In a minuit

Nelson Mail

MINUIT: Ruth Carr, Paul Dodge and Ryan Beehr.

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Vicki Anderson talks to Minuit's Paul Dodge about marching on, having a song on Gray's Anatomy and the social website they have created for inanimate objects.

There are numerous good New Zealand bands making great music that reflect this country's culture and moments in our history. A valid question might be - why aren't we hearing this music on our mainstream radio stations?

When I suggest to Minuit's Paul Dodge that they are one such group, he chuckles a little.

"The problem with mainstream radio is that diversity is missing, there's just a tiny playlist of songs which is just played around and around. I also find with mainstream radio stations that they hold so much power. They play a small playlist to an incredibly large amount of people. The power they wield in New Zealand is incredible."

Minuit are not going to start changing the way they make music, as others have done, in an attempt to win mainstream favour.

"With Minuit we've tried to do our own thing and the album is sticking to our style and hopefully that comes across, that honesty and integrity."

The producers of one of the United States' top-rating TV shows, Grey's Anatomy, certainly thought so, selecting I'm Still Dancing off their latest album, Find Me Before I Die a Lonely Death Com, to play in an episode that first screened in the US on February 5. Grey's Anatomy attracts about 15 million viewers an episode in the US alone.

The song is used to accompany a two-minute sequence that cuts back and forth between a scene in an operating theatre and a bedroom. Through Native Tongue publishing, the programme makers contacted Minuit's US publishers and bought the rights to the song. The group will also earn royalties every time the episode is broadcast. The episode is due to screen here on TV2 on April 27.

"It's funny. Lots of people wanted to talk to us when that happened, TV3 and others, because we were on an American show. We've been on lots of New Zealand shows but for some reason being on a show somewhere else has given us validity; it's odd.

"We have a mentality here that somehow unless it's validated offshore it's not good."

Although Minuit (pronounced Minweeeee) released their album Find Me Before I Die a Lonely Death Dot Com last July, they have only just found time now to "properly" tour it, Dodge says. They play at AL's Bar on Saturday as part of their March of Minuit tour.

Solidly touring the world for the past three years, Minuit has played Berlin, St Petersburg, Czech Republic, The Crystal Method's DJ night in Los Angeles, in the Amsterdam hotel where Quentin Tarantino wrote Pulp Fiction and even headlined the recent Hanoi International Music Festival in Vietnam.

"That to me was so exciting. There's a lot of buzz at the moment about the SxSW Festival in Texas but if I had my choice I'd rather go back to Vietnam. It was so interesting to play there."

If there is a Minuit song that deserves to have New Zealand sit up and pay attention it is Aotearoa, complete with a video comprised of archival footage of events of historical significance in New Zealand and snapshots of its residents.

Since its release last year, this video has been zipping around the world and made many Kiwis abroad more homesick than before.

"There was one case where someone sent the link to a friend in Canada and it was eventually sent back to him by another friend a few months later from France. That song has just been going off. We played it at Rippon and the whole crowd were singing along, it was a bit of a goose bump moment."

While album title Find Me Before I Die A Lonely Death Dot Com was inspired by the boom in popularity of social networking sites and thus, a worldwide boom of people sitting alone in front of their computers, Minuit has created a website under the same name for inanimate objects to use. It's worth checking out. When I looked there were advertisements from a band aid, a skeleton and a Smurf.

Dodge says they have plans to head overseas again soon, perhaps to Vietnam, but for now he's simply happy making music, even if it won't appear on mainstream radio.

"I love this band, I feel so lucky to have something like this to throw lots of energy into."

Minuit and Ed Muzik & the Burning Sensations at AL's Bar on Saturday. Door sales. findmebeforeidiealonelydeath.com

MINUIT IN 60 SECONDS

Debut album, The 88, released in 2003 sold Gold. Guns EP, a limited run, sold out in the first week.
Second album, The Guards Themselves featured hits A Room Full of Cute, Fuji and Suave As Sin. In 2008 they released a compilation of their songs called I Went to This Party and There Were 88 Guards with Guns Search: Minuit Aotearoa on YouTube

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