Posts by Russell Brown
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Its ironic that the digital revolution has in some ways turned the clock back 70 or 80 years to the era when the performance royalty ruled.
Do I have to pay you a royalty if I use that in a column?
;-)
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one of my Flying Nun moments would have to be when it all coalesced into a purely nz thang - culminating in the vegetable cricket match at Sweetwaters early '80s
with the denizens of the Flying Nun/Rip It up caravan
against allcomers - with a team consisting of Roger Shepherd, Doug Hood, Russell Brown, Harry Ratbag/Russell, Paul Rose, amongst others - much summer fun between bands -I remember that. In particular, I recall sending an absolute scorcher through the defences of one Malcolm Black. One of the best balls I ever bowled, even if it was a vegetable.
(Cue joke here about whether the real vegetables were the things being used as balls, or the idiots attempting to play.)
I know what you're saying about the Verlaines. When they were "on", they were just spellbinding. I have a mental image of Graeme Downes, drenched with sweat in one of his untucked white shirts, just commanding the moment one night at the Windsor, like there was nothing else in the room but the song.
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This post: iTunes sales collapsing...has caused massive industry talk over the past couple of days. Some sites suggest that because it excludes dec 06 sales (ie. Xmas when people get their iPods and tend to buy a tune or two) it is skewered.
Forrester, the company that actually did the research, is rubbishing the "iTunes is collapsing" angle, but also ticking off Apple for being so stingy with data.
It does seem fair to say that sales have plateaued, though, and you're right about DRM. Apple's DRM seems innocuous until you buy some tracks and actually start to think about the annoying obstacles it's going to present. And Windows Media DRM is just horrid.
One of the problems that's come up with the blanket performance fee across all media types is that it would mean the porn industry getting most of the money ...
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nic.wise - Ease was obstensibly meant to be a MDMA substitute, BZP was/is supposed to save us from the scourge of the P pipe, if you believe the words of Mr. Bowden. My view was that Mr. Bowden has nicely combined the works of God and Mamon to not co-incidentially handsomely reward his own back account.
All true, but it was bloody good stuff, and something like what you'd want from a legalised high. As my friend summed it up, "ecstasy for grownups". It's interesting to speculate where it would have gone if a certain TV programme hadn't spooked Anderton's office into bringing it all to a close.
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The Chooks would have made it anyway, but with less money I guess...
If I recall correctly, the prize money was weirdly structured. A lot of it had to be spent on marketing, rather than actually recording, which wasn't really what they needed.
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I'd actually had John Campbell down as more a Rick Astley type, but he is clearly a huge fan of this stuff....
You're seriously saying you've never come across one of John's spirited reveries about the NME, the Postcard sound of Young Scotland and/or the Clean?
Although I'll grant you he does look a bit like Rick Astley. In fact, he looks more like Rick Astley than Rick Astley does now.
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Hey, this gives me an idea for the Flying Nun competition.
Well, you'd better hurry up. I'm getting my judging hat on tomorrow night.
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Oh wow. My box set just arrived by courier.
Skipped past 'Point That Thing', because I'm always playing that bugger, to the Gordons' 'Coalminers' Song'. That record still sounds incredible.
Then to 'Needles and Plastic' and 'Randolph' at the end of disc 1. Yay!
I buy a lot more music as files rather than CDs these days, but this thing really is gorgeous.
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But, I seem to recall at the time, that mine was not a minority view.... And it seems to me an awful lot of people claim to have always loved Flying Nun/The Dunedin Sound....
They may indeed love it now, but some of them are full of it when it comes to thier historical view.... Just ask Flying Nun themselves about the early sales figures.
Hmmm ... Tally Ho! went Top 20, and Boodle eventually achieved platinum sales. 'Heavenly Pop Hit' made #2. And most of the bands could tour nationally when they felt like it. The likes of the Verlaines would play three straight nights at the Windsor Castle.
So they weren't exactly obscure, just largely absent from commercial radio. That said, no one locally was achieving the kind of multi-platinum sales that mark out a really big release these days.
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Does anyone else remember the storm in a teacup that erupted when the Headless Chickens won the Rheinech Rock Awards way back when? There were plenty of commentators of the opinon that they weren't guitary or rocky enough.
I do know that the controversy was a complete pain in the ass for the band - who needs some radio fool on their case? - and winning the award was in some ways more hassle than it was worth.
But Chooks got their commercial revenge, didn't they?
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