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Murray Burns vividly remembers the night in 1980 when then-prime minister Rob Muldoon attended a Mi-Sex gig in Wellington. At the time there was a bid to have tax taken off local products and it was argued that records by local artists should be included
The American activist author of The Color Purple has been added to the line-up confirmed for this year’s Auckland Writers’ Festival. Alice Walker will appear in one event only, The Color Purple, named after her Pulitzer-prize winning 1982 novel.
After being overshadowed by a fatal car accident outside the Mohawk Club on Thursday morning, which killed two people and injured 23, the annual multimedia conference South by Southwest drew to a close last night in Austin, Texas. The all-out celebration of music, film and, in its interactive component, “innovation, creativity and inspiration”, this year’s SXSW, as it is commonly known, will always be remembered for that tragedy.
Every year there’s a couple of films that make me want to blockade the multiplex, and shout at the queues to forget about what-ever over-produced under-souled rubbish they’re about to pay for, and go see a complete gem instead.
Ben Campbell’s nascent Christchurch creative co- operative Fledge is showing a bit of muscle. The former member of Zed and Atlas, who now channels his music into House of Mountain, is a mentor for the New Zealand Music Commission and a director of Fledge Records – and now he has found chart success with Jed and Hera’s debut album, Live At York St
FIELD OF REEDS These New Puritans (Liberation) The only thing puritanical about English “electronic composer” Jack Barnett and his drummer brother George’s South-end-on Sea musical project is the sometimes stark and strict adherence to experimentation.
The Phoenix Foundation is one of Wellington’s most popular bands, with a strong following overseas, as well as being praised by music veterans such as Neil Finn.
Tom O’Dell still has fond memories of the year he spent in New Zealand. The BRIT’s Critics Choice Award winner, who recently released his debut album Long Way Down was still a youngster when his dad was offered a job as a pilot for Air New Zealand
Back in 2007 guitarist Ruban Nielson decamped from Auckland to Portland, Oregon, with his brother Kody Nielson and Paul Roper, all members of popular Kiwi indie punk band The Mint Chicks. The move came after the band, founded in 2001, cleaned up at the New Zealand Music Awards that year, winning five categories including album of the year for Crazy Yes! Dumb No!
If you haven’t heard of Karnivool, you soon will. The prog rock quintet have made a huge name for themselves in the Aussie music scene and they’re looking to take on the rest of the world with their no nonsense, keep-em-guessing approach