Posts by Jolisa
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Don't feel mutinous, Jolisa! It's an open smile on a friendly shore!
I'm just nervous. How come they're expecting me?
(Speaking of expecting... all good? Did you get that writing thingy done??)
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Hah! Well, that does it. If you give me a postal address I shall promptly send you this book.
Hmmm, "a rich, passionate, militant and wholly optimistic polemic" - that sounds even better than free ice-cream!
(Same publisher as the feminist/socialist book you mentioned a while ago, the title of which I forgot to jot down?)
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And of all these things public radio was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
IIRC, the symbol won that particular round. And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
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You don't think comments like that harden the perception that there's an element of elitism and misguided sense of entitlement about the whole ConcertFM backers?
Tainted Love was probably important in its own way.
Excellent example; Tainted Love was one of the many tunes I taped off commercial radio, back in the day. It was terribly important, and widely accessible. If I hadn't taped it off the radio, I could have borrowed the album off a big brother or sister of a friend, or bought it at the mall after a few weeks of paper run money.
Shostakovich's Fantastic Dances, not so much. (Poor old Shostakovich - not much fun being an "elite" composer in Stalinist Russia. One day you're in, the next day you're surplus to requirements. Why, thank goodness we're not like that these days!).
You're right, there is a sense of entitlement at work in this whole discussion: I think the entire population is entitled to access great culture over the airwaves, for free -- with classical music as just one part of it -- and I absolutely think government should be in the business of funding it.
Elitist might well be one word for that. Another would be "radically egalitarian."
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Painfully accurate metaphor ahoy.
Couldn't quite figure out whether to follow up with deckchairs and something about an iceberg, or point to the horizon and exclaim about the whiteness of the whale.
Then I found myself humming the theme from the Love Boat, and feeling mutinous.
Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrr!!
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Danyl, your Socratic dialogue would work better were your sock puppets not thoroughly stuffed with straw.
Pro: Having the taxpayer fund my radio station is the only way I can listen to the music that's so important to me.
Pro: Being a taxpayer and helping to fund a radio station is the only way I can make sure that anyone who wants to can listen to music that's not just important but otherwise nigh unobtainable in that form...
Anti: You could buy your own music.
You could rent it from the library for free.
How about downloading it from the internet then? Also for free....as I was saying, especially those who cannot buy their own music (care to cost the content of a day of Concert FM?), cannot rent it from the library for free (show me the library!), and are not sitting at big shiny computers with broadband and the savvy to download broadcast-quality versions of that music (for free?!).
(On that subject: your YouTube Mahler link from earlier would make me cry, if I wasn't laughing. No free ice cream for that. Not even close to a suck on the popsicle, dude!)
As noted above by somebody else, this whole thing feels like a red herring. It smacks of a fishing expedition, to see just how quickly we can be persuaded to throw somebody overboard from the life-raft they keep telling us we're perilously clinging to. And we're obediently debating it, as always: Toss the grannies! No, the unemployed! Ooh, I know, the harpsichordist... and the group rounds on the hapless musician, gibbering in the corner...
Meanwhile, the life-raft is still firmly attached to the deck of the cruise-ship, and there's carpetbag steak for dinner in the first class lounge tonight, with drinks on the Captain.
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Love it, Robbie. Along similar lines, I was hoping for something that says "Bucklame" when you read it with a squint.
I have to say, I will never look at Auckland again without remembering (ta, resident word-botchers) that it's an anagram for Anal Duck. Which means it's time for a name change for the whole darn city. Who was this Auckland feller anyway, aside from thrice First Lord of the Admiralty and... Governor-General of India between 1836 and 1842?
Since even Tamaki-makaurau seems of uncertain origin, why not start from scratch? Perfect opportunity.
Or could we at least fix the spelling so visitors would pronounce it properly: Awkland?
(I do miss the brief reign of understated awesome that was "Auckland, eh" -- sorry, "Auckland, A!" Mainly because I always put a silent "fckin" in the middle.)
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I was not actually calling for Concert FM to be shut down, more that I was disagreeing with the notion that it was (in it's current form) a Must Have that the market could never provide for.
Important clarification, and I'm sorry if I misrepresented you. So, just kicking the tires on the government-sponsored ice-cream van and reckoning we could do it cheaper or better ourselves? :-)
I dunno. If you could find elsewhere in the world a privately funded classical station with the range and (current or improved) local content of Concert, I might be more persuaded that the market will indeed provide. I haven't looked extensively, but most seem to be publicly funded.
(Then there is Radio Classique Paris, which "is the only the radio operator offering Classical music and Economic Information" and which I am now picturing David Haywood listening to while he writes up his contes de Bollard).
Another one or two stations that broadened the RNZ content is a great idea, and could achieve the balance I'm talking about without impinging on Concert FM. This would be a win, IMO.
Exactly... and/but what do you reckon the chances are of persuading this lot that we need to quadruple National Radio? An informed populace is a dangerously intelligent populace, after all.
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Echoing Tim - that webstock finale video is amazing! I especially loved the Metropolis/Geiger bit in the middle. How much cooler it must have been in person, you lucky things.
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I'm sure it has a similar affect on many citizens.
Including those who find themselves on a ledge in the middle of the night.
MIkaere is right to question the shape and colour of the local content (above and beyond the daily "Made in NZ" hour). It does seem that Maori and Pasifika music most often finds its way to National Radio, for some reason, and then for only half an hour at a time. On the other hand, without Concert funding, we wouldn't have this taonga.
Again, the answer is more, not less - and more ownership of the question. I am getting to hate this analogy, but if we torch the ice cream van (or stand around while it's torched), then how on earth can we argue for a wider range of healthy and delicious brain-food?