Live feeds - How I loathe thee

I was watching this clip from Media 7 recently, and it got me started on one of my bugbears in the media here.



Namely, live feeds or crosses. You cannot get through the first twenty minutes of the news on TVNZ or TV3 without crossing live to a 'breaking story'. Even if there is absolutely nothing happening where the reporter is, there will always be a young boffin (good god I'm the youngest curmudgeon around) straight out of journalism school on the ground talking about 'what the feeling is' etc etc. Grrr. What happened to putting together a proper report so you can get a proper story rather than just standing someone and talking to someone live in a studio.

Example 1 (as shown the the clip above): last month when swine flu first hit New Zealand, on a Sunday night they had a report for TVNZ standing outside Rangitoto College at 6pm in the dark. Who was in the school. No one!

Example 2: Two weeks ago both TVNZ and TV3 put two poor reporters out in the middle of a storm hitting Wellington. One looked as though hypothermia was setting in.

While I think in some cases it is important to be where the news is (the David Bain trial being one) . Do we need to have reporters standing by passing cars when talking about accidents. I wouldn't think so. Far better to actually spend more time investigating the story.

News, particularly television, seems to be obsessed with getting in their first or getting the scoop on a story. For example tonight John Campbell mentioned that "I watched David Bain supporters watch the verdict first on TV3." Shameless. Similar to those short lived "we don't just read the news, we get it," with newsreaders emoting with long dramatic pauses about being in Lebanon, or ANZAC day parades. Once again shameless.

I understand we live in a fast paced world with information at our fingertips, but do we need to hear our newsreaders to name drop themselves. And do we need pointless live crosses to people 'on the scene'. arent TVNZ and TV3 meant to be saving money?

Shooting. Fish. In. A. Barrel:




(sorry for the quality)

And this just in......

Saw things so much clearer

Pearl Jam. Where to start. I can't actually believe that I have got this far and haven't posted anything about this band. Because pure and simple they are my favourite. They may not always be on my most played list, I might go for a long time without listening to a song. But to me every time I play Pearl Jam it feels like coming home.


Now I could write a Russian novel on Pearl Jam, it's history, meanings, top 100 songs etc. But I won't. What I will talk about is my personal relationship with the music. Now I don't mean that kind of personal, but rather how some songs have shaped my life.

I still remember the first time I even heard Pearl Jam. It was 1995 and I was in third form. Being a bit young to be right in the middle of the grunge explosion, Nirvana had already been and gone, and funnily enough grunge was already in its deaththrows.

It must have been an afternoon after school and on tv was I think the MTV music awards and they kept playing this song, (which turned out to be Jeremy). When I heard that chorus, and you must remember prior to this I was listening to Michael Jackson, I was blown away. I had never heard anything like it. I remember after that seeing commercials on tv advertising Ten, strange as it was a full 3 or so years after it was released. But I couldn't get it out of my head. I had to have this album. I managed to persuade Mum to buy it for me (on cassette of course). I remember getting home and listening to those first atmospheric chords of Once and thinking, 'this sounds like Phil Collins.' Thankfully it wasn't. I turned turned the dial on the stereo up loud and took it all in. I don't think my adolescent brain could digest it all at once. At that moment my poor parents must have thought "oh god he's a teenager now". It is really no coincidence that I feel in love with rock music in my 13th year. The rest was history.

I found that cassette not too long ago at home, the packaging dog eared from me pouring over the liner notes and the artwork, trying to decipher the lyrics. I went out and bought all the other Pearl Jam albums. Vs still remains my favourite. It has an anger and a tightness that was really Pearl Jam at their peak.

It's funny now to look back at those times as Ten is re-released in a beautiful deluxe version. Indeed it has been not only remastered, but the entire album has been remixed by Brendan O'Brien on a separate disc. From the first few run throughs, the redux is, in my opinion, a superior and less dated sound than the original. The original mix has a bit of an 80's rock sound to it, too polished and sheeny for the music it contains. The remix is a lot more immediate and sounds a lot fresher than the original.

While listening to the redux I was thinking how different music can sound at different periods of your life. When I was an angst ridden teenager songs of anger, injustice and despair were a revelation. I would listen to a song like Black, a lament to unrequited or lost love, and think, this guy really knows how I feel. Embarrassing I know.

Now I am a (slightly) more better adjusted adult, I can't listen to the album in quite the same way. You can't relate in the same way to angst ridden songs when you are happily engaged and generally in a really spot in life. But then again Pearl Jam are no longer in that space either. They aren't trying to pass off their former glories by trying to force the angst. They stepped away from 'grunge' and, while it lost them a large amount of fans in the process, they have written some interesting music in the meantime. Indeed, No Code, Yield, Riot Act and Pearl Jam contain some of the most self affirming music written.

Take a song like Loveboat Captain (not the best name, but great song nonetheless) off 2003's Riot Act.
"And the young, they can lose hope cause they cant see beyond today,...
The wisdom that the old cant give away"

This is no longer the voice of the youth, but someone who has been through some hard times and made it out the otherside, and can now see the good in life.

Vedder explained the change quite well in an interview around the time of Yield
"What was rage in the past has become reflection. In the past we got really angry and we cried out against many things in our songs, and I think our message reached to people pretty well this way. But where do you go after that? I think when you become an adult you have to express your energy in a different way, more calm. That doesn't mean we forget the bad side of life, because it still appears in our songs. But what it's now exciting, a real challenge, is facing it from a more positive point of view, looking for a way to solve it. In the past we said: what a shit, this stinks, that sucks, everything sucks... Now it's time to say: stop, let's look for a solution, let's be positive."

I'm not sure if I have necessarily grown with Pearl Jam, or that at a slightly older age I can appreciate the positive in their later records. Whatever the case may be, I love both periods of their music. While I can no, longer relate directly to their older songs, the energy of their early shows is undeniable.

Take the Porch below from 1992 with Pearl Jam in all their grunge glory. This is a truly amazing performance, all the power of youth and exuberance, plus what looks like 100,000 people.

Pearl Jam now do things how they want to and seem to be all the happier for it. Naturally, some of the raw anger and energy has dissipated but it doesn't mean they have forgotten how to rock out.

Who knows, maybe they could be cool and retro again soon. Flannel seems to be making a comeback.... I am already starting to feel old.

(photos courtesy of www.pearljam.com)

How the mighty do fall....

And fall hard sometimes they do. Case in point: Chris Cornell. He is currently the definition of the the law of diminishing returns.

Now I am a big Soundgarden fan. Superunknown is one of my favorite albums of all time. His vocals are simply amazing for a rock singer, how he can hit those notes I will never know. See Flower below:



Soundgarden were one of the original Seattle bands that stuck around and made it big. They produced some incredibly heavy music, but in a way that wasn't clichéd like much of the hair metal 80's bands. They instead played Sabbath and Zeppelin infused heavy rock with increadible wailing vocals from Cornell. They produced 4 full length albums peaking with the afformentioned Superunknown, before and acrimonious split in 1996.

Cornell embarked on a solo album (Euphoria Morning) which was very stripped down and a departure from the Soundgarden sound. It contained a few gems, although nowhere as good as his two previous solo soundtrack contributions Seasons (Singles) and Sunshower (Great Expectations).



He then made the bizarre decision of joining the members of Rage Against the Machine to form Audioslave. They subsequently made three albums together, which were quite frankly, rather bland. They subsequently broke up Rage became, comically, an unintentionally ironic relic by touring their greatest hits.

Cornell then released a fantastically average solo album, which was most notable for carrying a rather serious cover of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, as well as the theme song to the James Bond movie Casino Royale. He then went on tour with that fantastic bastion of alternative music: Linkin Park. I remember thinking at the time that Chris Cornell had hit rock bottom.

I was wrong

Chris Cornell "Part Of Me" (produced by Timbaland)

I mean what is he thinking? If it was 5 years ago and every blimmin song on the radio wasn't produced by Timbaland, it could (possibly) be seen as a departure. But plain and simple Chris Cornell has sold out. He is using auto-tune for god's sake. It is very, very, very sad to watch the downfall of a previously great singer, reduced to using the same techniques as Cher and Chris Brown. He has even sunk to chauvinistic lyrics.

Clearly, Cornell, while being the frontman of Soundgarden, was definately not the creative talent. I fail to see how he can come back after this.... I need to see this amazing performance to heal!

Northern Walkway

Myself and my better half decided to celebrate our national holiday by tackling the Northern Walkway here in Wellington.

And wow what a walk. We got the train out to Johnsonville (thankfully it was the first day it was running after a month and a bit of upgrading), and began the 16km trek. I imagined that climbing Mt Kaukau at the start would be the most difficult part of the walk. However, it was relatively simple and by the time we got to the top we were able to soak up the 360 degree vistas of Wellington. The scenery is truly breathtaking, we not only got to see Wellington in all its glory from the highest point, we also got views of the South Island. (Unless you are a master walker I would suggest going the way we did, its basically a climb straight up from Khandallah if you go from that side.)

We naively thought that this would be the hardest part of the walk. We were wrong. We descended straight down Mt Kaukau into Khandallah and down into the Nagio Gorge. This lead onto what was most definately the hardest part, clmbing from the bottom of the Nagio Gorge up to the top of Wadestown and the Tinakori hill. It's fair to say that by the time we got to the top we were fairly spent. Having said that there are some beautiful houses in Wadestown. Dreams are for free, the houses certainly are not.

Once we got to the Tionakori hill we had a closer view of the city of Wellington, and the near full stadium, complete with a crowd sung rendition of Wonderwall (England must have been playing). From there it was straight down into Thorndon and back home. All in all a beautiful walk and if you have a spare half day I definitely recommend it. The town belt walks around the city is one of the reasons I love Wellington so much. The fact that you don't even have to walk 45 mins and be right in amongst nature makes living here truly worthwhile.

Hopefully the memories of the views will far outweigh the sore legs we had the next day.

Get of the bandwagon, put down the anvil

Well I have been slack but very busy.

Anywho, a few weeks ago now I ventured to the Town Hall to see the Arctic Monkeys. Now of course the Arctic Monkey's have a hell of a lot of hype behind them. Their debut album was the fastest selling debut of all time. Not to mention some massive hype generated by that giant musical tabloid known as the NME.

Despite the hype they have managed to release two cracking albums, with the second, Favorite Worst Nightmare, managing to break the second album curse and actually be slightly better than their debut.

I was therefore pretty interested to see how they would shape up live. I had seen reviews saying they are known for blowing through a set without barely a word to the crowd, or indeed a breath. Lets just say I didn't leave disappointed. The gig was at the Wellington Town Hall, which is a beautiful venue and is usually really good for sound. That night however, the sound was slightly below par. I could have been where I was standing, but despite this I proceeded to have my mind (and ears) blown.

Having the balls to open with a B-side showed that they aren't afraid to mix things up. The setlist was as follows

• 'Da Frame 2R'
• 'This House Is A Circus'
• 'Still Take You Home'
• 'The View From The Afternoon'
• 'Dancing Shoes'
• 'Dangerous Animals'
• 'From The Ritz To The Rubble'
• 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor'
• 'Pretty Visitors'
• 'Brianstorm'
• 'When The Sun Goes Down'
• 'Leave Before The Lights Come On'
• 'Go-Kart'
• 'Crying Lightning'
• 'Fluorescent Adolescent'
• 'Do Me A Favour'

Encore

• 'Red Right Hand'
• 'If You Were There, Beware'

They played three new songs, 'Dangerous Animals', 'Pretty Visitors' and 'Go Kart', which will be on there new album they are working on with Josh Holme from Queens of the Stone Age. You could definately see the Holme touch on the songs, quite a bit darker than their previous material.

The Monkeys did not dissapoint. Their was some banter between songs, but mainly it was all about the music. They didn't do the old "save the famous single until last", they played I bet you look good on the dancefloor right in the middle of the set, leaving their encore to be A Nick cave cover (pulled off quite well) and the lesser known If you were there, Beware as the last song.

Some of the songs sounded slightly looser than I hoped, but it was their first gig for over a year, so I will forgive them. Overall a top gig, and I am definately looking forward to the new album.
4.5/5