Posts by Finn Higgins
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Robbery, I'm not rising to your posts because they've all been substantially addressed if you go back and read the thread properly. You're just repeating yourself. People have already had to resort to cutting-and-pasting their prior posts to respond to you, that's about all I could muster from now on. I've got better things to be doing, but feel free if it keeps you amused.
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which hardly makes it a CAREER option...... . we are talking about artists making a living off their music, arent we?
That's another argument entirely. NZ could arguably be said to be in dire need of a musician's union with teeth, working conditions for musicians here can be piss-poor.
but which often [not always] occur in better controlled/maintained environments with far far better sound quality. so even though they cost less to put on individually they require more long term investment, and are less likely to be a let down for the punter.....
No, they don't require more investment. The investment in a PA capable of supporting DJ sets vs the investment in a full band-worth of gear, microphones/desk/PA/foldback capable of supporting a band is way different, and the band option is a lot more expensive. Sure, DJ sets might require some screens and nice lighting to keep things interesting, but the basic infrastructure required to make the sound is a lot cheaper.
The reason the sound quality is better is because DJs use pre-mixed material rather than a live engineer who has to work on the spot and deal with practical issues like feedback and monitoring levels.
As for punters being let down, I agree this is a problem. I think it's a function of NZ audiences being too nice to local musicians to actually make putting on a really terrible show a traumatic experience, plus the fact that many bars don't actually pay their bands anything or make any real investment in the people they choose to play. Unfortunately an inept DJ sounds a lot better than an inept band and is a lot cheaper to host.
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I don't mind talking differently for different situations, that's sensible. But I do wonder what the Maori half of the conversation must have thought when the 'honky' went back to his friends and suddenly remembered how to talk 'properly'. I suspect insulted might be one reaction.
I think the main thing that makes putting a different face/voice/dress on weird or irritating is when it becomes needy rather than just friendly, particularly when it's obviously not natural. Pleading for inclusion or trying to achieve a desired result, rather than just going with the flow, perhaps? That certainly annoys me, but the question of why is still kind of interesting.
That's the major thing that pisses me off about bad salespeople, actually. You can tell all the friendly stuff is forced, which is what makes it repugnant.
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But I find just as annoying people who pretend to be something they're not through the way they talk.
Can you put your finger on why? It's not like people don't do that in other ways with their dress, facial expressions or basically any other mode of communication on offer.
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A deeply unworthy thought -- and at an intellectual level I know that it's indefensible -- but that was, I'm afraid, my very first reaction.
I'm not sure it's actually indefensible. I'd be willing to make a case for there being accents that you wouldn't want to try to sound smart in, and that if you wanted to be taken seriously you should try to soften a little. Similarly, I doubt somebody who speaks perfect BBC English is going to be taken seriously as the next hip-hop superstar. Different cultures have different appropriate modes of speech, just as they have appropriate modes of dress. Is acknowledging that a bad thing? Accents are mutable, after all.
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I recently met a woman in her late thirties, who introduced herself as "Clear".
I was five when my family first moved to New Zealand from the UK, and I didn't really have much concept of there being a different accent here. The first friend I made was a girl at the motel we were staying at, who I thought was exotically-named "Seerah" or something similar... Similar confusion resulted.
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I don't wish to appear to be defending Ropati in any way here as I think even his admitted actions were apalling.
But it has to be pointed out that there are substantial numbers of people of both sexes in NZ who consider getting utterly munted then having a shag as a successful night out. What would constitute "reasonable grounds" for belief that the other person had consented? That again seems extremely vague, but with the burden of proof shifted onto the accused. That rather violates the presumption of innocence, no?
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American Studies is being cut at Canterbury, so everyone is going to have to find a different subject to process their learning though.
You mean people have to watch The Simpsons for fun now? Aw, hell...
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Just on the topic of qualificationism, I had to leave my first crappy (civil service) data-entry job after a year because I didn't have GCSE English and had no intention of getting it to keep the job. Which I'd been doing for a year, note.
I had some similar fun with pay scales for itinerant music teaching in New Zealand. If you want to make money teaching an instrument in schools in NZ, go get the shortest and easiest degree on offer beforehand. You'll get considerably more money that way than if you, for example, go find the best musicians on earth and spend a fortune on studying with them one-on-one until you can play like Coltrane, Hendrix and Jesus combined.
It would be possible to be irritated by that stuff, but generally I'm of the view that organisations which value people on the basis of paperwork alone are ones that I can happily avoid. They'll only prove to be annoyingly stupid and inflexible in other ways later.
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Grrrr... Phil Goff, unctuous lying prat... snarl... Lockwood Smith grinning Thunderbirds puppet... spit, foam... Russell Marshal, human blancmange... gibber... Maharey, Mallard...erk! (immediate stroke).
Do I sound like DFJ yet?
Actually, I was expecting you to finish with "I was very, very drunk"...