And the "Tui" goes to...

Being that my flatmate - by virtue of working as a radio announcer - is one of the judges for the Best Gospel/Christian Album award, I get to go to the New Zealand Music Awards (AKA The Tuis) this year. Cool!

The Tuis are like NZ's version of The Grammys meets the MTV Music Awards minus about 90% of the spectacle and with a somewhat more raw aesthetic feel. Still, the prime minister and most of our local celebs turn up in force and many of them make dicks of themselves for the entertainment of all and sundry (though they are not necessarily aware of it at the time!) 

My flatmate gets in free whilst I merely get a half price ticket. BUT I still get a seat at the tables with the judges, artists and industry peeps plus we get to go to the before and after parties if we choose; nice ;-) Should be a good night (Wed 8 Oct)...

On that note I feel like I should give my own personal selection of favoured NZ music for those who may lack some local knowledge, or whose guidance thus far has been received from less than trustworthy sources! ;-P

The following are 5 of my picks for the best NZ artists/bands from the last 5 years or so (in no particular order and realising that I will have inadvertantly  left out some that I love):

The Phoenix Foundation

A bunch of lads from Wellington who play a mix of alt-rock-folktronica* stock full of sonic interest. Their latest album, Happy Ending, is utterly brilliant, all wry lyrics and musical madness. Check out this for a great earthy-kiwi style opening metaphor in their song Bleaching Sun:

"Well I'm a waking up, to your crazy shit

And I'm a leaving now, yes I'm a jumping ship

Because your heart is cold, like a box of beer

And I just can't cope, with you my dear"

Other favourites from the album are the opening track Bright Grey, a driving song entitled 40 Years with my favourite little line about birds, and a quirky little number called A Day in the Sun which muses about the desire for fame and fortune that lurks somewhere in all of us (musicians in particular)

Liam Finn

The offspring of NZ's most famous musical son, Neil Finn (cornerstone of 70s-80s alt-rock outfit Split Enz, and of 80s-90s pop-folk-rock trio Crowded House) Liam went from juvenile rock band Betchadupa to an indie-pop solo career. His debut solo album I'll Be Lightning is both critically and publically acclaimed and it seems that he has inherited his father's talent for melody and lyrical depth. My favourite track is the wistful Gather to the Chapel though it was Second Chance that won him a Tui last year.

The Mint Chicks

Angular art-rock, The Mint Chicks is not everyone's cup of tea. Hailing a few years back from the Elam School of Fine Arts (where I now work) these boys create such a kineticism in their music that it just picks you up and throws you around - like in Opium for the People and Fuck the Golden Youth - which is something that I appreciate. One of their more popular songs, unsurprisingly, is the more approachable Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! from their album of the same name, which I also really like.

Anika Moa

A Maori girl with a great voice and a subtley cutting way with words, Anika rose to local fame with her first album Thinking Room - including singles like Good in my Head - but later somewhat repented of it feeling like she had sold her soul to the record company 'man'. Her sophomore release Stolen Hill remains one of my favourite female singer-songwriter albums, in particular the track In the Morning (addressing the often unspoken emotional aftermath of abortion) with its preceding te reo Maori (the Maori language) refrain Ka whakahuia ano. Incidentally, Anika also recorded a version of The Mint Chicks' Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! which is also way cool!

Fat Freddy's Drop

Now these guys, some of the coolest cats in NZ music, did the hard work to record, release, and distribute a totally independent album that created a groundswell in the NZ music scene. Their debut full length album Based on a True Story, though released in 2005, was the culmination of many years work (they were big in Europe long before they made headlines here in NZ). Hailing from Wellington, they are part of a thriving collaborative dub-roots scene and to see them live is an almost transcendent experience. Unfortunately, when the rest of the country picked up on their musical largesse, almost every trying-to-be-decent cafe in NZ played their album almost constantly for over a year meaning that their music suffered from thrash-complex. Still, I like to point out to people that I first caught them live at an impromptu outdoor gig at the Wellington at the fringe-fest in 2001 - well before the masses knew what was coming - how sad of me! My fave track remains the version of Hope released on the Conscious Roots II compilation album but Cay's Crays, Wandering Eye and almost every track on Based on a True Story is gold.

*Folktronica: I use this term c/o Rhett Snell.

High as a kite? You bet...

Recycling and macroeconomics...

I was thinking about the apparent global economy collapse after seeing some truly scare-mongering headlines in the NZ Herald the other day. I don’t think things are quite as bad as some of the more worked up commentators like to think, but I’m half inclined to say it might be a good thing if some significant parts of the current western economic model should fail. I almost think that the global economy could be course correcting for the glut of over-consumption which has slowly been established as a cultural norm in our society.

Remember when we were younger and there weren’t quite so many choices? Maybe only four brands of soap or something like. Was it so bad? Well the level of choice afforded to us now is unfortunately built on the back of removing such choices from the people in developing nations where much of our manufacturing is carried out. They live in poverty, working their arses off for next to nothing so that we can have whole chain stores full of cheap t-shirts, and plastic crap that falls apart mere weeks after being gifted to a loved one on their special day?! I mean, really?! Really?

So, ‘what’s this got to do with recycling?’ I hear you ask [humour me]. Recycling is one way for us to have a positive impact on both our environment and our consumption habits, and consequently on the lives of those worldwide somehow connected to us by our consumption choices. Recycling, in a broader sense, can encapsulate something as simple as making sure we don’t send reusable components of various goods – including packaging, like tin cans, cardboard boxes etc – needlessly to landfills, to choosing to use second-hand goods (op-shopping is great fun and can make for a cool road trip!), through to repurposing goods that have ceased to be used for their original purpose (e.g. instead of using Glad-Wrap, or new plastic bags to carry my lunches I reuse empty bread bags instead).

Tying back to my original thought above, the more we can recycle, repurpose, and reuse, the less unnecessary ‘stuff’ we are causing to exist in the world (demand drives supply – in some economic theories anyway), and across a large population of people these decisions can have a very real impact on the global economy and ultimately the lives of those on whom we depend to keep our way of life going.

And on a completely spurious note, I think I’ll end this relatively brief and poorly formed musing with a poem I wrote a number of years ago (twelve to be precise!) which has very little to do with the serious topic above, excepting that it uses the metaphor of recycling to describe heartbreak (how much poetry is derived from some form of emotional suffering??):

Recycle

She took my heart and stapled it
to the wall of her hallway

Like some tacky ornamental moose head
without the horns.

They’ll wonder if it’s fake, though it did
live once.

Soon she’ll forget it’s there
glimpsed at occasionally, no fond remembrance

Gone with the next inorganic rubbish collection.