I Ain't Thick

Jeffrey Lewis anti folk legend (well that may be stretching things but I dig him) and comic book artist covers the British anarchist punk band Crass's song I Ain't Thick.

Comes from his album of Crass covers, 12 Crass Songs. A album that shouldn't work but so does.

In the daktari household this album has been getting hammered for some rather simple reasons, I am a Crass fan and a Lewis fan and the album is cool....

After yesterday's post I should have added Systematic Death from the album - a song I have always really dug and one I used to reference in Sociology essays at university. But Lewis's cover isn't that great, tis good, wheras I Ain't Thick is perhaps in my view the pick of the litter from the album.

Every now and then a album or song comes along that reminds me why I miss doing radio... this is definately one of those songs.

Anyways, get into it and remember to change a sysem or smash the state all one has to do is form a band.

Download


Jeffrey Lewis at the Windmill 2006:




Jeffrey Lewis - I ain't thick... (Crass cover)
Uploaded by kidamprod

System/System/Death is Life

The Long Weekend

Why does it end

why?

Hello Ladies...

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Always wanted to meet a New Zealandian

The Curse Of Voodoo Ray (Smoothie Mix)

One of my all time fave records - Voodoo Ray by A Guy Called Gerald, here it is remixed by François Kevorkian and credited to Lisa May a vocalist - of course we know its all about Gerald. He reputably sold the copywrite to the track for 300 pounds so he could pay his rent, the record went on to sell tens of thousands of copies.... thus earning him not a penny - doh!

Download link

Previous Daktari's World rant

The original version will be twenty years old this year

Twenty bloody years and still the opening strains of this record get me. This FK mix is light on the vocals and the smoothie mix sums the style quite nicely.



enjoy

The Story of Stuff Chapter 2: Extraction

Sir Ed & Hone

Wagged school to watch Sir Edmund Hillary's funeral on the telly.

The stories from the family members and tributes from the sherpa community were very moving and allowed us New Zealanders small insight into the man himself - we're more than equatted with his legend... and my what a legend he was. I was particualy taken by his grandaughter (think it was grand daughter) reading a poem by Hone Tuwhare, the NZ poet who was also buried yesterday, a very nice touch - perhaps she could be given a job in NZ media who have ignored the lose of this great talent. As I read somewhere two great Kauris fell recently.

Hillary's life seems more akin to a boys own adventure story than reality, perhaps thats why we admire him so - he is the man, the person many of us would like to think we to could have been. Or is it more than that - his modesty, his dignity and his humour speaks directly to our kiwi values - even if these kiwi values are more myth than anytihng these days.

Two great men, two great kiwi's... two great lives.

No Ordinary Sun

Tree let your arms fall:
raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.
Let your arms lack toughness and
resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon’s pull.
No more incline a deferential head
to the wind’s talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight
of birds nor shield
nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall
nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,
no dashing trade wind’s blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies . . . for this
is no ordinary sun.

O tree
in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor
your end at last is written.

Hone Tuwhare

How Much For Digital

The movie studios are starting to get excited about renting movies digitally (via Apple and others). The pricing seems to be modeled on Blockbuster (+). Figure $3 a rental, another buck or so for HD. That seems 'fair', because it's in the same range as we're used to.

But wait.

Blockbuster buys DVDs for $15 or $20 (probably a lot less in volume, but I have no clue what the real number is). The studios have to pay for duplication and warehousing and marketing and they take a risk with every pressing that they'll have to shred the leftovers.

Blockbuster then rents them out 30 or 40 or more times each, meaning each rental costs Blockbuster fifty cents. Not to mention rent, surly clerks, cost of capital, advertising, etc. Or, in the case of Netflix, stamps.

In the case of online rentals, all of these intermediate costs immediately disappear. Gone.
So, why try to mimic the current model when it comes to pricing if the costs are mostly gone?
The same thing goes for online music and for PDF versions of books. Kevin Kelly figured this out with his book on films. He makes $1.50 a copy regardless of whether you buy the beautiful color edition or the cheapest edition he sells. Why should he care which version you choose?

The current phone novel craze in Japan is even more evidence for why this makes sense. 2,000,000 people download the phone novel you wrote (it costs you nothing) and then, when it becomes a hit, you make millions on the sales of the paper book and the movie...

No, I don't think Free is always the answer, but I do think the studios are about to make a mistake of RIAA proportions. I'd charge fifty cents for an online rental. It would immediately hammer the rental stores (which is fine with Hollywood) and DVD replicators (also fine with Hollywood) but would instantly teach people a new habit. Then, once the new habit is set and you've earned permission, sure, charge more for new movies and for blockbusters. 300 million movie theatres, all selling tickets every single night--you don't need to charge $10 a seat when you have access to everyone.

It's important to charge something, because the act of paying fundamentally changes the dynamics of the relationship. The question is this: at the start, is your goal to maximize profit or to build a platform that scales? The fact is that the market is too small right now for the price to matter. What matters is whether you can build an audience that is in the habit of paying you, an audience that wants to hear from you, an audience that you can build a business on.

At fifty cents a rental, all desire for piracy goes out the window, replaced by convenience, ease of use and a clear conscience. More important, entire new services show up, habits are built and the studios end up with a direct relationship with consumers who want to hear from them. If they don't get greedy at the start.

Seth Godin, hat tip to Bob L

Dr. King's Prophetic Call to Conscience and Action Today

With the economy slipping into recession and more than 160,000 American fighting men and women in Iraq combat zones and no end to the war in sight, these are trying times for our nation. Unemployment, underemployment and poverty are afflicting more and more American families who face rising costs for food, health care, gas, heating oil and other expenses. Working families have been hit hard by the skyrocketing costs of sending their children to college and the subprime mortgage crisis while the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer. Almost 13 million children are poor, with 5.6 million living in extreme poverty. Since 2000, child poverty has increased by 10.7 percent. Currently 9.4 million children lack health insurance; nearly 90 percent of them live in working families. Over the past two years the number of uninsured children has increased by more than one million.

As we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and as we commemorate the 40th anniversary of his Poor People's Campaign for which I was privileged to serve as counsel and Congressional liaison, it's instructive to look back at what Dr. King has to tell us. In his sermon, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968, the Sunday before his assassination, he warned us again of the triple threats of racism, excessive materialism and militarism, and called on our rich nation to end poverty.

He told the story of the rich man Dives and the poor man Lazarus and said Dives didn't go to hell because he was rich; he went to hell because he refused to see and help Lazarus. Dr. King feared America might make the same mistake and said our wealth could be our salvation or our downfall. He said the U.S. had the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is if we have the will.

"This," he said, "is America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.... There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

"In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor Peoples Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect...."

"We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.' But if a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists...."

"And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible."

"We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for Black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically, in terms of direct action."


Dr. King's position on the Vietnam War was profoundly prophetic if one just substitutes " Iraq" for " Vietnam." He warned that the U.S. would continue to have " Vietnams" unless we confronted our deeply ingrained militarism. This is a time when many of our sons and daughters and husbands and wives are bogged down in a military quagmire in Iraq, and recruits aged 17 and up are currently given bonuses of thousands of dollars to enlist in the Army, many of whom are having a hard time finding employment in today's economy. Dr. King makes us mindful of the misguided priorities of a nation whose poor children are being sent to war and its poor children of color to prison rather than to college and good paying jobs at home. With the amount we spent in Iraq last year, all children and pregnant women could be provided with access to comprehensive health coverage and every poor child in America could be lifted out of poverty, and we would still have $65 billion left over.

Just as he decried how the Vietnam War "has played havoc with our domestic destinies" including the need to eradicate poverty in 1968, so the Iraq war is stealing from our children and families the health care, education, housing and food they need to survive and thrive now.

"We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world," Dr. King said 40 years ago. These words ring true today.

So many of us love to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. It is time to follow him. We ignore his truths at individual and national peril.

By Marian Wright Edelman

the Big Day Out 08

So here we are Bob's tenth or eleventh BDO (I can't remember how many I've been to... not a good reflection on what little mind I have left)... and so how was it?

The day started out fine, a slap up cafe breakfast with lashings of coffee to set Bob up for the day ahead - Bob needs his strength as he knows its going to be a big day. The festival is all but sold out and the weather is going to be muggy as all hell... this suggests today is going to be more than simply wandering around enjoying the musical delights on offer.

We arrive at Mt Smart in the early afternoon, grab media passes and immortals lounges passes, queue for ages to get drinking area passes (bob likes a beer with the commoners, LOL).

Adjourn to the immortals lounge for a couple of cold ones and then its off to see Kool Keith. The Boiler Room is a big fuck off tent, built on decaying and broken concrete - simply stated it is a shithouse place. Kool Keith starts the set off in wonderful style Blue Flowers, a huge song back in its day (wot 12 or so years ago). I'm chuffed with this, taking it as a sign that his set is going to be off the hook. Alas soon enough things deteriorate to the inane "Hello New Zealand" calls and the corresponding sheeplike cries from the crowd (which is a decent size) most of whom have no idea I reckon who the hell they are seeing or who Kool Keith is, but a NZ call has gone up and hey thats where we are so one has to yell doesn't one? No, one doesn't. Soon enough we're treated to nearly 30 minutes of a medley of KK tracks... fuck this mumbles Bob I wanna hear a song in its entirity. Soon enough (about 30 litres of sweat, by god the tent sucks!) its over Havoc steps up to play some tunes - Bob flees.

Its at this point that the size of the crowd makes itself known - a twenty minute queue to get into the Lileypad, no thanks I just want to chillout and enjoy a beer, so back to the immortals lounge. Drink caht and catchup with those I seem to see once a year.

Check outside the window prior to departing to see Dizzy Rascal - the crowd trying to enter that damn tent again is simply huge, no ones getting anywhere fast, so I opt for another beer and hear the strains of Mr Billy Bragg waft tyhrough the window, yep sounds like he did in the eighties...

By 4ish the immortals lounge is filling up with industry wankers, hangers on adn the randoms this place attracts these days - time to bail and stay away.

Go for a wander and eventually its back into the tent for UNKLE with my brother whose a fan. I quite liked UNKLE's latest album as a non fan and to be blunt was expecting them live to be rubbish. Well bugger me if I wasn't wrong, so wrong on that count. Stunning live band set ensues. Suddenly things pick up and the excitment levels I didn't feel I would find on the day kick in.

Then its off to see a tiny bit of Battles before the lure of Arcade Fire drags me to the main stages. Arcade Fire were perfectly placed on the big stage and wow they were everything I had expected, stunning. Shame about the influx of the afterwork crowd whom all seemed to be entering the stadium area for Rage Against The Machine, looking asomewhat baffled by Arcade Fire, their constant pushing past me was a dampener on my mood.

A bit more wandering and not really getting anywhere and Bob and bro think fuck it hometime and off we go. Couldn't face the prospect of LCD Soundsystem in the tent... something I found out later wasn't bad and they were apparently off the hook - damn my eyes... but I also don't care. For its one thing to dig someones music and an altogether nother thing to see them live - sometimes live is one thousand times better but not often and very rarely at a budget festival (that is one we kiwis can afford).

Not the greatest day ever, but certainly a Big Day Out. I believe the scheduling of the day could have been better - acts can and perhaps should be scheduled to compliment each other (its not against the law to have hip hop act follow hip hop act), UNKLE should have IMO been post Aracde Fire and pre Bjork... you know build a groove, keep those whom certain acts will appeal to in the same area rather than force them to navigate the stadium area - which as always is a mission and not a fun nor pleasant one.

This years BDO was not my fave, it wasn't overly fun for me but there was just enough seen and overheard on the day for it not to be a washout. With a bit of work the festival could be so much more - such as booking more acts that are actually fresh... this year was a bit too retro in styles overall.

With the number of summer dance festivals on right now I wonder if they would appeal more to me... nah they have even worse booking policies... so once again Bob realises he isn't the target market (thank fuck yell all of NZ's promoters) but with a bit of effort he can still have some fun.

I'd give my BDO experience a 5/10. Which reflects I think this years lineup, solid but not super.

For more BDO reviews and views check Russell Brown's Public Address postions (link to your left) and the various links and discussion on PA System

I look forward to next years Big Day Out, for no matter what people like myself say and think its sure better than a day in the office or a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.

It is a

Kool Keith - Drugs

An original member of New York's new school pioneers the Ultramagnetic MCs, Thornton is best known as a solo rapper. His signature style is stream-of-consciousness lyrical flow and complex vocals, two skills that earn him a perennial nod from the underground hip-hop community. The average Kool Keith album is peppered with bizarre, disjointed, and disassociated themes, concepts, and references. Nearly all of his albums incorporate a satirical dislike for more commercialized strains of hip-hop, as well as major record labels.

From wikipedia


I like him, a lot.

He's here to play the Big Day Out tomorrow - also doing a side show tonight at Coherent on K Road.

Download Here

Discography

Website (not official)

enjoy

Hangovers and humidity

Indeed coupled together they are arse

The US exports it's waste, exports their dirty technologies and the most dangerous thing that they export is their way of living

The Story of Stuff will take you on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture — from resource extraction to iPod incineration — exposing the real costs of our use-it and lose-it approach to stuff.



Trashing the planet and contaminating communities is not inherent to doing business and running a society. The things that are not working in our system didn't just fall from the sky; they are the result of decisions made by people.

Well?

Levan and co. @ The Red Fox NYC - 1981

It's raining music.... of a sort

I've nothing to say so will let someone else do the talking

Larry Levan is one of the true Legends in the DJ culture. He and "his" just as legendary club - the Paradise Garage - were so influential to the Disco and dance music scene that it's hard to understand today. Many writers and producers tried their new work with Larry at "the Garage", if it worked there - it would work everywhere! Larry and the club meant so much to the music industry that a genre of N.Y. House music got the name - Garage. Unfortunately Larry is no longer with us, but his memory and work still lives on and here's my tribute to one of the greatest DJ's of all times Click here for more.

Enjoy

Download Link

Things To Do if in Auckland

The Hidden Cameras - Music Is My Boyfriend

Keeping up with the jones part 1: Add music to blog - check

Each and every Thursday this year I shall share a song that I adore. Download stick it on ya digital music playing device and curse my bad taste as you smile at strangers in the supermarket.

Where possible the file will be a 320 kbps MP3 and I won't bog you down with some pathetic disclaimer in the vein attempt to pretend this is not illegal - it is. It's either this or taking my massive ghetto blaster to the domain each and every sunday and belting out a few classics to share in a public space ;)

I've picked this particular track to start things off as well its a damn fine song but more importantly it celebrates that which I intend to share - music.... for I Love Music

I won't tell you why I lvoe this song and band... I am more interested in if you might also - if ya dig the track leave a comment (or not) or better yet go and explore the world that is the Hidden Cameras.

You can buy this song and others by the band on i-tunes and other physical and digital stores (go check em out), all of their albums are well worth buying, believe me I have them all and love them, if that is any recomendation and one would hope so or why the fuck are you here?

sing to be happy
hum to be free
the eternal harmony
music and me

Links:

Download Link

Previous rant on Daktari's World

Lyrics

Warning this song might make you a) happy b) sing along, we at Daktari's world take no responsibilty for either reaction. You have been warned!

Enjoy

Rebel’s Requiem: The Legacy of Joe Strummer Five Years On

It is always bittersweet to see an artist no longer with us get the recognition they deserved in life. For Joe Strummer, the Clash-man who died five years ago last week (December 22nd) at age 50, that is exactly what’s happened. In 2007 alone, we’ve seen an exhibit dedicated to the Clash at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, a magnificently authoritative biography from friend and journalist Chris Salewicz, and the long awaited (however problematic) Julien Temple documentary The Future is Unwritten. And, of course, Strummer’s music is used to sell everything from cell-phones to cars; the true mark of a rock ‘n’ roll icon.

There’s no doubt that Joe deserves every drop of praise for his contributions to popular music and culture. But for those of us moved by his call that “anger can be power,” it’s hard to take the flash-and-fanfare seriously. The pop-music myth-makers love dead rock stars. Dead men can’t argue, and in the case of Joe, can’t protest while their legacy and message are picked apart and made safe for consumption.

This past spring’s Doc Martens ad sums it all up: Strummer, complete with halo and angel’s wings, playing his guitar atop a cloud, joined by angel versions of Hendrix, Vicious, Joey Ramone and Kurt Cobain.

It’s a trend that can easily take a much more insidious tone. Joe himself recalled how he could only weep when “Rock the Casbah” was played by US forces during the first Gulf War. This February, Rudy Giuliani had the nerve to use “Rudy Can’t Fail” as his campaign kickoff song. And none other than Tony Blair once thanked “bands like the Clash” for creating (and I am not making this up) a much undervalued source of British exports!

The irony is absolutely stomach-turning. The man who warned against “turning rebellion into money” is now turned to fodder for marketing firms and politicians.

Joe Strummer had a different legacy, and it has absolutely nothing to do with export ratios. He was an artist profoundly shaped by his time and place. In a 1970s Britain wracked by racism and unemployment, Strummer chose to put himself squarely in opposition. The newspapers called the Clash “degenerates,” “hoodlums,” “anarchists.” To young people, they were “the only band that matters,” and it wasn’t because they sold a million records or made the most money. They mattered because they were the first band in a great long while that tapped into how the majority of youth actually felt.

And how did they feel? Quite frankly, they were pissed. Comedian Mark Steel was one of many radicalized during those tumultuous years, and he’s honest about the role the Clash played: “The Clash didn’t just legitimize anger, they politicized it, giving meaning to the directionless rage that drove early punk. They celebrated multiculturalism and supported the Sandinistas; they weren’t just against, they were for. And where most adult advice involved how to earn a few bob or save a few bob, they sold their records so cheap that they threw away a fortune.”

While politicians blamed immigrants for joblessness and gave cover to neo-Nazis groups, the Clash embraced the roots reggae of the Caribbean community. It was a gesture of solidarity that would inspire countless groups, including those of the soon-to-follow “2-Tone” movement. If not for the Clash, we might never have heard of Rock Against Racism or its successor Love Music Hate Racism.

Their embrace of hip-hop a few days later came from similar motivations. “When we came to the US,” said Strummer, “Mick (Jones, guitarist/vocalist for the Clash) stumbled upon a music shop in Brooklyn that carried the music of Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang… these groups were radically changing music and they changed everything for us.” The band’s controversial decision to have Flash and the Five open for them at the legendary Bond’s Casino shows in NYC lent a great deal of credibility to a burgeoning genre that has shaped popular music ever since.

Their identification with working people didn’t just translate into cheap album prices. During the miners’ bitter strike against the Thatcher government, the Clash were among the many acts that lent support and played benefits for the National Miners Union. These types of events were standard fare for Strummer. One of the last shows he played with his new band the Mescaleros (where he famously reunited with Jones onstage) was also a benefit for the British Fire Brigades Union.

This might be one of the most truly outrageous things about Strummer being claimed by the likes of Blair. Joe’s entire catalog rails against Blair’s ilk. One of the last songs he ever recorded was a collaboration with reggae legend Jimmy Cliff. “Over the Border” combines the righteous swagger of reggae with a steadfast punk outrage, and directs both against the horrors of war. Strummer’s gravelly growl and Cliff’s smooth patois bounce off each other:

“They’re shedding blood over the border
So who came first to these hills?
Only the drums remember
‘Cos the hand of the drummer was stilled
Oh, will chaos and disorder
Always rain through these hills
Peace will be slaughtered by anger
And the blood of the lamb will be spilled”

This is what Joe (who wrote the song’s lyrics) did best. He cut through the rhetoric and got to the meat of what ails the planet. Strummer tragically died several months before the US went into Iraq. But his urgent plea rings even more true as his thoughts during the run-up to the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan: “Even though there are extremists in the world, if we represent the sane people of the world, then we’ve got to hold on to our sanity and not allow ourselves to get crazed with vengeance…”

Perhaps the best living legacy of Strummer lies in the foundation set up in his name. Founded by his widow Lucinda, the Strummerville Foundation exists to give young musicians the instrumental and studio opportunities they might not otherwise have. Joe was always convinced there would be another Clash later down the line, another voice in music dedicated to the dreams and aspirations of ordinary people, and Strummerville is built on that idea. Already, from London to Tuscon, Arizona, there are annual benefits for Strummerville held on the anniversary of his death. It seems that there is a large swath of musicians who owe Strummer a great debt, from Anti-Flag and Rancid to MIA and Antibalas.

This is precisely what the Blairs and Giulianis don’t get; that past the bottom line of more money in the bank account, there is a world well-worth fighting for. A world of dignity, equality and humanity. Joe Strummer fought for that world, and that’s why he doesn’t deserve to be frozen in time with the rest of the rock aristocracy; his message embalmed into a milk-toast pabulum used to sell shoes. He deserves better. He deserves to have his message listened to.

*Special thanks to Antonino D’Ambrosio, who provided much of the material for this article.

Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Washington, DC

Back at work blues

Bored, depressed to be back at work?

Some light reading for ya:

Simon Grigg points out the obvious downside of our govt funding model for getting NZ Music on air

Noam Chomsky on Adam Smith (Wealth Of Nations) taken from his book Class Warfare.

" didn't do any research at all on Smith. I just read him. There's no research. Just read it. He's pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.

He did give an argument for markets, but the argument was that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. That's the argument for them, because he thought that equality of condition (not just opportunity) is what you should be aiming at. It goes on and on. He gave a devastating critique of what we would call North-South policies. He was talking about England and India. He bitterly condemned the British experiments they were carrying out which were devastating India."

Juan Cole The Top Ten Myths About Iraq.

That should keep the most active mind busy for at least a coffee or two.

Weird Facts

It sure would be an awkward family reunion. But, believe it or not, Barack Obama is related to both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

OK, distantly related: Obama and Bush are 11th cousins.

That's because they share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents -- Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley of 17th century Massachusetts.

Chicago Sun Times

Music Is Life

"Are you a fan of music or stars? If you're a fan of stars, despite the celebrity culture we seemingly inhabit, your legion is diminishing, music is returning.

Music is a bellwether. Music leads the way. Despite the capitulation of the industry, despite the endless polishing of vapid turds, music is the most vibrant medium, the one that we look to for truth. You can write and record a song in minutes, you don't have to ask anyone for permission, you don't have to hit up your parents for production fees, never mind a movie studio. There's a direct connection from you to your listener's heart. Assuming someone's paying attention.

While the film industry grapples with declining disc sales, and tries to establish another physical format, the music world knows that the disc is dead and that online is king. After all, Napster hit at the end of 1999.

Like I said, music is first.

Sure, there are ninnies interested in popular culture, who want to wear the badge of major industry hypes, but music, real music, the kind that touches people, not the momentary stop traffic hit, has gone underground. All that you lament has been gone from the game, everything from songwriting to mistakes...it's back. Despite the major media being clueless.

You don't follow the music industry anymore, you don't listen to the radio and you don't really care who's number one, you're a fan of an act. And those not interested in your act don't give a shit. It's not about crossing over, it's about the great divide.

Don't feel bad if you don't like the records reviewed in the newspaper, the ones talked about by the hipsters. They think there's a mainstream scene. But that's gone. Propped up to a degree by touring dinosaurs and what's left of over the air radio, but it just doesn't count.

-snip-

It's not about chart position. It's not about sales. It's not about gold albums. It's about hearts and minds. Are you in people's hearts and minds? Do you touch them, do you affect them?

That's all that counts. The rest, the trappings, are bullshit."

Bob Lefsetz

It is going to be a fascinating year for those, like myself, whom are fascinated by the machinations of the business of music, but what of music itself - will 2008 be a good year for our ears?

Damn right it is, with the amount of music being produced in this world how could it be anything other. It's the finding of that can be hard these days... but oh the search is worth it don't you think?

Back to life, back to reality Back to the here and now

I kinda feel numb being back in the Aucklandtown, the realisation that the holidays are over and real life starts again so very sobering.

I'd be bummed out if it were not for the fact that this is my Big Year of Fun!

look out

NYE