Something you may not know: the Council for the Humanities has been quietly working away on the development of a set of Creative Commons licences for New Zealand. The project has included the creation of a stage-one website for Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, which looks very nice. Congratulations are due to Brian Opie and all the others involved in the project, which began with a meeting at the National Library exactly a year ago.
Brian advises that the project has received funding for a second stage of website development, which is great news. The licences are at draft stage at the moment. There are more details and a link to the CCANZ mailing list on the site itself.
You may also not know that the 30th anniversary of Rip It Up magazine is being celebrated. I played my small part in the story back in the early 1980s, and a few of my words have been excerpted for the very large anniversary issue, including excerpts from three 1986 interviews of which I have fond memories: Nico, Shane McGowan and Adrian Edmonson. Nico said:
A poet at some stage has to be poor. And somehow money spoils poetry. It does, it takes away, it changes your original intention. I always become nasty when I have money.
The whole interview was like that. It was so cool. Two years later, she died of a head injury sustained when she had a minor heart attack while she was riding her bike around the hill of Ibiza in the blazing sun, as part of a fitness kick. Never one to do things by halves.
The frankly hopeless attempts by bFM listeners this morning to name the author of the song from which Rip It Up got its title -- The Cure, FFS? Don Henley? -- put me in mind of the day I first met Murray Cammick, in Timabloodyru. Keen to demonstrate that I was a hip young man deserving of the deputy editor's job, I brought Murray around to my flat and stuck on Orange Juice's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever album: the one with the wonky version of Al Green's 'L.O.V.E.', and much beloved of John Campbell.
Little did I know that Murray, as a genuine soul fan, loathed the record, and that cover version in particular. "Could you please take this off?" he asked, eventually. Whoops.
Anyway, Satellite Media has kindly offered me five year-long subscriptions to Rip It Up to give away. Just click the reply button below to email me with your name and address and I'll pass the first five on to the proper people. (NB: This offer is closed and wildly over-subscribed. The five winning emails arrived between 10.09 and 10.15am. The power of free stuff, huh?)
Meanwhile, just so it's not all about teh L.E.D.s, Ed Muzik has posted us a guide to the Christchurch electro-indie scene, with links to all the MySpace pages and stuff. Feel free to come up with a catchy name for the scene.
And, as festering burger chains try to own rock 'n' roll, I'm off to The Food Show, because, frankly, I deserve a break for an hour or two.
PS: Wellington readers: another remind about the Hustlle for Autism on Monday night, which will launch David Cohen's book, A Perfect World and my new autism website, Humans, and raise money for the Autism Intervention Trust.
I'm MCing, the Bonnie Scarlets are playing the auction lots include the spiffy one-off wall-hanging of the last ever Hard News radio script, which was purchased by Microsoft for $1800 at the Hustle for Russell and very kindly handed back.
So: that's Monday August 6 at the San Francisco Bathouse,
171 Cuba Street, Wellington from 6.30pm.
We're expecting a good walk-up crowd, but it would help if you were to email rsvp@peadpr.co.nz to reserve $10 tickets at the door, or purchase them at Working Style Wellington, 8 Woodward Street, ph 04 472 2194 or Millwood Gallery, 291b Tinakori Road, Thorndon,
Wellington ph 04 473 5178.
Also, is someone able to lend me a longish (up to 15m) VGA cable for a projector for the evening? I'd be deeply grateful. Get in touch with the Reply button below. Ta!