Metro Magazine's Gary Steel On RIANZ, Dane Rumble and This Years New Zealand Music Awards
There’s something oddly special about about Auckland’s favourite elitist magazine, Metro, calling bullshit on this years music awards. Gary Steel’s column titled ‘The Blah Awards’ in the October issue of the magazine, cleverly takes shots at Dane Rumble (“…Rumble came on like 90′s rapper Vanilla Ice on milk biscuits. The former member of lollypop-licking hip-pop act Fast Crew was clearly a joke.”) and the way that the awards are structured through RIANZ, ignoring releases from artists that make our local scene so unique and special.
The New Zealand Music Awards take place on October 7, and what better time to issue a critique? Steel says we shouldn’t be that surprised that Rumble has been nominated for six awards considering the criteria that finalists need to meet; only RIANZ members can vote for the finalists and it costs $350 a year to join. “Once you’re on the long list, the major categories are whittled down to finalists by the “Voting Academy”, selected by RIANZ and comprising “approximately 150 representatives from various sectors of the music industry (radio, press, TV, online media, previous winners, retailers, promoters, and the like).” Steel resigned as a judge last year and says that the award process is “deeply depressing.”
Steel also points out that The Naked and Famous are technically still an independent band yet their music is distributed through Universal, which gives them a helping hand considering the way our market is structured (“those who opt for absolute independence are invisible…” Steel points out). He’s right, and the article brings us back to an interesting announcement.
Last week Dirty and Dawn Raid Records issued a press release saying that they had merged with Isaac Promotions to form Frequency Media Group, which will see all artists now get distributed through Universal Music. It’s a step that more labels might take if they need to survive locally. The benefits of signing on completely to a major label are arguable considering the speed at which things are changing in the current climate of local music yet there are clear upsides to having the backing of a well-established label like Universal and there’s not much doubt that it will help to establish FMG as a major player in our industry.
But as Steel tries to get across in his column, let’s not forget about the independent labels and artists which are the backbone of our industry. Border, Arch Hill, Muzai and countless others release superb music every year and will continue to as long as they can. Perhaps the criteria for the music awards needs an overhaul to help our independents get a leg up but whatever the case, the awards don’t dictate what’s bubbling under the surface. There were 19 artists nominated over 12 different categories (not including Gospel/Christian or Classical awards) for the music awards this year. Why not try and explore our local scene some more?
Interesting stuff. Though I believe that some distributors sign up to RIANZ so possibly some artists on independent labels could qualify to be nominated for the awards (i.e., by getting their distributor to put them forward). Nonetheless, I’m sure a lot of acts on smaller labels are immediately left out in the cold. Though I suppose that’s what the B-net awards are for? The RIANZ music awards are meant to be our version of the Grammy’s so I don’t think we should expect them to be any more outrageous in their choices.
We’re always bitching about the indie wanting to be mainstream and the mainstream sucking. The Music Awards New Zealand’s little piece of Grammy-esque swanky swankyness… leave it how it is. The less viewers, the less revenue and perhaps someone will rethink the awards business model to cater for independent artists then. It’s not about music – it’s about what sells and until that changes, the awards will continue to be a plastic embarrassment to Kiwi music connoisseurs.
Also, the bNet awards doesn’t exist anymore. But in saying the above, they probably should.
The B-Nets originally sprang into existence because the NZ Music Awards were so endlessly crap. They’ve kinda outlived their purpose, as many of the acts it used to highlight like Fat Freddys, SJD, Mint Chicks, Phoenix Foundation or Shapeshifter, now get recognised by the NZMA’s, which is a sign of the Music Awards evolving. However, if you look at all the R N B acts in this years finalists, they clearly need to review a category for that. They also need to review the Roots category, as the artists in that section don’t really fit the tag. Still love Mu from Fat Freddys making their winners speech for the Roots category, saying “some of our missus’ say were good roots”. Classy fella.
in regards to the merger, Dawn Raid and Issac already had distro deals with Universal, Dirty had one with Rhythm Method. I don’t think that aspect of the merger changes much for their local survival.
Also, i don’t understand the dilemma of people wanting to exist outside the mainstream but at the same time then be applauded by it. Why care about the opinions of people whose opinions you don’t care about? Also does the critics choice award make Street Chant no longer outsiders to the ‘mainstream’ or was that a ‘big win’ for ‘the scene’?
I think Steel’s article is more about acknowledging some great local artists instead of debating how being mainstream affects your status. His examples — Ruby Suns, James Duncan, Nightchoir, SJD etc — are all relevant. All those artists have received good-to-great reviews yet it still comes down to politics with RIANZ, which makes me feel like artists are losing out for no good reason.
The Critics Choice award is undoubtedly a good step in the right direction and as for Street Chant, they’re in a unique position. They’ve brought more personality than anyone else to the table this year which has been fun to watch but they’ve also done it without much help. They’ve received no funding yet they managed to make an album, three music videos and now they’re off to CMJ. If anything, they’re proving that those lines between being mainstream or not being mainstream are blurred and by putting in enough hard work, they can go far.
I agree with with all of the above. But the ‘fact’ that they (VMA/Powers that be etc etc) don’t celebrate ‘relevant’ (such an important blogosphere word) artists kinda illustrates what I was getting at. The VMA’s don’t ‘get’ what is goin on in nz music so their opinion really doesn’t matter and kinda makes the idea of a ‘relevant’ artist getting one, i dunno, not in keeping with them? ( But the Mint Chicks won heaps actually, and ihope DAvid Dallas takes out rnb/hiphop (i’m confusing my self))
Guess i’m trying to say, who cares, make good art/music etc etc don’t waste energy caring about awards or writing comments like this
out
did street chant pay for their own album and videos? i woulda assumed arch hill played a decent part in dat. the videos, at least.
I read the Metro Article with interest. As a fan of SJD I can see where Gary is coming from about the exclusion of SJD from Major award nominations in the past… However he fails to mention SJD is actually on Universal (or at least distro’d by them). Therefore he had the same chance at being put forward by the label as the rest of their roster (including the likes of The Naked and Famous)… I guess the gripe he has is that the Judges didn’t see fit to vote him into the final selections…
Gary’s article addresses a lot of different points. he wasn’t criticising the link with majors just noting it as a marketing ploy for the pretendipendents.
The main point is that this isn’t the New Zealand Music awards at all, its the RIANZ music awards, an inhouse set of awards given to club members ad those prepared to pay the entrance fee.
I read this article as Gary wishing for awards that genuinely acknowledge and recognize greatness in the wide world of NZ music, not just a PR exercise for club members. That it gets $130,000 of tax payers money via NZ on Air to prop up a business exercise is slightly offensive. Thanks for not being a media schill Gary.
I think regarding acts and labels with major-label distribution deals as improperly indie is pointless in New Zealand. The symbiosis between small labels (some of them artist-owned) and majors has been characteristic of the local industry for more than a decade. Universal in particular seems committed to working that way — hasn’t it been distributing the Dawn Raid catalogue for a long time? And Dirty, of course, started out with a P&D deal with FMR.
What has happened in that time is the rise of Rhythmethod as an indie distributor capable of selling multi-platinum records. And it’s not shut out of the VNZMAs at all — I seem to recall Fat Freddy’s Drop winning a clutch of them.
SJD was a finalist for best male vocalist 2 years ago. OH yeah Connan Mockinson is up for it this year
I woud like to think that hopefully the VNZMA’s are trying to become more inclusive of lesser known acts/less commercial acts, that’s why they have instigated the “Critic’s Choice Prize”, however i do think that they need to look at the nomination process and award categories because frankly they’re a shambles and it’s something which needs to be fixed if they’re to have any relevance to NZ’s musical community in the future.
Unfortunately as it stands the nominees are not judged on their artists merits, but by their commercial success, and are picked/voted for by people who usually have no musical knowledge or interest outside of their own sphere. This is the reason why the majority of acts up for awards are on major labels, because they have more resources on hand to make an artist well known.
The award categories are a joke! A large amount of the more meaningful awards not even presented on the night, probably down to the fact that they are not glamorous enough and therefore don’t meet the sponsers approval!
The Aotearoa Roots category seems like it was invented one year solely to give someone a prize and has stuck around to little relevance since. I mean if you’re going to have a Roots/Reggae category, why not a Punk/Metal category? And why does that specific genre get presented on the night whereas the best country, folk and Maori album awards do not.
I would hope that either the bNet Awards return in some fashion or that the VNZMA’s would come under some sort of review, not too disimilar to the one that NZ On Air is undergoing, because ultimately they could both do with some changes to make them more inclusive of the greater NZ musical community.
You and Peter are both right about the need to review the categories. The Roots award is near insulting and the Electronica one is much the same. Last year the nominations went to Ladyhawke, Sola Rosa and Antiform, and this year there’s P-Money, Bulletproof and Shapeshifter. I wouldn’t label half of those artists electronica. Also, the Album of the Year award represents artists from every major genre except for the hip-hop one, which feels like it’s getting left out in the cold being jammed in with the urban nomination anyway (this year J. Williams gets the urban nod, last year it was Ladi 6).
I’ve taken down the .pdf of the actual article after a short, sweet and irate email from Metro editor Simon Wilson.
Also, Peter McLennan has written a follow-up to the post questioning whether or not we need to re-introduce the bNet’s or something similar.
http://dubdotdash.blogspot.com/2010/09/awards-season.html
For something to be eligible for an award it has to be related to an album release with in that awards year cycle, which i think is of a similar timing to the financial year (may-april). Right?
And then a whole lot of songs/albums/videos etc get submitted, then this list gets made into a short list by a whole lot of industry related people voting right?
Could this year maybe be a year where a bunch of good/relevant artist just didn’t release anything good/relevant? I wasn’t complaining when the Mint Chicks cleaned up a few years back, or Ladyhawke won a swag last year.
Hang on aren’t the Phoenix Foundation up for a bunch? They were a pretty ‘legit’ band last time I checked.
I think the artists nominated are also reflective of the state of Radio in Nz. Commercial Radio still seeming to be the gate keeper to the charts/sales/peoples familirity with an artist etc. And Commercial radio in NZ doesnt have ‘that channel’ that other countries have, like a Triple J in Aus. So alot of the bands that I’m guessing people want to see in the awards slip through the commercial radio cracks, or chasm.
Also, for say… ‘bnet’ bands being represented fairly at the awards. In terms of radio listeners. The total bnet listeners would make a tiny sliver in a pie chart of radio listeners. Those bands aren’t doing to badly in the VNZMA’s or other awards. Naked and Famous, Street Chant, Pheonix Foundation, Connan Mockinson, David Dallas, Lawrence Arabia etc.
Bnet awards or something of the like would be great, yes the VNZMA’s smell of something stale, but the complaining about their not being the right awards to award to the right people, is this some sort of reverse version of Kiwi’s tall poppy syndrome? Lets all cut each other down, then give everyone an award.
Also this major / independent thing. Majors in NZ are practically indies compared to labels in other countries. After working with indies and majors in NZ, Aus, America and the UK the labels here are pretty low key and down to earth, and generally fans of music, in comparisons to labels abroad. Plus NZ Majors are the size of some over seas indie labels and seem to have bugger all money to play with compared to their overseas counterparts.
I love independent NZ music and labels, I don’t think they need those awards to tell them they are good (it would nice if they picked up a few on the way). It would be great to see more avenues for great music in NZ to get heard on the radio, new or existing stations.
I’m not sure i’ve gone anywhere with all this.
Keep on trucking and what have you
Also
Arias seem to do it okay:
Tame Impala, Cloud Control, Eddie Current Suppresion Ring all pretty new young decent acts. Maybe the VNZMA’s need a ‘best independent’ release?
http://www.ariaawards.com.au/winners-nominees-2010.php
isn’t the NZ Music Awards just a front for CRS management?
Pretty much
DING DING DING
It’s not an indie/ major battle. It’s that these awards are called the New Zealand Music Awards when in-fact they are the RIANZ music awards an in-house club award to paid up members.
This select club, who do allow outside nominations for a fee get $130000 of NZ on Air money to stage the event. That’s even more money to the commercial enterprise of manufacturing music. Good Music and commerce are not mutually exclusive entities but as far as recognising and financially supporting them with Culture and Heritage dollars they might as well be. If your good music is not making someone money then you’re out of the picture.
I’m guessing the Dirty/Damn Raid/Isaac merger is to create a stronger foundation for artists like David Dallas etc who want to attack the US market. With the US release of ‘Savage presents……Tribal Council’ – a compilation of NZ ‘Urban’(I fucking hate that term) tracks featuring everyone from P-Money to Tyson Tyler to Sweet & Irie – this looks like it could be a likely scenario.
But what are the local benefits of these labels merging(besides the money saving)?
My response here:
http://www.witchdoctor.co.nz/index.php/2010/09/the-music-club/
Thanks for replying Gary, but I’m not sure that an entire new blog post on your own website was really warranted when the conversation was clearly flourishing in the comments section here. Also, your tanty over my use of the word ‘irate’ is interesting considering how you use the word ‘virulent’ to discuss what has been mentioned on this page. Then we have your talk about ‘beef with bloggers’, which might have seemed clever had it not been expressed through your own blog (was that your sense of humour?). There’s an interesting comment about how you’ve chosen to focus on SJD; perhaps you would like to reply to that? Still, apologies for getting your name wrong in the tag line. I’ve updated it accordingly.
The reason for my own blog on the subject was simply that I wished to make a statement, not a random comment, and I felt that would better suit my own forum.
The word ‘virulent’ isn’t necessarily to be taken as a negative. Music, language, chatter – all these things can be viewed as a kind of virus. Virulent as in infectious, not necessarily poisonous!
My ‘beef with bloggers’ is obviously a beef with the high traffic in bloggers without spell checkers, and who can’t be bothered getting their facts or their thoughts together before spewing them on a page. I’m not saying that I’m perfect in this regard, just that I care, that the details do matter, but that the blogosphere shows little concern for such things.
Reply to the SJD comment? The fact that he was distributed by Universal? Well, as usual people have misinterpreted my Metro piece as a black and white polemic, when in fact I’m not intimating that distribution by a major necessarily tarnishes an artist. Craig’s point about SJD’s exclusion from final selections is apt, and it’s one I made in the Metro article: artists of the subtlety, calibre and quality of SJD get quickly eliminated, because the jocks and industry dicks that invariably get the final casting votes have no understanding of great pop music. In truth, the sense I got from Universal when they were distributing SJD was that it would be hard work. They must have known that it would be an uphill battle to get radio interested in something that good, and that outside the square; that’s if Universal ever understood SJD to start with.
I’ve just posted the following comment at Gary’s blog:
—
Wow, that was a bit unnecessary. I posted one comment on what was being said in the discussion on The Corner — and in return I get “media vampire”, “utterly fatuous”, “de facto totem of the new centrist-left/indie/alt whatever” …
I didn’t particularly even address the comment to you — although I do think your column was let down by some factual errors — but you spent more words cursing me out than I wrote in the first place.
Calm down, for goodness sake.
—
that’s if Universal ever understood SJD to start with.
Jesus, could you be any more pompous?
I think Universal tried hard with ‘Songs from a Dictaphone’. I sat down with Adam Hyde and Jim and worked out an online campaign for the record — people who pre-purchased the record via iTunes even got a free bag of coffee as an incentive — and it seemed to me that Adam was keen to do something different.
But the reality with that record was — and Jim said this to me at the time — that the real return to Sean wasn’t going to be via retail sales, but through synchronisation revenue. As he put it, the target market was ad agency creative directors. And that’s exactly what happened — two very big commercial sync deals.
Ironically, I think what did hurt sales was that the record fell between two stools — it was too sophisticated and interesting for commercial radio and too pop for the B-Net. But it didn’t do that badly — it reached #11 in the album chart, and topped the iTunes chart.
And it wasn’t exactly a rejection of the system. It was made with a Phase 4 funding grant from NZ On Air.
I do really have to take issue with you claim in the column that “those who opt for absolute independence are invisible, in fact, to both RIANZ and the Music Awards”. Unless you can clarify your definition of independence — what about Shapeshifter and Fat Freddy’s Drop? You might not like them, but they have quite assuredly been both independent (the Freddies never ever signed a contract with Rhythmethod for ‘Based on a True Story’) and highly visible to the awards.
I thought you made some interesting points in the column, but those errors — and your subsequent spray of bile — do tend to have undermined what you were trying to say.
Whoops. Edit: Not Adam Hyde, Adam Holt.
Adam Hyde is seriously indie ;-)
Wait so let me get this straight… the music awards are basically a promotional tool for RIANZ members, generating invaluable hype for their artists AND they get NZ On Air money for this? That’s appalling.
No, not just that, Stephen. It is also an awesome booze up for record execs & media types. HOLLA.
I’m super late to this, but would like to say two things: Firstly, that despite my writing an intensely critical column about the ’06 iteration of the music awards, I do feel like over the last few years (basically from 07 when the Mint Chicks scooped the pool) onwards they’ve actually become pretty good. Certainly there are a bunch of pop/rock artists who I may or may not have time for, but seriously guys – this is a nationally televised awards ceremony. If every winner looked like the Phoenix Foundation it wouldn’t be glamourous, at Vector, or have an audience beyond critics and music nerds nodding approvingly. It definitely wouldn’t be on TV. This thing is a never-ending culture war, and it’s better when the heat’s in the battle, and neither side is winning.
Look at the ARIAs, or the Grammy’s or the Brits – all way shitter, in my opinion, in terms of general standard of artists nominated, if not the scale of their production. We could do a lot worse is a pretty piss-weak argument, but truly, of late they’ve maintained a balance between pop and indie, entertaining and critically substantial – it just so happens that this year has been a bit flat for indie/critically acclaimed releases big enough to impact the awards (Phoenix Foundation aside) and a bonanza for poppier artists. That’ll happen from time to time.
All that being said though, the Aotearoa Roots category is a total joke, one that only gets less funny with each passing year. Particularly don’t like the insinuation that those fucking awful reggae/funk/mor bands are intrinsically more NZ than emo or hip hop artists, but that’s an argument I’ve made a thousand times without it ever seeming to get any traction.
Secondly, on SJD – Russell’s right in saying that he falls into an awkward spot in terms of his audience – the b.nets themselves love him, but I think the better his recordings get the less the b.net audience know what to do with it. And I can speak from personal experience about how hard Uni went with that album, Justin, Al, Jesse and Adam were all deeply invested in its success. We all have artists we love who get short-shrift for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be.
wasn’t Gary’s point re SJD to do with the lack of award recognition for his quality album, not with the lack of sales of it. only a couple awards are supposedly linked to sales. The rest are supposed to be an acknowledgment of greatness in their field
The VNZMAs are so important to me that until yesterday I was under the impression that they’d already been and gone.
No, not just that, Stephen. It is also an awesome booze up for record execs & media types. HOLLA.
Heh. Who are these “execs”? There are so few people working for the major labels these days that I sometimes wonder who all these people they fill the hall with actually are.
I confess, I do enjoy the bacchanale though. It is quite fun — and a lot better than when the awards were like some sort of retailers’ convention, and when the artists were regarded as unwelcome guests. I remember when the Headless Chickens were finalists with Body Blow, and they got told only two of them could come on the night. These days they’d be waltzing in on the red carpet. And hell, why not?
Who do else do they fill the hall with? Blasé mainstream radio promotions people who pinch the bums of junior journos and look up the skirt of Kim Crossman when the clock turns to half past danceonthetable o clock.
“If every winner looked like the Phoenix Foundation it wouldn’t be glamourous, at Vector, or have an audience beyond critics and music nerds nodding approvingly.”
….maybe, but man there’d be some darn good conversations about Brian Eno at the after party. Did you know he can fly a plane? No wait, thats Gary Steel, no wait Gary Numan. Wait, what was my point?
I wonder if them and half of blur fly around doing barrel rolls, high fiving each other with their wings while simultaneously reading all these comments. Man it would be sweet to chat Eno at an after party, flyin in the sky and write dry witty comments all at the same time at new vodaland musical icharts tune of the year awards.
man they would be some sweet comments.
Who do else do they fill the hall with? Blasé mainstream radio promotions people who pinch the bums of junior journos and look up the skirt of Kim Crossman when the clock turns to half past danceonthetable o clock.
Gold.
FYI Sam the Phoenix Foundation comment not meant as a dig – just that people aren’t going to want to look up the skirts of a bunch of beardos like yrselves. Hope it was taken in the spirit intended… And yep Lbd nailed the vibe. I even met Kim Crossman at the last awards. Very exciting.
Ha ha, no offense taken at all. Maybe I’ll were a kilt next time. People can check out my front row thighs.
sorry ‘wear’ a kilt….I’m still hungover.
A very late reply to Russell Brown, who is so enmeshed in the industry that I find it hard to see how he can even pretend to stand apart from it and objectively comment from the media wings. NZ Indie’s point about SJD is valid – I was talking about SJD in the context of quality, not retail sales. I have witnessed the Universal promo team’s efforts to get exposure for SJD, and while their methodologies presumably work for the kind of horrid fodder they usually hawk, they’re hopelessly out of their depth with music of quality and integrity and sophistication.
Russell’s point about Shapeshifter and Fat Freddy’s Drop being entirely indie and still visible to RIANZ doesn’t invalidate my original point – there is always going to be an exception or two that proves the rule. Brown specialises in this kind of fatuous debunking, which is based on his inability to see the wood for the trees, but then he’s so enmeshed in the perpetuation of his own comfy network that as an observer, he’s lost all sense of reality. Russell just loves saying things like “I thought you made some interesting points in the column, but those errors — and your subsequent spray of bile — do tend to have undermined what you were trying to say”, without proving there were any errors in the first place.
As for Dunc’s comments about the music awards, I agree that the NZ awards are no less shit than similar institutions internationally, and my column did point out their healthy state in relation to the “bad old days”. However, my interest isn’t in how glamorous the awards are, or how good the after show piss up; my interest is the music, and whether the best music has access to the awards, and whether, as a result, the awards are really relevant. My answer is still a resounding ‘NO’.
without proving there were any errors in the first place.
Apart from the errors you’ve dismissed as “exceptions that prove the rule”, you mean? And the mistakes about SJD that you’ve neatly rationalised?
But whatever. I was simply contributing my experience to the discussion, and I genuinely cannot understand your unpleasant attitude towards me.
Russell Brown, who is so enmeshed in the industry
I suppose I should address this, if only to say “WTF?”
I do not work in the music industry in any way at all. I know people who make music, and some people at independent and major labels to say hi to.
I’ll occasionally comment on industry issues on my blog, but generally if I write about music, it’s as a fan. And we’ll always cut good advertising deals for local artists. Last year, when we kicked off a small-ads section for the Scoop Media network, I gave Independent Music NZ a big chunk of free inventory as a matter of goodwill.
Anything else is in your imagination, Gary. Seriously, I don’t think it’s me who has lost touch with reality.
Do you think perhaps you could find someone else to vilify now? I’m finding it a bit creepy, to be honest.
I’m interested to know what would fit YOUR bill of musical quality, integrity and sophistication, Mr Steel. Frankly, I do not expect anything less than nordic avantgarde electronica fusion, considering you have the sophistication to contribute to the epitome of hard hitting Ponsonby journalism itself.
Isn’t RB tucked in there nicely on a bunch of ‘advisory’ panels?
Doesn’t he front a media program on tv?
How exactly does he get to be on the guest list for all these events?
Explain to me the concept of ‘not’ enmeshed again?
and FFD and Shapeshifter hardly represent the position of the bulk of independent artists in nz. They are the glowing exceptions, not the rule. Why would you think or pretend otherwise?