Posts by philipmatthews
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I thought One Day was a pretty good song, actually, in a MOR, wannabe-Coldplay sense.
Not music, but a good story about music. This new Simon Reynolds story about My Bloody Valentine -- finally a reunion worth the attention (unlike Gang of Four, Throbbing Gristle, Led Zeppelin ... er, Crowded House). The gig described in the opening pars -- in LA, 1992 -- sounds like it should make anyone's list of great shows they wish they'd been at. And if they're playing festivals, someone needs to start thinking about the Big Day Out. Anyway, the story:
http://www.spin.com/articles/my-bloody-valentine-opposite-rocknroll
This one's interesting, too -- the short version is that you give something away for free and people would still rather steal it:
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Craig, you should enjoy this. Today's Michael Laws outrage:
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Good stuff, James. I'm really looking forward to the Ward and the Habicht. I'd say that at times both Christine Jeffs and Niki Caro -- esp in Sylvia and Memory and Desire, respectively -- have got to the poetic level you ascribe to Ward, Habicht and (I'm less convinced) Greg King. But it's all subjective.
This is my first festival in Chch. It's interesting to see how much better the North Island does with its festival line-ups than the South. Over the course of a year, from reading magazines and the net, one builds up an unofficial list of films you'd really like to see in the festival come July. This year, mine might have gone like this:
The Man From London
Silent Light
Lorna's Silence
Diary of the Dead
My WinnipegAnd exactly none of them are playing down here. Never mind. There's a lot to be going on with.
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Finlayson has definitely been making encouraging noises. Those with plenty of free time should read his inaugural arts speech from last year:
http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?articleId=10935
Of special interest: a kind of mea culpa about National failing to do enough for the arts in the 90s, and a concession that too much of the arts infrastructure goes towards supporting Auckland and Wellington and that the provinces are, by comparison, missing out. I imagine there's quite a few in Wellington feeling a little nervous.
One also gets the feeling, based on this speech, that he wouldn't have allowed NZ's contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale to be handled as badly as it was -- that was a spectacular failure of nerve on the part of a supposedly arts-loving govt.
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Holmes is all over this, isn't he? Getting the exclusive interview on one hand, drafting the on-air apology on the other, and also justifying and diminishing Veitch's actions in his own radio comment, linked from here:
www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10520857
But unlike most here, I don't think that Tui billboard is in poor taste. I take it as saying, "Veitch, how could you ever think that something as terrible as this would stay quiet?" I don't see it as an indictment of Dunne-Powell.
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If you think Real Groovy's grim where you are, Rich, you ought to try the Chch shop. Acres of second-hand bargain tables that don't change for weeks and new release sections that ... don't change for weeks. Hardly ever a soul about, except for glum teenagers browsing Marilyn Manson T-shirts (big market down here for that, admittedly). I haven't tried Dunedin's, but pretty sure the Auckland store is the only one that really works.
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There's some good fan-made videos for Godspeed You Black Emperor, who often seemed like a soundtrack in search of a movie. This is one of the better ones. What a great band they were ...
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Sorry Che, there's no such thing as emo before emo. The word you're looking for, I'm afraid, is "Goth". Having spent every day of my 19th year listening to the first Sisters of Mercy album and the Swans' "Holy Money", I can recognise the condition. Won't scare anyone by linking to either band here ...
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For the guy who wanted a sustained account of changes at the Listener, a good piece went out in the student mag Critic a week or so ago. Interviews both Pamela and Finlay:
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Sad to see you're going from the Listener, Russell. I remember when that column -- was it called "computers"? -- started back in the utopian days of the early-mid 90s. This new-fangled "internet" thing will never catch on, I thought -- but I always liked the way you had a strong belief in its democratic or maybe even counter-cultural value. You were way ahead of the game there.
Was it Paul Little who commissioned it? Seems now like a bold thing to have done.