Cone or bowl it doesn't matter. The tastiest top 5 ever!

We'll start

Orange and Chocolate Chip

Blue Hawaii

Chocolate

Cookies and Cream

English Toffee

I haven't seen much mention of bands reforming and attempts at making comebacks here, so I thought I'd chuck in a few cents. Does anyone here not care that Right Said Fred are making a comeback by rereleasing 'I'm too Sexy'? Rage Against the Machine are reforming to play one gig. Crowded House are reforming. Axl Rose's GNR seems to be finally coming to fruition. Michael Jackson is planning to record a new album. Kids are playing Korn at parties again. The Police are playing another gig. Van Halen are back together...

Damn. Am I just more aware of this stuff this year or has music ultimately decided that there is no point in continuing on. Has music become your father, caught in his past, reliving moments by spinning old records. The good ol' days. Who needs to branch out when the greatest has already been? Should sleeping dogs just lie?

So, we all know the deal by now. Kiwi FM fails because no one wants to listen to just New Zealand music all the time. Critics believe that the whole point of kiwi (with its listenership of less than 1% of Auckland's population) is simply a foil which has allowed Canwest (lead in NZ by one Brent Impey, by all accounts a man who is not all that passionate about NZ music) to prevent the "Youth Radio Network" from coming into existence. The government adds insult to the NZ music industry's injury by gifting Canwest 3 frequencies for 12 months, which to buy would have cost tens of millions of dollars. Steve Maharey has said that after 12 months the station will have to fend for itself financially, though without the burden of the cost of the frequencies, effectively it just has to break even and it will be a huge success for Canwest. Maharey has indicated that the main reason the Youth Radio Network is not yet in existence is that the money is not available to fund it, and under this logic it seems that such a network will not exist in the future either.

Why would Kiwi have success in other centres when it has failed so spectacularly in Auckland? Why did Maharey give international corporate Canwest what they wanted, quietly and without consultation, in spite of massive suport for the government-owned youth radio network from people like Neil Finn? How can we as the musicians of NZ protest what has happened? How can we make Kiwi completely unviable and give the government cause to change the decision so the frequencies are instead used for a Youth Radio Network?

Here are some ideas I have had: A website needs to be set up. Quotes can be emailed in to an email address set up for the site, from people such as Neil Finn, the Phoenix Foundation, Black Seeds, Shihad, Goldenhorse, Goodnight Nurse, Steriogram etc to send in their reasons for why the government needs to make a commerical-free government owned radio network their priority. These artists (crucially Mr Finn) could put their money where their mouths are and refuse to allow Kiwi to play their music. Gigs could be held to further strengthen the public awareness of the issue.

We only have to look as far as National Radio to see that government-owned radio stations means smart programming, intelligent informed hosts, huge support for up and coming NZ artists that currently have no national radio support outside the b-net and importantly programming driven by interest in the public good rather than commercial interests. Triple J in Australia has shown that a government funded national radio station can be enormously successful and beneficial to the inhabitants of a country, so why not here?

National Radio does its best to cater to people of all ages (and does very well considering), but there is a definite skew towards 35-50 year old listeners, which will likely go even older as the (majority) baby boomer generation ages. What NZ needs is a dedicated national radio station for people aged 15 - 35 offering the best new NZ and internationally produced music, documentaries, live performances in the studio, interviews with interesting people and more. It would allow many NZ musicians to reach a far bigger, more diverse audience than current channels allow, and indirectly would make being a musician in New Zealand a more viable career, through successful tours, CD sales and royalties. Tours would go from selling fairly well in major centres but not in the provinces to being sold out across the nation, as is already the case with artists like Bic runga, who get played on the existing networks. New Zealand CD sales would go up, NZ artists would regularly hit #1. Instead of the tried and true lowest common denominator pop dross that Canwest and TRN rely on, we would have a generation growing up listening to music selected purely for its artistic merit.

Your thoughts?

our band is the most hardout and violent and melodic band in NZ. we are looking for 3 more members to get our sound even huger. you need to be about the street or have history or abuse to understand our music to play it. if you are into songs about hardcore subgects like suicde and assult on babys and violence murders then you might be able to handle it. we dont want any pussys and you have to be a good. we are starting playing round auckland soon at all the major places.

if you play the guitar keyboard and turntables then email me at
dthebax@yahoo.com

Haven't had a forum awards ceremony for a while.

Nominations plz

Not sure If anyones said anything yet. But this is a real shame. Staple was a damn fine mag, always kept it real and was a great alternative to Pulp/Pavement.

But massive ups to them for giving it a go. Fucken print publishing sucks ass, but they produced a very nice looking and good reading mag. I'm gonna miss those photographic essays.

For a while I've been building valve guitar amps in my workshop for my own pleasure, and also listening to a cool style develop in kiwi music. Lots of feedback, extended chords with extra notes, and all this barely contained melody.

This kind of stuff is hard to coax out of amps at the kind of volumes you're all constrained to playing at. I'm Welly based, and I don't know how many times I've heard Greg asking the guitarists to turen their amps down, only to hear the common refrain 'but it only sounds good this loud!'

Well, I've scrounged up a bit of backing from the wonderful folk at Guitar Gallery and we're going into production. We're going to build a guitar amp, all valve, hand wired, no PCBs, around $1500 for a combo. The idea is to make a highly responsive amp that feeds back very controllably, with clarity when overdriven even when you're playing mad chords with discordant notes, at a comfy volume for 50-150 capacity venues. I also want to make them beer proof.

As information-savvy musicians of New Zealand, we'd like your feedback; what features do you actually use on your amp? I want to make sure it's going to suit a lot of us, not just me.

Do you typically use one, two, or three sounds in a song?
Do you change your EQ settings during your set for individual songs?
Do you use both humbuckers and single coils during a set?
Do you like amps with the controls on the top or the front?

Your opinion will be much valued! If you have anything you particularly like about an amp you've played or heard, I'd love to hear about it also.

Cheers,
--
Darren
Lucid Tone