Peter McLennan over at Dub Dot Dash has posted about the impending changes at EMI, and mused as to whether they will affect the NZ operation.

Whilst there are no clear answers to that question (at least publicly), the clear answer is that of course they will. EMI seems to be the first of the major labels with the balls to face the inevitable and part of that inevitability is that branches which are smaller than the average US State sales offices, i.e. rather insignificant, will go, or at least be subservient to bigger regional offices. Already EMI Singapore has gone (with a bigger, But, I guess this is important, much more tech savvy population than NZ…thus greater broadband penetration and a more developed digital culture) and I suspect in the long run even Australia might be rolled into a grand Asian Pacific office logically controlled from Hong Kong.

For NZ this is doubly significant. Firstly because the company has, under current management, led by the highly regarded Chris Caddick, who I’ve been proud to call a friend for some 25 years, been a major player in releasing NZ music. It’s directly signed or licensed repertoire includes Hollie Smith, Goldenhorse, The Black Seeds and much much more. When it comes to mainstream NZ popular music, no-one comes close. And they’ve coupled that with a strong reissue program of their own and other’s classic NZ repertoire, in a time when, if they hadn’t bothered, it would be unavailable, which would be a crime.

Which brings us to the second point of significance, that of it’s history. EMI NZ’s huge local current catalogue is simply a continuation of the most important story and the most important record label in NZ’s history. From the early recordings, pressed in Australia, to Johnny Cooper (pictured above, who made the first rock’n'roll record outside the US) to Space Waltz, they mattered.

For much of it’s history, at least until the late 60s EMI, or HMV as it was known, was about 80% of the NZ recording industry. Not only did it distribute most of the international labels but, until Stebbings came along with Zodiac about 1959, despite some rather legendary indies like Tanza, HMV released the overwhelming bulk of NZ records. In the 1960s if you take Zodiac and HMV out of the picture then the strong NZ recording era becomes rather sad.

In the 1960s and early 1970s HMV / EMI had in-house studios, legendary producer / A&R men like Peter Gable, Peter Dawkins and Alan Galbraith who left us a legacy of pop and psychedelia, much of which stands the test of time and is being intelligently compiled by the current company.

From the mid seventies through to the early nineties EMI NZ ceased to be a major player in the local market, but under Caddick it once again thrived.

Will any of this legacy survive a devolution into a regional office? Probably not, which is sad but also sadly, as I said, inevitable.

For EMI, casting aside the legacy and the sentiment, and from a purely business point of view, now gains little from having an operating company office tucked away in an insignificant bump at the bottom of the world. Nothing that EMI has signed in NZ has contributed in any real way to the profits or standing of the global company and most of it’s physical sales of its ‘priority’ international acts can now be achieved by a sales and / or marketing team. Perhaps 2 or 3 people max. When survival is the issue, extravagates like an NZ stand alone can not be justified.

And neither do the other, what were called majors, need such, for the same reasons (only PolyGram / Universal have provided the parent company with any potential ‘acts’ over the years). But I suspect only EMI have yet had the balls to come to terms with what is a fairly obvious partial answer to the question: “What next?”.

But the others will. As a good friend with some inside knowledge said this week..

And so it begins……..

Cigarettes have a strange place, almost esteemed, in Indonesian society.

Whereas the smoker is largely a pariah elsewhere on the planet, not so here. Nobody thinks twice about lighting up at the table next to you and blowing smoke across your meal as you eat. I find southern Europeans are probably the worse at this as their almost compulsory addiction / habit has recently been banned from public places in their homeland, so they enjoy their last gasp of freedom, at other’s expense, whilst they can before returning home.

The concept of asking someone if they mind before puffing grotesque clouds across you seems alien to the Indonesian psyche. This country is the smokers’ last refuge. Even in China smoking is banned in many public places. Not here, and even in the odd place where it’s technically illegal, the ban is happily ignorable. Like the malls where security stand next to no-smoking signs fag in hand, or the airports (where the smoking lounge is a few seats in a corner with no walls or glass to divide it from the main room). And the coffee shops are all sponsored by cigarette companies. As, for that matter, is just about everything else. The cigarette companies support every event, including the soccer World Cup (which was promoted on TV by a bunch of puffing athletes kicking around a ball).

This is the country where cigarette advertising is allowed to happily tell you that smoking actually is good for you…it gives you strength.

Where you can go to see a band and the price of entry includes a drink ticket and a packet of kretek.

This is a country with allegedly the highest death rate from lung cancer in the world which allows its High School students to go on school field trips to see the hell-hole factories of Kudus where up to 50,000 work in the sort of places that thankfully, with vastly improved general conditions in recent years, are a thing of the past in the rest of Indonesia.

But since the payroll networks (and 5% of the government’s income) of the ciggie companies are vast and the cost to the country’s health system, in an absolutely we don’t care system, irrelevant, I guess they get a bit of a blind eye.

It’s encouraging though, to see that the powers are looking at removing tobacco sponsorship…..at some stage in the future.

With such a freewheeling attitude towards fags and such nicely compliant legislators its little wonder that the likes of Philip Morris are happy to invest so freely in the likes of PT. Sampoerna, the makers of the recent A-volution square ciggie (well the packet at least)

But one wonders, with all that money, and all that global reach, how Philip Morris were unable to come up with a slogan better than the gibberish of “Begin What Next”

“Begin What Next”…what the hell sort of sentence or phrase is that. I know what they are trying to say, but…”Begin What Next”?? It means nothing to a non-English speaker and even less to someone who does.

And from their web-site:

Size doesn’t always matter, since a ‘begin what next’ spirit from Avolution has bought you a big smooth taste

Which too, is absolute gibberish. Not only is Philip Morris slowly and happily killing off the (mostly male…69% smoke) population of Indonesia, they’re doing it with incomprehensible grammar and slogans.

I encounter Indonesians daily with perfect English. So why in hell can’t companies work these things out. Like the mess over the Visit Indonesia 2008 slogan, I feel embarrassed for these people.

Almost….

And from the pages of the NZ Herald…..

The show, which transforms ordinary people into their favourite pop star, was last week won by a woman impersonating Brit-pop legend, Debbie Harry.

Apart from the fact that she is two decades out genre wise and the width of the Atlantic Ocean away from Brit-Pop (the NY punkette was from New Jersey and had little to do with Oasis or Blur etc), its good to see that  Michelle Coursey is maintaining the paper’s reputation for journalistic accuracy.