A pinch & a punch for the start of NZ Music Month...

Yup, it’s New Zealand Music Month. I have never been a fan. I refer below to the slap and kick that I wrote for the website of that NZ arts show Frontseat a couple of years ago. The information is related to that year, the release of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s album. But the general tone is still pretty much how I feel. I thought I’d be lazy and leave it as it was originally written. Hopefully we can kick off a debate about New Zealand Music Month – what are your thoughts? Here were mine from a couple of years ago:

New Zealand Music Month: Ah Phooey!

Every year seems to have, within it, a month named May. And so it is that every May now also goes by the title of New Zealand Music Month, or NZ Music Month for short. (NZMM is not a recognised abbreviation; but I will be using those capitalised non-acronym letters hereafter. Just so you know.)

I dislike NZMM. A lot. I do not dislike New Zealand Music. (Certainly not all of it, anyway.) And I’ve nothing against the month of May - other than it being the allotment of weeks that houses NZMM - so it is just the combination: the NZM and the M.

I have never liked NZMM. I was never quite sure - other than to say, simply, that I never understood why we needed just one M to celebrate NZM. Couldn’t every M, be for NZM - as well as other music? Why May? - I don’t mean, specifically why May? I just mean, why one month.

And now, after years of writing about music, and working sporadically in music retail, I know why I don’t like NZMM. It is exploitative. And token. We are demeaning ourselves - well, our music at least - by giving it one month. It is as if to say “let’s only try one thing this month”; the musical equivalent of a fad-diet. And fad-diets don’t work. I would be happy if April was Australian Music Month, June for America, July for Romania, August for Fiji perhaps? That I could handle; if we actually promoted one geographical-genre per month then that would be fine.

Tall Poppy Syndrome. That’s what you might be thinking. And you are right. But I don’t suffer from it. The promoters and instigators of NZMM are the ones. Yes, like reverse-racism, NZMM is a social crime that seems hard to detect. (And harder still to prove.) But, NZMM is a pointless, insulting waste of time.

Sure, in a very grass-roots, love-your-brother, let’s-all-eat-sunflower-seed-paste-to-be-better-people sense, NZMM is a good thing. But, it is token lip-service. Nothing more.

NZMM brings with it a vague air of desperation - it’s as if the poor huddled masses (ie: New Zealand’s musicians) have, er, banded together around a rubbish tin, with their fingerless gloves on, warming themselves by a bitter fire, and have decided to give their albums one final big pitch before resigning themselves to the dole queue for life. But, thanks to Aunty Helen, they can still have street-cred on “The Artist’s Dole”!

Anyway, worse than the musicians shoving their product at us, with a desperate last-ditch sense of urgency are the record companies hocking their wares; big overfed pimp-daddies, dressing their whores in fresh knickers (bonus-discs, slip-covers, DVD-extras…) Mind you, prostitution is legal. Fair’s fair, I guess. But this is the part that has me most frustrated: The Feelers are, without a doubt, living proof that mediocrity can be celebrated. (And major-label endorsed.) And what will we receive this NZMM? Sure, there’ll be some stuff to look forward to: the second album from Phoenix Foundation! The first full-lengther from Ghostplane! That’s two very exciting (Wellington-based) prospects. There’s a newie from Shihad-nee-Shihad (formerly, pathetically as well as parenthetically, Pacifier). And Fat Freddy’s Drop will finally show whether they’ve been spending years sewing together the musical equivalent of Emperor’s New Clothes.

Perhaps they won’t have us stitched up; perhaps it’ll actually be good? (Apologies, but the pun was there, I had to use it.) But whichever way it goes, it’ll be interesting to find out. These are exciting things - and they didn’t need to happen in NZMM - they’d be exciting anyway. But I’ll accept that NZMM will draw focus to them. In that sense, it’s fine. But The Feelers? Back to The Feelers. No they don’t have a new album for NZMM. So what, instead? Their record company is re-releasing their 2003 album with - wait for it - a Bonus Disc! (Bogus disc, no doubt.) But what a catch-22, and a nasty one. People, this scribe clearly included, that don’t like The Feelers have to tolerate their re-promotion. And the fans out there that do like them, and hey, each to their own, but the ones that did snap up the new Feelers album way back when will have to fork for it all over again, just to hear a couple of new songs, and a couple of shoddy live versions of songs that are on the album already. That stinks. And that - not the cool stuff like Ghostplane and Phoenix Foundation - is what sticks out to me about NZMM. That, and people walking up to the counters in music stores with Goldenhorse, or Finn Brothers, or Scribe CDs in their mitts, and saying, as if apologising “well, it’s New Zealand Music Month”.

Don’t qualify it! Buy it cos you like it. Or because it’s for a present for someone else that likes it (or hates it, and tries to exchange it later). But please, don’t buy it simply because it’s May. That’s how it seems.

Don’t apologise, shrug your shoulders as if to say, “well, every home should have one New Zealand album”. HEY, every home should have whatever music they like! There are heaps of great New Zealand albums released every year. But also, there are a lot more bands in this country that miss out releasing albums because we get things like NZ Idol, Carly Binding, Yulia and Feelers bonus-discs forced at us.

And answer me this, what does Kiwi FM do for the month of May? Play New Zealand Music? That’s not making a change - that’s what they do for the other 11 months. Surely they’re allowed time off for (supposed) good behaviour?

NZMM will happen of course, despite my protestations. And I will be a good soldier and no doubt buy at least one New Zealand album. But I will do my best to also point which new New Zealand albums that have come out are no good at all. That’s my job - regardless of what month it is.