Memo from Sanur

a)God I dislike the Buddha Bar albums. When I tossed together my audio hate list a couple of weeks back this was clearly a major omission. I think my credibility was more or less shot to pieces by my admission about Elvis anyway, so what the hell.

The Buddha Bar, the bloody Buddha Bar, volumes one to fifty three or whatever, is everywhere here in Bali and I hate it with a vengeance. To be honest I despise any faux pseudo-chill-out styled new age-ish nonsense with a passion. I guess I just like music with a backbone and my punk legacy screams shite every time I hear Café Del Crap or whatever. Sadly every café, bar, restaurant, bar or western orientated warung in this paradise seems to think that playing a Buddha Bar CD gives them an air of sophistication.

Beep….wrong…..

Don’t get me wrong, passionate, soulful dubbed out downbeat forms are an addiction for me as much as the noisier forms of electronic music (as I type I’m getting tingles from Gregory Isaac’s sublime Slum), I just can’t deal with the fake, overpriced, badly packaged, sub-world-music plastic that is the Buddha Bar series…and the fact that it’s thrust at me daily.

b)Gordon Bennett…why am I saying this? I’m sitting in paradise, surrounded by boundless beauty, by wonderful people who really understand the word “smile”, by restaurants serving exquisite food that we can only dream of in enzild, by Indonesia, which I love so much as a country. I guess it’s the one flaw in this little dream…I miss my music so bloody much and I KNOW I have a whole bunch of new stuff sitting waiting for me in Auckland that I can’t get my hands on right now. Like the remixes of the new Juan MacLean single and the new Arnold Jarvis / Franck Roger collaboration and a killer new collection of songs from the sixties inspired by Phil Spector that I’m gagging to hear…despite the fact that he’s currently sporting the worst haircut since that twat from A Flock Of Seagulls, and may well have put a bullet into some girl. I guess I’ll have to wait a while…but it’s not easy. I wonder if I can convince Singapore Air that an SL1200 is legitimate carry on luggage.

c)Talking of convictions and Bali, thank god all that Corby stuff is going away. I mean, I feel sorry as hell for the girl, especially now the Knight in Shining Armour, Ron Bakir, seems to be asking her for half a million dollars as a payback, which is not that surprising when you look at him, and the parents and the obvious culture, or lack thereof, they come from. Yep, I feel for the girl, 20 years (or more if the prosecutor and Indonesian public opinion gets their way) is one hell of a long time, but she knew what she was doing (and nothing I’ve seen to offer anything resembling reasonable doubt…even most Australian legal voices opine that she would’ve been convicted under domestic law). But I guess what really offends me is the reaction from Australia. Firstly, the overwhelmingly anti-Indonesian explosion ignores the fact that she was, if innocent, the victim of an Australian drug ring…nothing to do with Indonesia. But the truly offensive thing is the racism so implicit in the reaction in Australia, from their rather odious Prime Minister downwards. The, as one poll had it, 90 odd percent of Australians who felt that she had been wrongly convicted seem to have made an assumption that, as a non-white, non Christian nation, Indonesia is incapable of dealing fairly with this…that the system is inherently inferior to the system practiced in English speaking “civilized” nations. Ignoring of course the thousands of years of developing civilization in this part of the world (and if you want, or need, to add a European element to it, four hundred years of Dutch, Portuguese and English contact…long before the penal colony of 1788). At Denpasar airport the other night it was sad, and funny, to watch the terrified arriving Ockers off the Brisbane flight with all their bags wrapped in sealed plastic. I wouldn’t be surprised if good old Ron had the wrapping concession at Brisbane Airport.

Of course the Australian legal system is impeccably corruption free….

What bought this on was the fat sweating slob outside an ugly RFL bar in Kuta wearing a “Free Schapelle you Bastards” T-Shirt and the thought of the ingrained racism I always have trouble dealing with in Australia. How dare they?

d)I miss New Zealand a little (but not that much…it’s more about certain people than the place, and there are people I miss all over the world, like my best buddy Mark in Sydney), but what I’m not missing is the ingrained aggression in much of the culture. The violence implied in conversation, in encounters, in written form…not physical violence, although there is that too…Auckland is a very heavy place at times, five minutes driving tells you that…but simply the day to day way many people approach their fellow humans. I don’t know whether it’s the Rugby (although I suspect it’s a big part of it) or the immature society or the booze or the weather but you can feel the unnecessary tension whenever you make contact. Scary, but I feel it as I get off an aircraft in NZ…bang into the paranoid unfriendliness of New Zealand Customs….

e) Fortunately a few days back here knocks that on the head….

The Hills Are Alive

To quote Julie Andrews (and why not, when I was growing up, she was seen by the world at large as the epitome of all things good and decent, that is, until she took her top off in some piece of fluff some years later and willingly destroyed that pre-conception…but then again, those of us who knew where the dirty words were in “TSOM” were never fooled anyway)..lets start at the very beginning…

A few weeks back I opened the post to a promo copy of the new Kraftwerk live album “Minimum-Maximum”. These things sometimes turn up in the mail sometimes, courtesy of a promo person somewhere and obviously I’m not one to look a gift horse in the….I’m pretty grateful. Especially since its Kraftwerk and I’m a fan and a bit of completist. But, that aside, I love and need new music and it helps to satiate a craving. The album had a tracklisting and not much more on the sleeve, but it did the trick. You would imagine that the King Klang crew would sound petty much the same live or studio. But the live versions added a completely new raw spirit to the, perhaps, overly familiar soundscapes that are “Trans Europe Express”, “Autobahn” and the rest and, with a ton of paperwork to do in May, it became the late night, rather loud, soundtrack to several GST returns and a lot of writing before I left the country.

As the album was due for release early June, I passed on the promo copy to a mate before I left NZ and, like a dutiful consumer, picked up a “proper” EMI release from the HMV in Singapore’s Orchard Rd. It came, complete, with the, now standard, EMI suicide note (the copy protection warning) on the back sleeve. But I ignored it…generally it causes no problem, although I’ve noticed more and more that EMI discs are a bit hit and miss on car players, which can be a bugger.

But can I get the thing to play on the laptop (which is a primary audio source right now)… nope. It simply refuses to recognise the disc as an audio CD and keep on asking me if I’d like it formatted. I’m sure there is way around, and I know this has gone through the courts before, but it’s not affected me to date (apart from some David Bowie album trying to install a player without asking…an EMI Trojan…actually I’d forgotten about that until this minute) and I really can’t see why, having bought a legitimate delivery device for audio, I should have to jump hoops to use the bloody thing. The record companies’ wonder why the consumer is pissed off….it’s not rocket science.

So….I downloaded the damn thing. It wasn’t hard to find a decent copy on a peer to peer site and down it came, courtesy of the free very high speed hotel broadband. And, more to the point, as a music consumer (read “addict”) I shall never buy another EMI CD “Copy Protected”, or any other “protected” at any time in the future. Why should I? They are not fit for the purpose they’re being sold for. Yep, I know there is a warning on the back but it’s rather beside the point to expect consumers to read small print (which in my case was covered by a price sticker anyway) when only an idiot assumes that laptops are not, in 2005, a primary playing device for compact discs. Quite frankly, while a company like EMI operates with such blatant disregard for its customer, they deserve to die.

The other disc I bought at the same time, Common’s “Be” (the Kanye West album when there isn’t a new Kanye West album…dunno if it’s quite the album 2002’s “Electric Circus” is, then again, few albums are, but I’m playing it to death, especially “The Food” and “They Say”) plays perfectly. And two other people I know have bought it after hearing it via me…the free live DVD helps. Unlike EMI, who have broken retail rule number one…don’t put barriers in the way of selling…Universal have added an incentive which cost them little.

On a similar note the editorial in Monday’s International Herald Tribune was of some interest. I read it as I was sitting on a Singapore Airlines flight with, I would guess, over a hundred, mostly blockbuster, albums available on the inflight system, none of which interested me in the slightest, but I’d hazard I’m not general target. Facing The Music came out on the occasion of US music retail’s “Big Tuesday” last week, with new releases from The Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay and The White Stripes all big acts with massive sales potential and a huge potential upside for traditional retail, being banged out at the same time. Figures for 2005 predictably show an ongoing slide in sales….down 7% this year on last. It muses about the depression after the flop of the Warner Music IPO and the ongoing tendency of the majors on blame their woes, wrongly, on digital piracy, rather than looking a little closer to home. At the blockbuster mentality that can be traced back to the mid to late 70’s in the US (and ironically a mentality that Warner Music, and the likes of David Geffen and the other moguls who dominated the US industry over the past 20 years helped invent with the likes of The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and the other bloated “Big” acts who mattered more than the lesser signings) that has eventually eaten away at the industry.

But as the piece correctly says:

These days there are more musicians and bands than there have ever been. And there are plenty of music buying fans. Together they are discovering alternative means of connecting with each other.

But to me, musing away over here in South East Asia, the revolution that we are seeing right here, right now (good name for a song that…) goes back to about 1976, to the beginnings of the rise of the post punk indie labels, specifically in the UK…labels like Stiff, Chiswick, and more precisely the slightly more anarchic Rough Trade and Factory. Sure, there have always been independent labels, but pre-punk these were, more or less, little labels that wanted to be majors…in the way that a company like Mercury or Capitol came out of the forties aspiring to be RCA, or A&M and Island wanted to be Capitol in the sixties. But the punk thing was different. It was about taking control away from these people, handing it back to those who created (whether it be the musicians or the producers or the smart business whiz who often is just as much a part of the creative process as the guy who writes the song). Andrew Oldham’s Immediate was a prototype as was Lieber & Stoller’s label, Red Bird. But punk, and later electronic music, meant that, for the first time the musical ethos matched the label ethos. And it took the digital revolution to bring this ethic to full fruition…to bring us to where we are now, where the business model that popular music has survived on since about 1920 has largely been superseded. And no number of blockbusters will change than……

It 1976 has any legacy, I guess this may be it….

Hey, and talking of the rise of indie music…Scribe’s “Crusader” is, after a year or so, top twenty in the Australian album charts which is pretty damn impressive. I’d love to see it trickle around the world, country by country in the way that an indie record like this potentially can

Dance, dance, dance to the Radio

What the hell is it about godzone….eat eat eat eat eat. The obsession with eating endlessly even when you’re not hungry is something I’ve only encountered in New Zealand and the USA. It scares the living daylights out of me and it does me no favours whatsoever. I’m one of those unfortunate people who spend weeks battling to deal to that one steak and cheese pie that I succumbed to in a moment of pathetic weakness (the ones in the bakery next to Glengarry in Ponsonby Road are especially good by the way), only to lose the battle in another momentary lapse. I despise beyond reason people like my bro Peter Urlich (we figured out today we’ve been close friends for thirty years this month..not bad, so I don’t really despise him at all, quite the opposite), whom I had Yum Char with today; he can eat inhuman amounts of anything, washing it down with lager, with no noticeable effect.

I like the Asian way of one decent meal and then a browsing, if and when required across the day. It makes perfect sense..de-bloating, and a succession of flavours.

All this, really, is just self flagellation and complete nonsense, as I’ve just got in from a massive gorging, with the associated guilt, from our hidden secret, KK Malaysian in Greenlane. At least, it was our secret, until bloody Metro (which has, to change the subject completely, a must read article about Iraq in the current issue) made it “hot”, and ruined it. Happily we’ve been going there so long, enjoying the food prepared with such obvious soul and love, that we’ve jumped to VIP status, and we can still get a table in this Formica tabled shoebox at whim…so ha! There is nothing quite as satisfying as pushing past the food Mafioso with a knowing look and declining the menu as we know what we want already. Yep, its puerile but I don’t care at all….

So…nineteen years.

I love doing radio. Its a massive buzz. It stands head and shoulders above TV when it’s done well (and makes a soul shudder when its not, as, unfortunately, so much NZ radio is not). Radio can be a direct line to the spirit and has a one on one relationship with the listener when it aspires to be more than a mindless opiate. The car…that’s where I listen to radio. I spend a lot of time in the car…like the three hour return trip from the city to Royal Oak today. I guess Auckland and traffic congestion are pretty much one and the same thing these days and, to be honest, I don’t mind a bit and I get a little pissed off when I get somewhere before the tune ends. I play vinyl, CD & digital bits at home and in the office, but the car is for radio. I like it loud…even radio based on talk, and I canter through the pre-sets: B for the Wire and the intelligent discourse, but not so much the music; George for assorted shows, especially the Sunday shows and Saturday mornings, Outerdrive and a bit of Churchill noise; the BBC and National Radio for the joy of being spoken to like a thinking adult and sheer information overload; Nui & Flava for the humour and the soul; Base, just because it sounds warm and has the best breakfast show on the planet….

Actually I did my first radio show more than nineteen years ago. Back in 76, as a young lad, I approached Radio B (or Radio Bosom as it was known for some odd reason back then..you have to wonder about those student wags with their excellent sense of humour…the sort of people who turned in Murray McCulley) about a show. Whoever was programming then…it wasn’t much of a job as they only broadcast in the University area …told me I was on and threw me into the on-air studio at midday with virtually no instruction, on my own. For some reason I freaked and found the longest track I could find, Emerson Lake & Palmer’s gruesome live take of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at a Exhibition”, so as to fill my hour with minimum number of voice breaks (I don’t think I spoke once truth be known). I was terrified and went from prog rock hell into a Santana track which took the whole side of a bloated multi disc live album called Lotus. I wasn’t asked back. I guess I was perceived as simply latent talent…

I did more than a few shows in the early eighties as a guest specialist…Elvis Costello b sides and the like, but it was frustration that Roger Perry and I felt which led the two of us to approach bFm to do a regular dance based show in ’86. Nobody at all was playing the stuff we liked on the radio…that funky club stuff, that hip hop, that garage and funk-punk. And, to be honest, B was less than keen too. Murray Cammick had the killer soul show, Land Of The Good Groove, but that was purist soul…not the sort of stuff we wanted to play. Eventually we managed to find an ally in Lisa Van der Arde and were given a midday Saturday slot. So was born Asylum FM. The relationship was fairly symbiotic…we played in return for free ads for our club and it worked well enough for a while, until the all-disco-sucks regime moved us sideways in 87. The station’s magazine completely ignored us…and dance culture, until they turned up with a full page piece that year accusing our club, The Asylum, of quiet racism because we, allegedly, had a bunch of white kids dancing to black music to the exclusion of brown kids. It’s the only time in my life I’ve been accused of racism, something I know I’m not guilty of, and it was doubly offensive since we had a blatantly open door policy and were known for our happily mixed crowds, the first in Auckland, something I’m fairly proud of. Roger and I quit B as a result but never said anything beyond that. I’m not one to let something fester but 18 years on, I’d like to say…fuck you..

There, off the chest, thank god….
(just to clarify..my comments seem to have caused some offense to Mark Tierney but should be put in context..they relate to this particular incident only. Mark was a pioneering force in recorded NZ electronica and a person I hold, otherwise in high regard…sorry Mark).

Mark Phillips, the unhailed founding father of Aucklandclublife, and I, did a show in 88. The Playground. Without Mark none of this stuff would exist, and I wish to hell he didn’t live in Sydney so I could see more of him…..

I guess I should also apologise to Nick D’Angelo for hijacking the Beats Per Minute show in 1989. It was his name, but I convinced B management I could do it better. Sorry Mr Laan.

I did the BPM show for 13 years. 1989-92 by myself, 92-95 with Rob Salmon, 1995-2002 with Greg Churchill and it was mostly a fantastic experience. It was a strange feeling for a while. It was the only dancefloor show in Auckland and we had to play a huge variety of stuff. For the first few years, we played hip-hop for the first hour (in 2005 its hard to believe that we were the only radio outlet for the genre on the air) followed by our top five at nine..really, I guess, the Auckland dance chart, then an hour of house. Later, we dropped the hip hop, and added a techno spot with Simon Flower and friends giving us 15 minutes of purist electronics. Our guests included the cream of the touring djs, with Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May (three times), Derrick Carter (twice), Andy Weatherall, Justin Robertson, Giles Peterson, Norman Jay, Elliot Eastwick, Juan Atkins, Sneak, Ashley Beedle, Phil Asher, Paul Oakenfold, Norman Jay, Lenny Dee and even Judge Jules, plus many more, doing shows. For years, bFm mostly ignored us. It wasn’t real music..it was a token, a novelty, late at night. Even when the station ran its own dance parties we weren’t asked to contribute or be involved. Odd really….

The arrival of George really removed the need for the BPM show…and, any way you look at it, 13 years was enough….

George also gave me the freedom to move away from what Greg & I used to call the fascism of the dancefloor. We’d painted ourselves into a corner where we were limited by having to play new releases and I wouldn’t have carried on doing radio if I was limited by that.

So, there you go. As I said, I love doing radio, and it’s going to be quite a tear not to be preparing the show the night before, hunting out new music and pre-programming in my head, as I’ve done for almost two decades.

Hey Ho…onwards..

Taking of which…I love the FK remixes of LCD’s “Disco Inflitrator”…big big record, both sides. See, its in the blood. Oh, and his new 10” with the mighty U-Roy..and the new Tussle on Rong, which come complete with a killer B side from Corey Black. Or the Soul Jazz acid comp, which is really the bomb. I own god knows how many old acid records from this era, including originals of a good half of this thing, but it still sounds fresh and revolutionary…and after 20 odd years, its hard to ask more than that….

I think this weaning off the music is a complete failure already….

Off to Singapore in the morning…the food, the food, the food!

Extended Play 1 June (the final one) on George

self indulgent as can be today but what the hell, its the last one for a while

Ian Dury & The Blockheads-Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt 3 (12”)-Stiff-1979
West Street Mob-Breakdance-Electric Boogie-Sugarhill-1983
Willie Colon-Set Fire to Me (Latin Jazzbo Version)-A&M-1986
Roach Motel-Wild Luv-JBO-1994
Urban Soul-Alright (Original vox)-Polar-1990
Sterling Void-Alright (House Mix)-DJ International-1987
Plantlife-Why’d You Call Me-Gut-2004
Lil Louis-You Called Me-Diamond-1990
Houz Neegroz-What is House Music-Nu Groove-1992
Shay Jones-Are You Gonna Be There (House mix)-ID-1991
Raze-Break for Love-Grove St-1988
Phuturescope-What is House Music-Emotive-1994
Kraftwerk-Numbers (Live)-King Klang-2005
Inner City-Hallelujah (Leftfield High on Vocal mix)-Ten-1992
Rhythim is Rhythim-Strings of Life (Carl Craig mix)-Transmat-1994
U Roy & Francois K-Rootsman-Deepspace-2005
Saint Etienne-Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Ken Lou dub)-Warner -1991
Bam Bam-Give It to me-Westbrook-1988
Kenny “Jamin” Jason & Fast Eddie-Can U Dance-DJ International-1987
Tyree-Acid Over (Matey mix)-DJ International-1988
Paul Rutherford-Get Real (Happy House mix)-4^th & Broadway-1988
Seven Grand Housing Authority-The Question-Simply Soul-1993
Disco Evangalists-De Niro`-Black Sunshine-1993
Ralph Falcon-Every Now and Then-Miami Soul-1992
Underground Solution-Luv Dancin (Extended Vocal)-Strictly Rhythm-1991
Doug Lazy-Let It Roll-Grove Street-1988
Hardhouse-Check This Out-Easy Street-1988
Inner City-Ahnongay (Dave Clarke mix)-6X6-1993
Fingers Inc-Mysteries of Love-Jack Trax-1988
BT-Relativity (Carl Craig Urban Affair dub)-Deep Dish-1993
Michael Watford-Holding On-Atlantic-1991
Green Velvet-Flash-Relief-1994
Ron Trent-Altered States (South Side Terrace)-DJAX-1991
Golden Girls-Kinetic (Frank de Wulf mix)-R&S-1993
Fallout-The Morning After-Azuli-1990
The East Village Loft Society-I Wanna Sing Sunshine-Black Sunshine-1994
FK-Hypnodelic-Wave-1996
Dream Team-Love is What we Need (K Dope Soup mix)-Freeze-1994
Paperclip People-The Floor-Planet E-1996
The Beatles-Tomorrow Never Knows-Parlophone-1966