Ngaire hangs at Cause Celebre

Kiwi singer Ngaire burst onto the music scene in 1990 with her cover of To Sir With Love, on Southside Records, a soul/funk label started by Murray Cammick (then Rip It Up editor) and Simon Lynch (ex-Ardijah). That song sat at number one on the singles chart for 5 weeks straight in late 1990, going gold.

This video is for the follow up single, released early 1991, and staying in the charts for 10 weeks, peaking at number 18. But who is that greasy rocker sitting at the bar, smoking?

Lorde watch

Lorde and Joel Little, at APRA Silver Scrolls

It's been another big week for Kiwi pop star Lorde. Here song Royals is still sitting at #1, for the second week in a row on the US charts. She has two releases in the Billboard Top 200 albums, Pure Heroine and Love Club EP.

Her song Royals was covered by some street urchins in a tv ad for Samsung, featuring football star Lionel Messi. He uses Samsung's latest technology to demolish a building in the slums and create a playing field for the grateful urchins. Apparently the ad is inspired by Messi's own charitable foundation doing similar work.

The reaction online to Royals featuring in a tv ad right after it topped the US singles chart was lively, to say the least. Many online commenters were turned off by what looked like a sudden grab of a pop hit from Samsung, although Billboard quoted an ad exec saying they estimated the music was signed off in late July, well before Royals headed up the charts.

Many folk picked up on a piece written by The Verge's Nilay Patel slamming Samsung on some rather odd assertions. See "Samsung doesn't understand Lorde's 'Royals,' uses it to advertise the Galaxy Note 3 to street urchins."

The comments on that post suggest that Patel has a long history of taking any opportunity to slam Samsung. Is he trolling, or does he have a point? He also mentioned on Twitter that it's "particularly bad timing for Samsung as Royals is currently under fire for being racist." Let's not go down into that particular cesspit.

The Verge's followup piece talked to the ad's director, Adam Hashemi... "Choosing a song proved difficult, and Hashemi makes it sound as though one wasn't selected until late into production. His team considered tracks ranging from David Bowie's "Starman" to Johnny Mercer's "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive." When they finally landed on "Royals," it only had 2 million views on YouTube, he says, and wasn't yet a hit single, although they saw potential. Now, it's at closer to 28 million, and sits atop the Billboard Hot 100. Hashemi isn't sure if Lorde ever saw and approved her song's use in the ad, but a licensing team did clear it."

So, will Lorde cash in on this ad? Her co-writer, Joel Little, has a publishing deal with Sony ATV, and Lorde is yet to sign a publishing deal.  Her record company probably won't get any income from the ad, as they have used their own recording of the song, not the original recording. Lorde's publishing will have been done thru AMCOS, in lieu of a publishing company. [Updated Nov 14 2013  - Lorde has signed a publishing deal with Songs Music, possibly worth about US$4M].

Will the exposure in the Samsung ad hurt her or help her? Simon Grigg (OMC's label) says if the ad only has a short run, then it will help ingrain the song, but if it has a long run, it will become known as the song from the Samsung ad, which may be offputting to radio.

Grigg says "most radio will not want to play a song that is seen to be endorsing a brand." Her future income will be from publishing, and that is linked to airplay. Grigg says when OMC's album came out it sold 1.5 million copies and made it to #39 in the US charts, but that was back when albums were still selling in big numbers. Lorde's album sold 127,000 copies in it's first week, which Grigg described as soft sales.

Meanwhile, she's started doing more interviews, as her album gets released in various parts of the globe. The Guardian's Alex Petridis talked to her, ahead of her album's UK release on Oct 28.

"... Interviewing an international pop sensation while their mum hovers in the background is a slightly odd experience, but then, as Yelich-O'Connor points out, she shouldn't really be here herself. She should be back home in New Zealand, in Davenport [sic], a suburb of Auckland that's apparently known locally as the Bubble – "because it's so insular and closed off from everything" – and which she describes, winningly, as "the kind of suburb that people make movies about, there's quite weird mums everywhere".

ADDED 31 October 2013  - Lorde is on her 5th straight week in a row at #1 on the US singles chart -she posted this on Twitter today - "@billboard: .@lordemusic #Royals crowns the #Hot100 for a fifth week: http://blbrd.co/1aDPEtw ” - soon they'll run out of puns.' Royals has just hit #1 on the UK singles chart too.

She and her co-writer Joel Little recently won her first award, the APRA Silver Scroll, for songwriting. Read more about that night here.

Via Kottke.org: "New Zealand journalist Duncan Greive caught onto Lorde early and has written the self-styled "definitive inside account of Ella Yelich-O'Conner's rise to the top".

It's a fascinating backgrounder on Ella and her family life. Why is she so assured onstage for a newcomer? That will be eight years of doing drama classes. Originally published in Metro magazine, the story is now available online in full at FasterLouder.




There are approximately six million covers/remixes/mashups of Royals floating round the internet right now, here's the funkiest one. Hat tip to Murray Cammick for the above clip. Video info says "Two of the guys playing on Royals (Window & Rooster) are in a southern-fried-voodoo-funk band named "Harvey Knows A Killer". They are hard at work on their debut album, check them out at the following link"...
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/harvey-s-debut-album-fund.
 The Rekkids on Facebook  


On Tuesday November 5th 2013, Lorde was in New York, performing at the MOMA for an event honouring Tilda Swinton. See the photo below...

As Consequence of Sound put it, "does this not look like a pair of proud parents
posing with their Gothic teenage? "  Photo: David Bowie's official Facebook page

The next day was Lorde's 17th birthday (in NZ) - she was still in New York, a day behind on the dateline. She wrote about that over on her Tumblr, read that here... she reflects on her previous birthday , which "...fell in the middle of exam revision but a bunch of my friends came over anyway to eat cake and ruffle my hair and talk about pokemon. Weirdos..."

DJ Rhys B recalls the World DMCs, 1990

DJ Rhys B. Scanned from Volume mag

DJ Rhys B at 1990 DMC World DJ Champs, Hammersmith Palais, London, March 20, 1990. [originally published in the sadly defunct Volume magazine, 20 Dec 2011]

DJ Rhys B: "I was only 20, so it was a big experience for me. I competed in the first New Zealand DMC Final at The Gluepot - competition was tough, but I took it out. The prize was a trip to London to compete in the World DJ Championships.

I travelled with Simon Grigg who ran the DMC competition in New Zealand, and it was my first time in the Northern Hemisphere. I was excited to be the first Maori DMC champion to represent Aotearoa in an international DJ competition.

It was a bit overwhelming at first, especially in the elimination round when you'd see all these other competitors that you'd read about. DJ Dave from Germany - he won the competition that year, the Japanese guy DJ Yoshi, the Italian guy Francesco Zappala, the American champion was Baby G - there were heaps of big names.

I had Twin Hype in my set - a song called 'Do it to the Crowd' - and I used 'Jam Master Jay' by Run-D.M.C., I had a couple of 12-inches of those. It was more back-to-back and scratching and body tricks in the early '90s. The DMC is a six-minute competition and they want to see all-around DJ skills, scratching, beat-juggling and beat-mixing, all in one package.

There were 23 competitors in the eliminations and they chose 10. I came 12th, and I'm proud of that. It was a very eye-opening experience and I'm lucky to have had it.

This is probably when the DMC competition was at its height, and lots of people played. I met A Tribe Called Quest, Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. - I went to McDonald's with them and they were real cool. Public Enemy and Professor Griff were there, Inner City, 3rd Bass, Digital Underground. That's where I met Tupac - he was a dancer for Digital Underground, and it was funny because everyone was around Shock G 'cause he was the star of the show, and just to the side was Tupac and their DJ, Money-B.

This is before Tupac had the tattoos and stuff. I just walked up to him and introduced myself: 'Hi, I'm Rhys B from New Zealand'. I was pretty starstruck with some of those people but I figured I wasn't going to get an opportunity like that again. I just did the New Zealand thing, walked up and said, 'Gidday, mate - how's it going?'

ADDED: I found a video of the entire DJ finals, plus some live footage of one of the acts that performed that night, Public Enemy...

Audioculture talk

Simon Grigg (L), Murray Cammick, outside site of punk club Zwines

This free talk is on at the Auckland Central Library in Lorne St,  Thursday 3 October, 6pm - 7.30pm. These fellas have music stories for days, bound to be entertaining....

Audioculture: A history of popular music in NZ
When: Thursday 3 October, 6pm - 7.30pm
Where: Central City Library, Whare Wananga Level 2

Join Simon Grigg and Murray Cammick as they discuss their ambitious plans for music website AudioCulture, which aims to document the history of New Zealand music culture.

Simon and Murray will speak about working with artists, historians and music industry people to tell the stories of nearly 100 years of New Zealand popular music, from the first vinyl recording in the 1920s to digital streaming. AudioCulture is an evolving, online celebration of New Zealand music. The site aims to highlight the people who have created the music, the scenes they shaped, and the audiences they played to.

Join us for a welcome glass of wine from 6pm before the talk begins at 6.30pm.

Speaker bios
Simon Grigg is a New Zealand music businessman, writer, broadcaster, publisher, producer, DJ and archivist. He has owned record labels, night clubs and managed bands and has always been in the thick of the local music scene.

Murray Cammick is a New Zealand popular music journalist, photographer and record label founder. He is best known for being the co-founder of Rip-It-Up and being editor when it was good.

From Auckland Library website.

How bizarre wax

I've wanted a copy of How Bizarre on vinyl for ages. As a DJ, it's one of those great Kiwi tunes that just makes people smile whenever you play it. Like when I drop Slice of Heaven. Dobbo and Herbs, gold.

I finally found a copy recently, floating round in the 2nd hand vinyl bins up at Conch Records. Local DJ Manuel Bundy had had a bit of a clear out and was parting with it (thanks Manny!). Of course Manuel observed the How Bizarre phenomenon firsthand, as he toured the world as part of OMC's live band in 1997.

He talked about that time in an interview with yours truly over at Audioculture - he said “The one thing about Pauly – there was that classic tall poppy syndrome, a lot of people dissed ‘How Bizarre’, a lot of the hip-hoppers – but no one analysed it, and thought 'why was it a hit?' It’s because the way he looked, people didn't know where to put him ... That’s why it was a hit. He was like this Polynesian Elvis from outer space!"

This promo oddity was slung together by some marketing guru at Polygram Canada in 1996. They had the stupendously weird notion that How Bizarre would sit comfortably alongside a Grease Megamix. It doesn't. The flip is two appallingly bad club mixes of How Bizarre.

Simon Grigg (boss of OMC's label Huh!) tells me that they were very unhappy when this promo turned up and Pauly Fuemana was furious.

ADDED: There's plans afoot to remaster/reissue the OMC album early next year, with bonus tracks, hopefully including the acapella of How Bizarre.