Crissakes. Been far too long. You know I have this thing as my home page, and it fills me with guilt knowing I’ve not done anything on it for a months and months. Well, more effort to be expended shortly. There are some stories to tell, but I’ll get to that in the next post. Just to let readers know I’m still around and still thinking and doing the odd spot of writing.

More music soon, too.

TV DiSKO

Ahem. Where was I?

It’s been a busy few months for me and I’m doing my dangedest to keep on top of things. The to-do list has aforementioned things slowly being ticked off:

• 3 articles sent out for peer review (two forthcoming)
• 1 biennial popular music conference in Mexico City (with stopover in LA)
• 1 adoption of role as Chair of IASPM
• 1 transfer of power to new IASPM webmaster (new blog layout for IASPM website up soon)
• 1 hiring of Editorial Assistant to finally get those proceedings sorted (’bout time)
• 4 articles refereed for various journals
• 2 layouts for the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies
• 1 book proposal submitted for collaboration on Media Studies Introductory text
• 1 book proposal of my own for book on Montreal/Berlin (well under way, to be done this week)
• 1 full-year first-year course done
• 1 third-year course underway (plus 3 tutorials)
• 5 guest lectures done
• 4 DJ nights as TV-DiSKO (great successes, all, or at least the dancefloor massing says so)
• 2 sessions of planning Bit o’ Berlin Bitte, for mid-September (details to follow)
• 4 graphic design bits and pieces
• 8 photos readied for exhibit here in Wellington
• 1 grant application for funding to symposium “Liquid Cities,” on Berlin/Sydney in Sydney (accepted)
• 1 promotion application submitted (under review)
• 1 funding application for research in Berlin submitted (under review)
• 8 Media Studies seminars organized (3 happening already)
• 1 preparation for programme review (like a cyclical review for my Canadian friends)
• One dozen radio shows

Sample of things musical that have been keeping me sane the last little while:

Where Do i Begin- Love Story (Disco Mix)

Le Group X - Transfert 2002

Trans X - 3-Dance

Albatros - Volo Az 504

More soon,
TV DiSKO

Phew…. I really need to stay on top of this. Perhaps the strategy is not to write long-winded posts, but pepper the blog with bursts of something shorter and sweeter. At the very least let you know I’m still here (and not elsewhere, of course).

Friday night, a TV Disko production at the Mighty Mighty. It went well, from what I recall (there are pictures apparently, so I’ll have to appeal to their evidentiary nature to help the old recall). Seven hours of DJing and a fair share of dancing, people seemed to really like the Spanish psyche, Finnish disco, the Moog music and just about anything else I could throw at them. Nothing fazed them and seemed to only get them into more of a groove. It was a great way to end the trimester for me.  More to come at some distant point in the future.  Perhaps Mexico City will hold more gems for NZers unsuspecting ears.

In other news, I’ve renewed my visa/permit for another two years. There’s a story here, and I’ll tell it shortly. But for now, back to grading all those first year assignments…

Music too, as in some I played Friday, a teaser for the next event, some months in the future:

Richard Caiton - Listen to the Drums
Hari Bhuvan - Chhuppa Chhuppi
Rumba Tres - Rumba Tru, La, La
Las Grecas - Amma Immi

Out,
TV Disko (this is me, for now)

Okay, back. It’s been a crazy couple of months. Where to begin really? Trimester started, and that’s where it all went south (or is that north here?). I’m teaching, for the second time here at Vic, a large undergraduate course (well over 300 students, which is sizeable for Vic) and I’ve been trying to keep on top of that. I think I’m happy with the way the course has been set up, versus how I did it last year. This is a bit more schematic and based around your run-of-the-mill media studies terminology, rather than things are a bit more abstract.

I’ve decided this year to no longer rely on the “smart” room technology as they pretty much failed me with regularity last year. Now, I do all my lectures on my laptop, which means I’m getting my clips together, audio, etc., all by lonesome. It means a couple extra hours of prep of course, but it makes for a very smooth lecture presentation. I couldn’t do this without ishowu and isquint, which are great little Mac apps that capture and compress very nicely.

I think the students are following and are pretty much on the ball, as you might expect, with terms like ideology, hegemony and subjectivity. We’ll see after the first assignment, natch, but I’m confident.

Doing a course a second time is supposed to be easier, but I’m not entirely convinced, especially since I’ve rebuilt this one from the ground up. I’m sure it will be better than last year and certainly seems to have an obvious narrative structure that links each lecture to the previous one.

During this two month hiatus, I’ve also submitted two articles for consideration. One was that Ping Pong Country piece and the other was for a German journal, called SPIEL, and this one is about play and humour at an electronic music festival, Club Transmediale. Both are about Berlin, really. Fingers crossed that they find a proper home here.

At the same time, I was also helping set up the Berlin Bonanza, which took place over the last two weeks. Great fun with heaps of musical events and artists from Berlin and here. One night was dedicated solely to Krautrock (not by my choice, as it was a Friday and I think the club kids were a little perplexed by it). We set up Ping Pong Country as well, which seemed to go down quite well, once people got over the initial hurdle of trying to imagine what it would look/sound like. Lots of press, with me doing print and radio interviews, which was pretty fabulous fun, too.

I also managed to see an old highschool friend who was passing through Wellington. Not seeing someone for more than twenty years and then catching up on people who’ve long been out of your mind can be quite a trip. It’s been a while since something like that happened.

I should also say that my little amateur photography hobby is paying off as well. As many flickrites no doubt know, there are plenty of businesses and individuals using it to trawl for publicity photos. I’ve had all sorts of requests and I’m usually eager to have my pictures out there. I’ve got photos of mine being used in Sweden, Denmark, Berlin, Montreal and, recently, Carnegie Hall used a photo of mine in their most recent catalogue. No cash for these, but I’m working on it.

It might come through a recent show here that includes two of my photos. The Wellington flickr group just mounted an exhibit of photos at one of the city’s older theatres and it went down well. I haven’t had a minute to actually go down myself, but word on the street is pretty good.

And in other news, I’ve started doing radio again, this time through a new station set up this past month here at Vic. Show name: TV-Disko, you can guess what it sounds like.

Back to the work grind for now, but some new old music for you, in the form of two moog and disco flavoured exotic numbers.

Yes, it’s a bit late, but I’ve been elsewhere (as the title of the blog would indicate). A few weeks acrosss the Ditch, in Adelaide, Melbourne and then up to the Sunshine Coast to Mooloolaba for sun and surf (where I realized I’m not really a sun and surf person at heart). It was great, and I’m glad for the plethora of flora and fauna we saw while there. Goannas, galahs, cockatoos, parrots, kookaburras, scrub turkeys, many beautiful but deadly spiders, flying foxes, among others. Oh, and heaps of great fresh fruit (no bananas, as they’re still out of our spending bracket). A final day spent in Brisbane, overlooking the treetops in the valley was a magical moment, just to see so many of these birds jetting about. Glorious.

As for end-of-the-year lists, it’s been a while since I did this, and really this year has been all about blogspot and rapidshare for me (in a land where new CDs are far out of reach of young-ish lecturer’s salary, I didn’t purchase one new CD in 2006, though the same can’t be said for vinyl).

In no particular order:

Peter Bjorn and John - Writer’s Block (the neo-folk sound continues, this time name-checking The Chills - no doubt showing up on Grey’s Anatomy some time soon…)
Ellen Allien and Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles (dance throb dance throb dance)
Nathan Fake - Drowning in a Sea of Love (lo-fi electronic pop)
Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5-55 (like father like daughter… and mother, for that matter)
Readymade - FC Babilonia (fey boy girl ethereal pop with music boxes and other gew gaws, with Feist and David Sylvian guesting)
Lo-Fi FNK - Boylife (great Swedish electropop)
Catpower - The Greatest (cheering up she is, sort of)
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar (emo and the Arcade Fire, with horns)
Lambchop - Damaged (it’s been a while since I’ve liked an album of theirs. ‘Bout time)
Nouvelle Vague - Bande a part (yes, it’s ubiquitous music, heard in cafés, or at least I imagine it being heard in cafés, across the world, but that’s comforting in its own way. And at least it’s not the Buena Vista Social Club)
Poni Hoax - Poni Hoax (yes, more indietronica, sort of, but so many hooks and a lovely Gallic flair)
Ms. John Soda - Notes and the Like (lovely stripped down pop, a la Lali Puna)
Dominique A - L’Horizon (French pop, crafted as only this man does it)

Singles for me (some might have shown up at the end of 2005, however):
Madonna - Sorry (Thin White Duke Remix)
Fairmount - Gazebo
CSS - Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above (and remixes)
Jamie Lidell - Multiply Additions
Sebastian Tellier - La Ritournelle (Metronomy remix)
The Cure - Fire in Cairo (Digitalism Remix)
Royksopp - What Else is There (Thin White Duke Remix and the Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Breakout - Planet Rock (live cover of the electro classic)

Reissues:
Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan - Life and Death (And Almost Everything Else)
Luna - Best of Luna
Selda - Selda (Turkish psychedelia/disco/rock)
VA - Cult Cargo Belize City Boil-Up
VA - Bombay Connection (Vols. 1 & 2)
VA - In-Kraut: Hipshaking Grooves Made in Germany 1966-1974 (Vol. 2)
Mike Sammes Singers - Comp.
VA - Boogaloo Pow Wow: Dancefloor Rendez-Vous In Young Nuyorica

RIP James Brown, Bernard Estardy, Grant McLennan and too many others to count.

A sample of some things recently dug up:
Eddy Mitchell - Tighten Up
Kati Kovacs - Sehnsucht
Michel Polnareff - La Mouche

Have a good year all,
G.

We’ve come across the Ditch to the West Island for the holidays. It’s been two weeks now, with one to go, yet I’ve still not wrapped my head around a summer Xmas. This is my fourth one and I’m still getting used to it. While on Adelaide’s Rundle St. Mall, I was reminded of the lack of fit through the atonal skronks of somone bleating out “Jingle Bells” on a sax. The out-of-tune sound fit the out-of-season mood just right. Ersatz snow didn’t help either.

Adelaide is a fine town, prim and proper in many respects, and easy to navigate as it’s laid out on a grid (the same planner did Christchurch, NZ, but thankfully left out the space in the former for the neo-Nazis found in the latter). As it’s so flat, I was pining for a bike, but as the temperature edged near 40, I was thinking only of shade and sleep. I don’t think I’ve felt heat like that in over two years now, so my internal thermostat didn’t weather it so well. This was not helped by the whiplash brought on by a dramatic temperature change on Xmas day. Down to 15 it went (they call that “cold” here). And in Victoria, they had snow and hail. All the while friends Up Over are telling me it’s nearing double digits above zero. Hmmm….

The smell of bushfire, however, was a true reminder of where I was for the season. This was certainly more pronounced in Melbourne, where the state has been plagued by drought and fire for the last couple of months. For the past few days a smoky haze and accompanying aroma have been part of the atmosphere infusing the place. From North Fitzroy, where we’re staying now, you can barely see the city, the sun striving to get through the sweet, acrid layer of what were once forests of gum trees.

Even with the threat of drought and heat and heat and more heat, I’m glad to be back in Melbourne. Every return visit here just confirms for me why it remains one of my favourite cities. It’s definitely struck me as a young person’s paradise, and the spread of street art is just one affirmation of this. (Note that you can always tell a town that’s reverberating with the “creative city” buzz when there’s a publishing boom of not only “Guides to…” but also a litany of indie-published books on funky boutiques, restos, local artist hangouts, art galleries, comix culture, and, of course, street art). I’m a bit over it at the moment as there’s just so much of it, and to my eye it’s become overly repetitive and cluttered. The feverishness of the scene has been tempered somewhat (there’s only so much wall space after all), settling down into a tourist attraction where people can have guides show them around the city’s alleyways.

Café culture is clearly in the ascendant as well, and while I prefer the sketchier parts of town, such as those found on stretches of Smith St., which seems to be enjoying a temporary reprieve from the city’s “culturalization,” I can’t say that I don’t mind it, though I definitely waver. Since I lived here in the early 90s, Brunswick St. has been particularly affected (although it was clearly on its way even then). Once boho central, it has continued to trace out the gentrification narrative arc to a T. There’s a boutique for every artist it seems, with many ateliers open for public perusal, and any evidence of going against the grain has been burnished out, leaving only a trademarked funky decrepitude, perfect for cultivating a consumerist paradise (dotted, thankfully, by some good new and used bookstores, woefully absent back in Wellington).

In my own way, I’m a sucker for it, at least when it comes to good summer flavours. Thankfully, Charmaine’s Ice Cream still stands out (though the hipsters have crossed the road to join the gelati revolution at the highly overrated Trampoline), reassuring by virtue of its sweet, sweet, tenacity (but also by the addition of a knockout gingerbread ice cream).

If I’m a bit torn on the hot Xmas, I will take sun and warmth for New Year’s Eve. Nothing wrong with either of those as far as I’m concerned.

Completely irrelevant to the season, two songs to see you into the new year, one by Jack Ary (Les Tomates), the other by Robert Charlebois (Engagement), rocking out in a funky vein.

Have a good one folks.

Le G.

I’m about to have my debut on New Zealand television tonight. A few weeks back, I was asked to comment on the status of country music here in New Zealand (mainly in reference to its absence from commercial radio) and talk about the genre. While hardly an expert, I can waffle on with some degree of expertise (aided by my many great country albums, which I was asked to supply as props). Not sure how I’ll look on the magic talking box, once the editing gets a hold of me. It was a bit forced, with the interviewer and myself cramped into a tiny room at Radioactive, with her in her cowboy boots and all bright and cheery and me underslept and probably sounding more like like Droopy Dog than I wanted. Not in my best radio voice or form, but I’m not really fussed.

The show itself is an arts and culture show, Frontseat, which has tried desperately to spruce itself up by going all “perky” (which consists now of the host wandering around various settings in Auckland and mugging for the camera). I can’t really abide by that, and it’s turned me off the show. That and the fact that it airs at well past my bedtime. It’s also eerily reminiscent of much of the CBC’s arts programming which just went for the middlebrow, wherein someone (usually Evan Solomon) feigned surprise or pitched their CBC-voice an octave higher at anything that might seem too provocative or controversial.

On another note, I’m finally getting my publishing act together. I hope to have two articles out in the next month or so, one ready to go for the end of this month and the next slotted into a special issue of the German journal Spiel. They’re related pieces, in the sense that they take up issues of play and humour in the New Berlin. More on those things later, but it feels good. Little did I know that so much of my academic life would be taken up with the tedium of admin tasks.

Yesterday, Saturday, I spent the day at a symposium on creative industries, which yielded many nice surprises. Not as dominated by management Richard Florida types as I thought. It was much more modest and interdisciplinary. The end result was the start of a fledgling network, with a possible symposium on Wellington as a “creative city.” Yes, they’ve taken that on, too. I suppose I’ll really have to sink my teeth into the music scene here (I’m doing my best and can recommend local heroes So So Modern as an antidote to a scene overshadowed by its dubby other).

The day finished with a friend’s housewarming, in which the couple, a Dutchman and an Indian/Maori woman, did a nice tricultural job of welcoming us into their new digs. Songs and multilingual greetings all ’round. A very good night, which finished with everyone sitting down to watch the NZ vs. UK rugby game. Us “arty” types exempted ourselves from the proceedings.

I’ve also finished up two calendars for 2007. One is titled “World,” and the other is “Wellington.” You can find pdfs of sample versions here and here. I’m asking for $25.00 for these (or $45.00 for two). If you have access to Paypal, you can send it that way, or you can send me a cheque for the NZ equivalent. Send an email to geoff.stahl@vuw.ac.nz

I’ll be DJing later this week, and I’m humming and hawing about whether or not to play these two as part of the intro set. I want to set the mood, which should be a funny one, and then cut to some bottom shakers later. One you’ll recognize as yet another Bollywood rework of an 80s classic. The other is from Bernard Estardy, a French musician known for his work with Nino Ferrer, his countless library albums and the album “La Forumule de Baron,” from whence this gem is plucked. Let me know what you think.

Le G.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been contending with what my doctor has now diagnosed as an ecotopic arrhythmia. Unlike tachycardia, which is the more serious version of an irregular heartbeat, mine is the benign sort. It’s not necessarily life threatening, though it can be if it intensifies. The sensation is of my heart missing a beat occasionally, not all the time, but with some frequency. It gives me pause, to say the least. The blood work, cholesterol tests, liver and kidneys are all good. Blood pressure is low, but a healthy low. It’s stress related more than likely. Now that I’ve cut out caffeine and reduced alcohol consumption to just about nil, things seem somewhat better. However, there is this strange sensation that my heart will just stop at some point, and not start again.

The funny thing is, I’m not particularly frightened by this. Yes, yes, I get somewhat put out when it happens, that goes without saying, but in quieter moments, after it passes, I think of the bigger picture.

Sure, I’d like to stick around for a bit longer, for all sorts of obvious and not so obvious reasons (hey I’ve got a girl who loves me and wants me around as well, and I’m keen to give her as much of my love as possible, which is really reason numero uno). You should pardon my tone here. I’m very matter-of-fact about this, which might seem odd. But I’ve got just cause, I think. First of all, I’m happy to have been to all the places I’ve been, to have met all the people I’ve met and to have done all the things I’ve done. Never did I imagine that once I’d finished highschool I’d go to Montreal, travel to countries like Western Samoa, Thailand, Japan, the Netherlands, Estonia, the UK, Turkey, and India, live in places like Australia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and now New Zealand. All of these experiences often astound me, when I take time to ponder them and what they’ve meant to me and how I got to where I am now. There are regrets and I’ve done and said things that I wish I could repair somehow, of course. Apologies need to be made and a few more thank yous as well. This goes without saying. Overall, however, I’m content with where I’m at, and I still have time (methinks) to sort out many of these niggling concerns.

Of course, when you put it into my general world view, it could be seen as all for nought, really, when it comes down to it, which becomes clearer when you consider my second reason:

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in a higher power of any sort. Never have. I’m secular through and through. Which is to say, that for me when the heart stops, so does the rest of the machinery and that’s it. Blackness. It’s as simple and stark as that, really. Nothing to be afraid of, not meeting my maker and being judged fit or unfit to pass through some pearly gates or burn in any fires of perdition, traverse some river or other, or doing anything else that sees my “soul” journeying elsewhere.

There are moments when my atheism gets poked and prodded a bit and I’ll launch into a tirade or two about it. I cast my mind back to one moment, where I was particularly put off when after my father died people kept trotting out platitudes like “Things happen for a reason.” Not for a second do I think they meant to say that he had a bad heart that just gave out; i.e., a medical reason. They meant something else which they thought was consoling, an appeal to another force, as though there is something called “fate” or some divine hand guiding us, one which decided, for some unknown reason, to take my father away (they say these things to console themselves, I think). For me, fate is nothing but a sequence of chance events, an arbitariness plugged into convenient narrative templates that help us make sense of the world, a kind of commonsensical fuzzy logic. Instead, I follow that old school existential mantra that we are condemned to be free, which always sounds grandiose when put that way (thanks JPS), but is really a pragmatic way of seeing ourselves as necessarily and ethically committed to being in this world, not beholden to the promise of access to some shadowy nether region that we should otherwise aspire to.

All of which is to say: I’m not afraid of the dark.

Songs then.

Le G.

So last weekend I spent my time at Scape, the biannual arts festival held down in Christchurch. It’s been about fifteen years since I was last there, so it was pretty much like seeing the city for the first time. There were vague memories of it, but Cathedral Square seemed about the only noticeable space that had changed. It’s been done up now, with requisite stainless steel style icon jutting out of it. Dreadful thing, really, and frightfully out of scale with the square itself.

It is, they say, NZ’s most English city, which as I’ve noted before, is saying a great deal, as NZ seems to be doing British better than the British sometimes. It also plays host to some of NZ’s most notorious racist movements. It’s an unremarkable place to me for those and many other reasons. It’s creepy, really.

Scape was a decent enough event, but I wasn’t particularly moved by any exhibit or any installation. They were clever more than anything, but they generally stuck to the theme “Don’t Misbehave.” The opening night proceedings were to provide just about the only spark for me, with a Chinese artist charging the stage and reading out his manifesto, calling the festival “The Boring and Bullshit” event, which was not really too far off the mark. Sadly, at the moment I expected to sprayed with pig’s blood or animal entrails, he simply left the stage, his little intervention welcomed with smiles and polite applause. Sad.

The only other ripple in the weekend happened before the symposium I was to lead, when a couple of street artists (from the Netherlands and Finland) were challenged as to why their work didn’t take into account local circumstance (which was not an accurate portrayal of their projects and the manner in which they were inserted into various streetscapes in the end). The other query was lobbed at the organizers, who were there, this one coming from a Brit who was clearly not happy to exchange simple pleasantries or offer up aesthetic platitudes. He was laying into them for what he saw as complacency and safe choices. Well, now, this second critique seems to respond to the first better than the artists could. This is a festival that seems to have loads of money, enough that they can fly the artists over and put them up in the Holiday Inn for $140.00/night for two weeks. The choices made regarding which artists should be part of it cannot be divorced from the simple economics of running a festival like this, one which the city relies on for tourist, and well as local, dollars. And from what I’m told, there are quite a few wealthy NZ eccentrics who will throw money at something like this with relative ease. Anything too out there is simply not going to fly, of course, so one shouldn’t expect too risky in this context. I’m in agreement with the second criticism, in principle, but I didn’t expect groundbreaking; I expected humour and play, which is what I got.

Along this line, then, the Ping Pong Country events were a success. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go down there, but everyone picked up on it and it turned out to be a great event. A lovely installation, too, which will stick around for a few more weeks. It was good to see the Golden Country Boys there and then to have them up here to host a night in Wellington. This too was a success. Perhaps we’ll see more of that here?

Related music:
Tommy Hancock - Tacos for Two
Roy Hogsed - Rag Mop

Le G.

I’m off to Christchurch later on today, to prepare for a little pingpong country action, as part of the Scape arts festival. I’m leading a symposium on art in the city, which should be good fun. As part of this I was asked to do an interview for RDU, the student radio station based at Canterbury down there. Assuming it would be about ping pong I was jazzed to talk about it. However, the first question was “Why did you choose media studies in New Zealand? I mean, we’re a small country at the bottom of the world, why would you come here when you’ve been to so many other more exciting places?” Well, I explained, I’ve always loved New Zealand, after coming here in the early nineties, and had longed to get back here somehow. I didn’t expect an academic job would do it for me, but it did and for that I’m grateful. I admitted that I’ve loved the music most. And I like Wellington more and more. Sure, it feels small and isolated sometimes, but that’s part of the charm for me. I can leave a couple of times year, get over to Aus, maybe to Europe, but I like it here and I’ve done the big cities for the time being.

The interview continued after that and hit on some ping pong and country issues. As we wrapped up, he asked me if I’d be interested in offering some sort of media commentary as part of their new breakfast show. I was flattered, naturally. He claimed, with some earnestness, that people with American or Canadian accents always sound like they know what they’re talking about. A shining moment of self-deprecating cultural anxiety, the kind that wants some sort of confirmation that they matter. This is another instance in which I make that analogy to Sally Field winning her Oscar for “Places in the Heart,” that point when she says “You like me, you really like me.” Sometimes someone says something that makes that seem so a propos.

Music is not thematic in any shape or form today, so here’s just a few rarities that I’ve ripped and have been loving lately.

Geval Trio - Psicosis (sic)
Amral’s Trinidad Cavaliers - Oye Como Va (sampled by the Beastie Boys)
S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and S. Janaki - Boochi Boochi (with a lovely Hi-NRG break a la Bobby Orlando/Divine)