A cou­ple of things, one new and one back­ward looking:

Firstly I have a guest post in the NZ National Busi­ness Review, on the record­ing indus­try, copy­right, and var­i­ous issues fac­ing both. In par­tic­u­lar I talk about the intrigu­ing and hugely impor­tant Eminem / Uni­ver­sal case. This case has the poten­tial to change the face of the indus­try, and I note that it’s been joined this week by Toto — a band who should prob­a­bly be fined for inflict­ing aural agony on a whole decade, rather than rewarded…

And Peter Framp­ton. Yeech.

The flood cometh.…

The other impend­ing indus­try mael­strom I neglected to men­tion is the arriv­ing 1976 US Copy­right Act pro­vi­sion that poten­tially allows artists to strip assigned copy­rights from record com­pa­nies after 35 years under so called Ter­mi­na­tion Rights. The first of these comes up next year and there­after. Rather than explain it, this cov­ers it well, but it doesn’t need to be said — although I am — that this could destroy the record com­pa­nies in their cur­rent form.

Cou­ple that with the UMG case…

——

Whilst that one runs I’m deter­mined to track down miss­ing mas­ters of my ancient Pro­peller stuff and get all the bits that are stray on-line this year, and onto other for­mats. In a few weeks a 7″ re-press of the Spelling Mis­takes 1980 debut Feel So Good will make the shops, via the won­der­ful folks at Sing Sing Records in NYC.

One I’d like to see avail­able in some form is the Furtive Four Three Piece Pack, a mini com­pi­la­tion on Furtive, a briefly extant label owned by Paul Rose and myself in the early 1980s.

A lit­tle his­tory since it’s so very long ago. Paul and I were part­ners in Pro­peller and most of our acts went via main dis­trib­u­tor, Fes­ti­val Records. How­ever, Paul also man­aged the still cor­rectly famous and fan­tas­tic New­mat­ics (if you are unsure why, this song might help) and the acqui­si­tion of said band was one of the rea­sons — aside from the fact he was a smart guy — I offered him a part­ner­ship in the label.

It worked and the New­mat­ics became the third band in the tril­ogy I wanted — with the Blams and the Meemees — on the label. This per­fect plan was com­pli­cated by the fact that Paul had promised the band to CBS.

In order to keep Fes­ti­val hon­est and to hon­our that com­mit­ment, we formed Furtive, a new label via CBS. I shifted the newly signed Tall Dwarfs across to the label and their 12″, 3 Songs, was the first release.

Paul and I then decided to issue an EP — four tracks by four new bands we wanted to sign to either Pro­peller or Furtive — and tour the bands. The result was the  Three Piece Pack, so named because all the bands were three piece bands — except they weren’t: there were four mem­bers of The Skep­tics and we even admit­ted the rouse on the promo blurb as below, and by the time we issued this The Bon­gos had grown (briefly) to five.

Paul chose the tracks. All the acts were from Auck­land aside from The Skep­tics who were dis­cov­ered by Paul and var­i­ous New­mat­ics in Palmer­ston North on a tour.

The record came out, had some fine reviews, and we there­after released a record by each of the acts with, again, the excep­tion of The Skep­tics — their record, FUR 006, Pyrronhist Selec­tions, remains unre­leased after some­body stole the mas­ter tape, which was the only copy ¹, from Paul’s desk­top on after­noon. It was never seen again, thus becom­ing the holy-graildom of the Skep­tics, and before we could issue another record­ing I’d decided to close the label(s) and move to the UK, which I did. They were sub­se­quently on Fly­ing Nun as we all know.

I own a copy of this — I know I do — but where it actu­ally is is another mat­ter alto­gether. So I was happy when Ben Curnow emailed me to tell me he had scans of not only the sleeve, but the promo book­let that came with the first copies. Thus, instead of waf­fling on, I will, cour­tesy of Ben, let the bands on FUR 004 speak for themselves.

The sleeve was cred­ited to Gor­don Ben­nett, which was an alias for Peter Urlich and Trevor Reekie. And I have no mem­ory of sell­ing ad space on the back of the promo book, but I guess it was con­tra — a Rip It Up ad and a tour poster from Hugh Stew­art (now an Aus­tralian based pho­tog­ra­pher of global repute).

Now where is that mas­ter tape…

Mostly I’m not one for reunions but this was fun on the night. Symonds St., 1998.

Rena fol­lowed with a roar­ing ren­di­tion of her coy urban tale, Reena - and bought the full house com­pletely down.…

Maybe I don’t mind the occasional reunion.

And (below) another re-polished video from Rob Mayes, this time for the Dec 1982 final release from The Scream­ing Meemees. Directed by indie film­maker Willie Ked­dell, our bud­get was $129.

The video was made in early 1983, and the band had in effect split (although they would reform a cou­ple more times for a farewell sea­son — which included the never-broken atten­dance record at Auckland’s now demol­ished Main­street in upper Queen Street (as dis­tinct from Upper Queen Street, and for a Pro­peller Records ben­e­fit gig as the label stum­bled under the weight of the album record­ing bills from the Blams and the Meemees).

It was shot at the Auck­land Phil­har­mo­nia in Domin­ion Road with only singer Tony Drumm and drum­mer Yoh present — nei­ther Michael O’Neill nor Peter Van der Fluit appear­ing. Their sil­hou­ettes are roadie Terry ‘Tow­elling” Gra­ham and Adam Holt, now MD of Uni­ver­sal Records.

The song itself was recorded at Man­drill Stu­dios and was the only released record­ing by the band not done at Har­le­quin Stu­dios. It was also the only self pro­duced record — in this case by Tony with sound­man Tom Samp­son and engi­neer Glyn Tucker. The brass is Steve Ander­ton (son of Jim) and the hand­claps, Peter Urlich. The per­cus­sion was from Manuel Echevarri and Ricardo Pratt.

The 12″ mix, done by Tony, Glyn and myself, was the first extended 12″ mix done in NZ.

Tony and Willie worked together on this and the con­cepts are both of theirs. Given that it was done with such a low bud­get it holds up rather well and I still rate the song as one of the best things I’ve ever released. You can find it on iTunes if you are so inclined, in a remas­tered version.

That remas­ter forms the soundbed of this, which has been rebuilt from a VHS tape by Rob. For more go to his chan­nel.