Posts by Russell Brown
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Hebe,
... and a litter of puppies born at about four hours’ notice to an old dog who we didn’t even realise was pregnant.
Soz, but my injured darling and I did actually laugh when I read this out loud.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Emma Hart,
But in the five minutes I had for shopping, I bought her a book by Julie Burchill. It seemed to help.
I… can’t… even… What?
Her novel, Ambition. I gather it's a good read.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to David Haywood,
No worries, I figured (also from your atypical Hard News silence) that something was up. Very much hope you're over the illness & injuries.
Nothing serious, just something of a 12-day blur involving finishing Media3, finding short-term work, coming down with the flu, consequently missing an important day's work MCing NetHui, and staging a Great Blend, all the while continuing to drown in my own snot and sputum. And the injury was not mine, but Fiona's: she turned her ankle in a dark cinema, which meant a few hours at a White Cross making sure it wasn't broken.
On the other hand, your account of your travels has brightened both our lives with the gift of laughter. I hasten to add that the fact that we were helpless in our mirth does not mean that we take any pleasure in your misfortune.
Also, as I staggered back through Wellington on Friday, I managed to arrange lunch near the airport with two dear friends. They'd missed the Great Blend two nights before because he'd dug an axe into the back of his hand while chopping kindling and couldn't drive, and she wasn't greatly comfortable with driving both ways, in that she was recovering from heart surgery. By Friday, her birthday, in ludicrous Wellington weather, they were feeling morose and my friend had received no presents whatsoever. I couldn't even give her a birthday hug for fear of passing on a potentially dangerous infection. But in the five minutes I had for shopping, I bought her a book by Julie Burchill. It seemed to help.
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At the airport, I sponged the worst of the blood out of my beard, and mailed a last-minute package to Russell Brown.
For which I -- yikes -- have not till now thanked you. Thank you!
(In my defence: illness, injury, travel.)
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Hard News: Music: The Love of Food, in reply to Samuel Scott,
I was in such a daze I had no idea there was food for us on Wednesday! Sorry about that, I dragged James off to ’Nam for some lemongrass chicken.
It was so-so food. You did the right thing.
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Hard News: Music: The Love of Food, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I've been in Auckland this weekend and went to the Street Chant EP launch last night. It was so good. A bunch of people crammed into a small room, BYO booze, smokes and more sound and chaos than a three-piece seemed capable of producing.
Exactly how I figured it would be. I kinda had to admit to myself after the Phoenix Foundation finished that even though we had time to get over and catch Street Chant, I'd done very well for a man with a thunderous cold and would be unlikely to cope with the joys of such an environment. I hereby retrospectively declare you as my proxy for the evening.
The Blam Blam Blam cover isn't even the best track on the EP. I've been listening to it as I do a bit of exploring around this isthmus of a thousand lovers and it's full of quality tunes.
The stuff they've deemed not good enough for the album is amazing. The last "single", 'Sink', b/w their cover of Wire's 'Outdoor Miner', was great. They're actually a very disciplined group -- witness their recent turn as a backing band for David Saunders.
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Hi all. Just needed somewhere to put a description of my "Music and the Internet" panel tomorrow, 11.30am in the main room at NetHui.:
'The Song Remains the Same? What's really going on with music and the internet'
However often it's pilloried, here's the thing about the music industry: it's probably further through the prodigious change brought by the internet than any other established media sector.
While some revenue streams have withered, others have grown, and artists and music and publishing companies are learning to harness the power of the network and deal with some of the disruption it creates.
This session, chaired by Russell Brown, will be less discursive than most NetHui forums, and more of an info-dump from the panel to the audience. The panel is:
Samuel Flynn Scott, The Phoenix Foundation:
As Sam put it to Kim Hill, "this band sustains itself" -- and that doesn't happen by accident. Sam will talk about how the band uses social media, giveaways as marketing, cultivating a fan base and how record labels and Bandcamp can live together.
Adam Holt, CEO, Universal Music NZ:
Part of a generation of local major-label managers who were themselves in bands or from student radio, Adam has this year seen Universal NZ signing 16 year-old Lorde become the year's biggest entry to US radio and the toast of the hype sites. She has two New Zealand number one singles -- after giving away a remarkable 60,000 copies of her debut EP via Soundcloud. He'll talk about that project, about the nature of modern record deals and about embracing some of the grey areas of the internet.
Chris Hocquard, Dominion Law/Amplifier/DRM/TheAudience:
Chris founded New Zealand's first online music retail, mp3.net.nz (now Amplifier) in 1999 went on the found the leading New Zealand aggregator for digital music services, DRM. For the past year, he's been behind TheAudience, the NZ On Air-funded music discovery website, which aims to recognise the way that music discovery has moved from radio towards the internet. He's also one of the country's leading entertainment lawyers. Let's just say he knows where the money goes.
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It turns out that a gang of plasterers has roughly the same digestive throughput as herd of diarrhoea-stricken elephants.
Sweet Jesus. It's actually bad enough having one's sole home toilet used in the morning by a team of tradesmen when it's actually connected to the sewerage system.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Paul Brislen,
I’m voluntarily having my house pulled apart around me and find it incredibly stressful. I can only imagine what having it done involuntarily and overseen by bureaucratic nutters would do to your heads…
Exactly the same thing has occurred to me, in a similar position.
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to Chris Waugh,
And a very good point that is, too.
He went on to point out (I paraphrase) that by the same logic you could say "that terrorist bombing could have been prevented if only we'd had a surveillance camera in every home". Avoiding risk isn't an absolute. We actually have to make decisions about what we are prepared to allow to avoid risk.