I have five years experience working for Sony and EMI (UK) and a stint at MTV. What are your credentials that make you such an authority?
Well, Hun is obviously not the brightest lightbulb on the Xmas tree, lena o.
Actually Hun, I agree with you. Like I said above FF are good. Their ecleptic, energetic sound reminds me a little of David Byrne/early Talking Heads, which may be the elusive Glasgow sound. People are being very positive about a new Glasgow live music scene, with Snowpatrol and other bands, which is great - the place has been dominated by the clubbing scene for too long. No 'conspiracy', just maybe a little media manipulation, which is not a bad thing.
I reserve judgement on Fur Patrol however - brrrrrr!
All right - there was no conspiracy, the good people at Sony New Zealand are paragons of virtue, Nick from Shortland Street will become the next prime minister and every song that receives widespread airplay on New Zealand radio is a good song. Forgive me for having individual taste in music instead of following the crowd of millions!
This is the number one song in Europe at the moment: The Ding Dong Song by Gunther and the Sunshine Girls. It's getting massive airplay so it MUST be good: http://www.gunthernet.com
No conspiracy? You don't think it was just a little suspicious the way Fur Patrol's inane Lydia single was number 1 in the charts, just in time for the lucrative Christmas market a few years ago, when the single had not actually been released for sale in shops?! There was a Listener article on it. I am not dissing Franz Ferdinand - they are a fine band, I think they will go far - it's just that if you were following their rise in the Scottish media it was clear that they were getting a boost. The Mercury award results were even accurately predicted several months ago.
No surprises there. Franz Ferdinand winning the award was as inevitable as death and taxes. I have been in Scotland on and off for the past year, and the music industry there is extrmely predictable. Basically, on the arbitrary whim of the music industry, a mediocre or unknown band will be selected, plugged by newspapers such as the Sunday Herald, resulting in Radio 1 airplay, and inevitable sales. The public are basically told what to listen to, and the award will be the first of several to come. Fur Patrol, anyone?
There's a brand spanking new Finn Brothers site: www.finnbros.com
Technically there is no such thing as the Morioris - they were Maori from the southern South Island who migrated to the Chathams, and were romanticised as an independent race by C19th ethnographers.
In 1835 Maori from Taranaki chartered a ship, sailed to the Chathams and slaughtered, ate and enslaved the pacifist Moriori (you just can't trust those 'nakis!).
Although the last 'pure' Moriori died in 1933, there are thousands of Moriori descendents alive today, and several Moriori claims have gone through the Waitangi tribunal.
Word up! :o)
Well, there are over 450 comments in the K'lee page here, many of which are from young impressionable lads asking 'Can I feel you K'lee?' and saying how much they want to lick her all over. One year on and she's forgotten - an object of ridicule.
*Sigh* kiwi pop is such a fickle, fickle world.
Aaaah. My first riff. I was 9 years old. It was played on a spanish guitar, with a cheap cassette microphone placed inside the guitar. The song was called 'Running in the Rain' and I think that was just about all the words. It was written by me, although I had just heard Born in the USA for the first time which probably heavily influenced it. I was backed up by my friend banging a cardboard box and pots because we didn't have a drum kit, and his two sisters on backing vocals. Wild. Even with thousands of dollars of recording equipment I don't think I could replicate that original and unique sound!
Anyone know where Flash Harry's name came from? As I recall Flash Harry was a character in a New Zealand Victorian melodramatic novel - a bushman who gets killed by a falling tree. If Flash Harry is named after this... RESPECT !
Together Alone album is a true New Zealand classic! For any dissenting Aussies, c'mon - it's got paua shell and fluffy dice on the cover art , it was recorded at Kare Kare beach and the title song features a Maori choir! Kare kare is the track that does it for me - a seriously underated song, atmospheric and evocative. Fingers of Love is great, but I think there are way better live versions of this out there. Private Universe is, as always, sublime. Black and White Boy rocks harder than any other Crowded House song, and Skin Feeling has a funky mid-90s U2 sound. There's not a weak track on the whole album.
Just got my greedy lil hands on Tim Finn, Live at the Borderline London June 16th 1993 "Very limited edition exclusive sampler" CD! An excellent laid-back acoustic session in which Tim sings a bunch of favourites, backed up by Phil Manzanera's guitar on a couple of tracks. My favourite track is Parihaka, which segues into Weather with You then back again. Superb. I'm looking forward to the new Finn Brothers album "Everyone is Here" which comes out in August, and I'm going to their concert in Edinburgh. Go Finn :o)
all I'm asking you to do is back it up - give me an example, not your cv.
Fair enough Hun. All I was doing is letting you know that I am talking from first hand experience, and are not, for example, some opinionated spotty adolescent writing on his mum's computer in Mosgiel.
(a) I thought we were done with Fur Patrol. I was out of the country at the time - someone sent me the Listener article and I did not know it had been a case of sensationalist journalism. Word in the industry was that someone in NZ had fucked up big time. Okay? I accept that Fur Patrol is a bad example.
(b) You want an example of the public being directed in what to listen to? It is charmingly naive of you to think that they're not. My experience comes in the UK. When a record company is plugging a band the whole marketing machine comes into force. Obviously UK radio stations are sent more promotional CDs than they can handle every day - but when a band comes with guarantee that it will be the 'next big thing' and if the DJ plays them he/she will get an exclusive studio interview/session funded by the record company... Once the band is played on the radio people within the music company, posing as the public, will text, email or phone the radio station repeatedly requesting they be played. No bull. And of course an article in the right music magazine pointing to a band as the next big thing is equivalent to selling a hundred singles just like that. It only takes 3-4 thousand singles sold for a UK band to make number 1 now (which is why the companies are pulling out of singles and focussing on albums). You want to know a band where we manipulated the charts? - McFly - happening right now and oh so appealing to that vital pre-teen girl market who dictate the singles charts.
I am not particularly proud of some of the stuff I did during my time in these companies. Too many times a talented and original band was rejected because they were not deemed to have the right sound in the right place, would be too difficult to categorise musically, would be too hard to manage or worst of all just didn't have the right look (the latter not as bad as it used to be, believe it or not). On the other hand completely crap bands were marketed like anything. I quit recently, to do something more worthwhile, and because I was sick of the superficial London atmosphere - how would you like to work with a bunch of 35+ year olds, dressing like Avril Lavigne and pretending to like Linkin Park and Tool, while secretly listening to Abba and Paul Simon at home?! Whinge.
Last word, I promise. Franz Ferdinand - several people in this thread have expressed that they are a sound band, but not entirely innovative and have questioned has the Mercury lost it's edge this year. This is my opinion, and this is what I was trying to intelligently discuss before I got angry at being told I was stupid for not liking Fur Patrol, and blew my cover. This is the last email I will be writing as julian_blade, as a few people I worked with in the industry who read this already guessed who I am. From now on I shall only contribute under a new alias... and on that dramatic note GOODBYE (and for chrissake stop banging on about Fur Patrol - no one cares!)