the ABs may've been told not to publically endorse, or do something that looks like endorsing, anything contentious, like politics.
About 20 years ago (possibly in an excellent cover story on him in the Listener by Denis Welch), Colin Meads said that he always made the point of going to a different voting booth as Jim Bolger on election day, so he could specifically avoid the chance of photo-op of he and Bolger together - and thus giving the impression of endorsement.
They very likely knew each other anyway, but at least Meads was wise enough to avoid publically being in Bolger's company.
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Field Theory: It's about time, in reply to Joe Boden,
I reckon National is trial-ballooning Richie for PM, actually
McCaw has, thankfully, publically stated he's not interested in going into politics.