i want to know everything. please. tell me everything about your beautiful country.
― fields of salmon, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Anyway: GG (and NZ-ers) will elaborate on such matters, I'm sure.
― Julio Desouza, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― nathalie, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― Damian, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
i don't know if theres really a scene... there's certainly scenesters. potential audience for y'r classic nz jangle-pop or experimental band is very small... but reasonably devoted. now, if only someone would get them to dance.
most people here equate new zealand music with neil finn and the-band- formerly-known-as-shihad. there is some nostalgic appreciation for some bands, like the chills, but mostly y'r classic flying nun artists from the clean onwards are like... "who?"
bands that rise to radio prominence are ones that play derivative material and try sign to warners. radio stations here have just agreed to a self imposed 20% nz music quota... this will mean every 5th song will be bic runga or stella or dave dobbyn or something just as awful
if theres a reason for bands moving toward an experimental or psychadelic aesthetic, it's for the same reasons such scenes exist overseas: an indie-ish anti-charp-pop movement, but a nice easy one to fit into that already exists.
i don't know if isolation affects us much, really, in such a digital age. distribution here is still pretty poor (so solid crew record was finally released here in march) so we're a long way off the trends... thats probably more relevant to electronic music anyway.
some records are easy to come by. others you may need to mail order or know someone. consider- it's probably as hard to find a notwist or dismemberment plan record here as a hdu record overseas. or whatever bands you want to suggest instead.
pot= v. accessable= most affordable "drug"
ok, now back to y'r regular schedule.
― Johan, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― di, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― Queen G, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
The Ghost Club are ace tho', as are the Subliminals.
― electric sound of jim, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― Damian, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― Ess Kay, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― , Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― jk, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
most people here equate new zealand music with neil finn and the-band-formerly-known-as-shihad
*sniff* it's...so...true...for the great unwashed [err, as in general populace, not the Clean side-project], NZ music begins and ends with Zedpoledupatrollar* [TM], the mighty major-label jugganaut of doom. They could be from anywhere, cept our sassy-front- chicks have better mullets. and thank goodness Breathe broke up.
I think the fringes of music - the experimental, independent, outright bizarre bands - will always thrive here. Basically, you have to suck a lot of cock to get where Zed are, and given how much their album cost to make, and how badly they flopped overseas, and what corporate bastards Universal have probably been to them since, chances are you wouldn't want to anyway. So there's no pressure to be The Next Strokes [though Cambridge rock city's own The Datsuns are heading for Next White Stripes status as we speak...SXSW fest and all] and shift millions of units. Better to make music you and your half- dozen best mates'll enjoy instead. Maybe cut a Peter King lathe 7" or a CD-R.
We get exposed to a weird cross-section of overseas music in NZ, too. Untill the last decade, UK and US albums would often be released here yeeeears after their domestic release [actually, this still happens sometimes. movies and TV serieses too]. We're the only country where Joy Division went number one [twice, plus a number two for 'Transmission', in '81]. Before the innernet, we also tended to get only a small proportion of overseas music - the toppermost of the poppermost and, therefore, the blandest and safest and dullest of the world's combined musical efforts. The extreme blandness of this dominant culture could perhaps explain the angularity and/or quirkiness of much local music output. One of our most sucessful '70s bands, after all, wore girly makeup and funny clown outfits, and featured a sprightly hornpipe solo.
And then there's the natural environment. All those early-mid 90s Christchurch spacerock bands with the wide-open-windswept-plains sounds, the violent dynamic shifts of HDU and their ilk, like the stormclouds that blow in out of nowhere to envelop Mt Cargill...even the widespread obsession with Dick Dale-esque surfmusic. We've got more coastline than the USA, yeknow.
I had more examples, but i forget and [oddly enuff] i have to go help mix my band's forthcoming lathe 7" now!
― petra jane, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― di, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― petra jane, Thursday, 4 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)
― david, Friday, 5 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)