Posts by Russell Brown
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A rather different seaside environment. Diggers lined up on the causeway of the Northwestern motorway.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Some Year, in reply to mark taslov,
Her music was all written by her co-writer, a 30 year old named Joel Little, and her lyrics are likely mostly his work as well.
Except for the part where that’s total fucking bullshit.
She wrote her lyrics, for god’s sake. She was diagnosed gifted at the age of six and represented New Zealand in a literature quiz at the age of 12 (she came second in the world). She’s written since she was a small child. Her mother is a respected poet.. I’ve spoken to one of her previous co-writers, who said she came in with wild lyrical imagery. If anything, Joel Little’s contribution will have been whittling that down.
But it’s also not as if she filed her lyrics and turned up later to hear how the song sounded. They worked on it together. I’ve talked to Campbell Smith, whose office was through the wall, and to her mother, who had to drive over from the shore and pick her up night after night. That’s what happened. Certainly, it’s reasonable to suppose it was she brought the lyrical ideas and Little who crafted many of the hooks, but did she craft “And every song is like ..”? Absolutely she did.
I’m enjoying the discussion about this Mark, but to suppose she was some sort of puppet for whom other people crafted an identity is woefully, deeply and demonstrably wrong. She’s signed a $2.5m publishing deal with a hot company which includes her writing songs for other artists.
If we’re sticking with the comparison, then I think that maybe Little is Butch Vig – the pop-savvy composer who helped the artists shape what they had into something huge.
Edit: I can see that you might not exactly agree with the comment you quoted Mark, but it's something that really annoys me. Glib dismissals by people who don't actually know what they're on about.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Sacha,
Oi
Quite. But by the same token, I need to temper my anti-Laphroaig jihad sometimes. Just looks rude. Sorry folks.
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Hard News: We need to talk about Len, in reply to simon g,
The problem of course, is if the “Issue” is clarified, then there are consequences for people other than Len Brown. Adulterers must all resign, or non-declarers must all resign, or Sky City freebie-takers must all resign, or people with rubbish PR (and Brown’s has been hopeless lately) must all resign. So, it’s all left murky, for the sake of those who have positions to lose – but not for the sake of an informed populace, or the future of public ethics.
Nicely put.
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Hard News: We need to talk about Len, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And let’s be honest, I’d feel a little more sympathetic towards Brewer if he hadn’t done such a good job of pinning a target to his own arse.
This. His yapping in Thursday's meeting was dreadful. Also how much of a lack of self-awareness do these guys have? Did he and Quax really not grasp that have ignored their own duty of declaration they weren’t in a very good position to be demanding yet more disclosure from Brown?
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Vile. “Wrecking Ball” is a great pop song. Miley knows how to do singles.
We're going to have to differ on that. It just sounds elephantine to me.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Pete,
If you’re a real neophyte start with a bottle of Pigs Nose blended then work your way up to single malts
No! Pig's Nose is soft, but it's nowhere near the Adelphi Private Stock blend for quality and costs $20 more.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to FletcherB,
I love Laphroaig, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it for a whisky neophyte?
Lagavulin was developed as a rip-off of Laphroaig, but is in fact smoother (and frequently cheaper) and probably easier to take as a beginner?
Supposedly, in the 19th century, Lagavulin’s distiller sought to copy the Laphroiag style.
If that’s really what happened, I’m glad he failed, because (to take the bottlings we most commonly see) the Lagavulin 16 is a vastly better whisky than the Laphroaig 10.
I don’t want to offend anyone, but while Laphroaig tends to be the first single malt anyone can name, it’s nothing exceptional. I’ve tried less common bottlings of it and they all taste pretty much the same to me. I prefer the Ardbeg in the same style.
Also, Lagavulin’s definitely more expensive than Laphroaig. Whisky Galore currently has the former for $135 (quite a good price) and the latter for $97. (That said, Whisky & More had the Lagavulin 16 from its grey-market sources for $89 last week. I got some.)
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Hard News: We need to talk about Len, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
So, really, why did they bother? The more I over-think it, I suspect The Herald’s not getting the kind of overwhelming support (internally or from the public) they’d like everyone to believe.
They've painted themselves into a corner. All they can do now is keep saying over and over that he's damaged goods in the hope it will become true.
As I said in the original post, I do regard Brown's undeclared taking of freebies from Sky City as an obvious and lamentable breach of the code of conduct. But any sense of proportion has been lost, to the extent that it's hard not to come back around to the view that it's still about the shagging.
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Entertainment Weekly picks 'Royals' for best lyrics of the year.
