Posts by ali bramwell

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  • Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of…,

    I really don't get the whole loud live music thing, never have. I'm not such a massive fan of live music to start with - I won't just pay to hear a band unless I already like them, as I'm more into it for the music than the experience of the gig.

    I remember that Karen Hunter tour, Kyle Matthews do you think that that good atmosphere you remember from ARC (as it used to be) can be recreated by pushing play on your home entertainment system? Its a bit like the difference between television and theatre or cinema surely? While you might be guaranteed to get a technically good copy of the work with well mixed sound every time (thanks Robbery) there is a human chemistry that will be missing.

    Many people would argue that the gig is quintessentially 'the experience' of the music for that reason (pheromones). Although purists might also argue this has obviously shifted with increasing amounts of sound performance that relies more on technology and less on instrumental timbre.

    To balance my own comments about the primacy of pheromones: There are a few Luddites lurking who think that a return to live performance as primary delivery will solve copyright issues. What they seem to mean is get rid of that pesky technology and the problem of copyright will evaporate. This sets the discussion back before the age of mechanical reproduction (nod to Walter Benjamin) where the authentic product is the one with the direct touch of its maker. Besides the obvious delusional longing for bucolic utopias... the box is open, even if we could why would we want to shut it? The Gorillaz performance work has played in and with this divide beautifully...a blended delivery where artists refuse to be an 'authentic' performance spectacle in the rock tradition, but there was still a crowd experience and a kind of charismatic mystique...as well as technically good quality sound and image.

    81stColumn made some good points about what I would call an open source ethos in arts and music. (without suggesting that musicians dont deserve fair pay for their work) there is a productive strategy in collective and self publishing...a new millennial version of the garage party perhaps, where the event creates a new audience and market for itself.

    sorry long post, this is a great thread.

    Dunedin • Since Jul 2007 • 33 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Welcome Home?,

    On the subject of your future dates with customs officials: yes Im afraid you are right, that 'little note' on your file about importing pharmaceuticals will have an effect. From now on never book a tight flight connection or ask a busy person to wait for you in the arrivals hall.

    I travel for work occasionally, not all the time, but often enough (average 2-4 international inbounds a year) to know that random selection and irrational paranoia are both unlikely. I really do get searched every time I come back in. A sympathetic customs officer (some of them are very nice, fortunately) informed me the 'little note' on my file that causes the alert is about my 'suspicious travel pattern.' It may have been the trip to Bosnia, or the one to North Korea...whichever, Ive been doomed for a while now to have those little heartwarming chats about my 'activities' and to unpack my laundry for someone to rifle through.

    So even without the headache pills they stung you for, the fact that you went to Poppy and Terrorism capital of the world would probably have been enough to set you up for similar fate.

    Lie back and think of the Queen dear,(or Juliette Binoche if she's more your taste) it'll be over soon.

    and if not well...at least NZ is safe from your (and my) obvious criminal and subversive tendencies(?) Strangely, Im not comforted.

    Dunedin • Since Jul 2007 • 33 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Insert Token Here,

    I know that this thread has already dried on the vine and blown away some days ago, but nevertheless I'm going to commit the gauchery of the latecomer.

    After reading many of the discussions around the politics of representation over the last weeks without comment, taking an example from this thread to illustrate a more general point.

    Jackie Clarke, insisting she wasn't intending to be patronising (interesting word choice), lectured Emma Hart persistently about how she must acknowledge the importance of gender to her experience. Without any irony or self awareness, Clarke said, among other things:

    there are people all through a child's life who reinforce it [gender]. How you are reflected in others' eyes is incredibly important when you are young, hopefully less so when you are older, but it's still there. We live in a society that constructs mechanisms for various reasons.

    An often unacknowledged dynamic at work is the pressure that groups put on each other to conform to a given, essentialisms are not only externally defined 'constructed mechanisms'.

    I was taught, by women I respected, one very basic courtesy. When someone says plainly, "my experience is not the same as yours" to not then immediately insist they must be wrong/ naive/ foolish/ politically suspect or just plain ignorant.

    BTW Stephen Crawford I enjoyed the elegant way you made a parallel point.

    Dunedin • Since Jul 2007 • 33 posts Report Reply

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