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Library Laughing

Everybody loves UC Live!

UCLive is a gigantic pile of steaming shit.

That is all.

RegardsPissed off student

Thanks to the University and ICT for selling out to Microsoft and lumping us with UCLive. I heard last week that ICT had a meeting for students with email concerns - I never received the email informing me of this meeting and thus was unable to attend. At least with this new system, I no longer have to worry about responding to emails as soon as possible, or being able to keep in contact with my supervisor. UCLive seems to have a built-in feature that allows emails to relax for a day or two before making their way into the inbox. Sometimes, they don’t make it at all. I am also reaccquainting myself with spam I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing for years!

Additional thanks for keeping the internet running so smoothly this year. I’m really enjoying having to refresh every single web page that I visit during the course of my day.

Its great to see that $600 bonus each of us gave this year is being put to really good use, providing important student services.

Rebecca

ICTS responds:

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GLACIER COUNTRYBy Ralph Warburton

ONLY

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feature

May is a month of delightful anniversaries. This year, acclaimed actress Joanna Lumley will turn 64, an exact year will have passed since same sex marriage was legalized in Sweden, and, possibly more relevantly to us, May 2010 marks the tenth anniversary of New Zealand Music Month. So this week we decided to look at how far New Zealand music has come.

// PHOTOGRAPH BY DEAN MACKENZIE

By Minnie Cassadaga

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feature

Once immersed in this new feast of audial magic, the only way to learn it was to imitate it. Hence a lot of New Zealand's local bands became very similar to British and American exports. One could argue that we have only just started to deviate from this tirade with our own, new musical identity. Affecting everything from hip-hop to indie to pop, even stretching as far as the jazz and soul corners of Aotearoa, the gush of music from all corners of the globe has only just started to break down around us, leaving a phoenix of new ideas to emerge from the ashes and rise forth as roses of success.

On a national scale, our music is doing very well. Most of my friends listen to an even combination of music from New Zealand and music from other countries. Music within New Zealand is flourishing, even though you won't often find New Zealand's audial gems in the country's weekly "Top 40". The country is starting to develop original sounds in genres that function on an individual basis. Rather than those signed to bigger record label who thrive on media attention, these guys prefer house parties to stadium shows.

All around New Zealand you'll find bands of teenagers touring the country on their own steam. Indie bands across the country have dropped the prospect of signing to some odious record label and relinquishing their creative control. Instead they work ridiculous hours at some shitty job out at the airport week after week, then take off to Germany and tour with their band for three months, all for the love of it. They get around on their own funds, and join each other in different cities and play shows anywhere they can find the space. The recent "Lets Get Pregnant" tour saw Wellington's indie rapper Tommy Ill and "siqk" synth duo 47 Diamantes match up with similar artists in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland to play free shows for those both over and under 18. They don't seem to mind about being paid or where they sleep the night; as long as there's cheap wine and dancing, they're sold. The sound is addictive, and while it doesn't take itself all too seriously, it is a huge outlet for expression for all artists involved.

It still relates pretty heavily to its American and British counterparts, but New Zealand seems to be done with imitating and has started making

indie pop the way they want to hear it. This vein of music will continue to mould and shape itself, and we'll nurture it as the mother dugong does her calf. The melodies are catchy, and the sounds simple and repetitive. You can stop thinking about what the guitarist is playing and go nuts. New Zealand is teeming with acts of this ilk at the moment, and the rest of the world has started to notice. Bands like The Mint Chicks and the late So So Modern have been extremely well received overseas, and have secured a solid reputation for New Zealand's indie musicians. If you want to hear some of this

stuff in Christchurch, you should watch out for Sleepy Age, O'Lovely, and Bits 'n' Pieces on posters glued to lampposts all over High Street.

Although the indie kids are winning, nobody's implying that we're falling apart in other areas. Our hardcore/metal/metalcore scene is champing at the bit to get out, swing their arms around, and break a few noses. Our pop artists are regularly gracing television sets 4-6pm weekdays and 4-7pm weekends on C4, and the DJs and dubstep

1 WHEN I WAS 13, MY PARENTS FINALLY BOUGHT A COMPUTER AND CONNECTED UP TO THE NET. As a naive youth, I was clueless to the boundless realms of opportunity that lay just behind my screen. Eventually my best friend introduced me to Kazaa, a program that allowed you to merely type in any song title into a search bar, "download" it, and have it saved as a file on your computer. Each song only took like 40 minutes.

Thus began my enlightenment. My brain was a sponge; a veritable blank canvas of squishy capaciousness, ready to be satiated with the delightful fruits the interwebzz had to offer. I was unstoppable. My library grew to around 100 gigabytes of music, and with such a selection at my fingertips, it is no surprise that I became bored with the more readily available offerings. I began to collect acoustic versions of every song imaginable. B-sides of obscure punk bands. Bootlegs of men with beards yelling, stomping one foot and beating a chair with a stick. Ladies and gentlemen, I was obsessed. But I was not alone. People all over the country began to discover international music before it had even hit its own local scene. All thanks to the Internet's eternal archives, influences began pouring into the country like the hounds of hell, and New Zealand soaked up every last drop.

artists are headlining festivals on a near constant basis. However, one of the most impressive styles to pop up in New Zealand is the jazz/soul mash-up that I can't even think of a name for yet.

Jazz is undoubtedly an American genre. It flowed through the airways into New Zealand a hundred years ago, and since then it would seem that we can't get enough of it. With several educational institutions dedicated to the style, we find our major cities pumping out technically adept, well trained jazz musicians. The only problem is that New Zealand's jazz scene isn't huge. A jazz musician will not sell large numbers of albums, and the likelihood of breaking into an overseas market is pretty small. There is but one answer to the jazz musician's predicament: funk bands. You can find Jazz School graduates playing funk in just about any bar on just about any weekend night just about anywhere in the country.

While the jazz trio is not a dead medium, it just doesn't translate to larger crowds as well as funk bands. Traditional jazz bands set a great tone for weddings or background music for smoky bars on nights when the owners aren't expecting gratuitous numbers of patrons, but funk bands are far more popular with those who frequent "town" in the weekend. Covers are always popular with the hoards, but after a while, well-trained jazz musicians grow tired of playing other people's songs and start writing for themselves. At this point, live music from jazz origins starts to take on its own style. The product is a mixture of jazz and soul and funk. Often vocally driven, this amalgamation of styles is flexible, fluctuating between smoky, sultry ballads to upbeat funk tunes.

Although this style has been developed similarly overseas with artists such as Erika Bahdu rising through the schlock, our brand of jazz/funk soup is entirely our own. The music often displays kiwi tastes, and the style is adjustable to any crowd and translates to recordings with just as much energy. Perhaps the most impressive part is the fact that most of the music is improvised. Such a hybrid gives musicians the opportunity to solo for choruses on end; an apt forum to flex those freshly graduated muscles. If you want to get a dose of it, look out for Oval Office, Cairo Knife Fight, and Supership making some noise next time you're out on the piss.

So we're getting there. We've taken what we know and what we've learned and we're starting to do something with it. We made it through the '80s alive (just) and got through the '90s pretty much unscathed. New Zealand is pretty small, though, and these people are just people who are motivated to do what they love, so go and support them. Get out and see as much live music as you can. Even better, start your own band. Go get a job, make some demos and get on tour. Not just in Music Month either. As musician Josh Burgess will tell you, "Don't go giving all the support to shit bands. Give some to the good bands so they can get overseas and do something with their music instead of headlining Christmas in the Park three years in a row and then returning to their shitty job at the Rockshop."

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NAME: Robyn1st Year - BSC - Biology/Chemistry

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“BREWED FOR TASTE, PRICED TO PLEASE”

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Only with valid student I.D

You’ve got to try Harrington’s award winning brews!

Only available at: 1 Normans Rd, Ph:355 5632

Ice Breaker orGinger Beer

1.25 Litre, 5%

$5 each!.00

Hurry offer expires 1/6/10

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