[General] Sink and Blend

Sorry for the blog-gap yesterday. Dom thankfully filled that in (and gave me an idea for a weekly piece, but more on that later).

Last night was the first ever Karajoz Public Address Great Blend Wellington Dub-Remix Edition. It was sold out there but were fewer people than I expected and there were plenty of spare seats. The free food was most appealing and so was the free coffee thanks to sponsors Karajoz.

The talks (both the panel and the interview) were really interesting! Like killer-interesting! After hearing Ashley Highfield of the BBC my partner said she thought the New Zealand really was quite backward.

There was some debate with Highfield and the audience from one guy with an accent that I couldn’t quite recognise. He seemed to be there as a representative from the internet pirate community. He even had the nerve to tell Mickey Tucker of Loop Recordings that he had burned copies of Loop’s music.

Basically the audience guy wanted to see all the content absolutely free on the internet for everyone to download and use as they want. Highfield said he saw no “free download utopia” in the foreseeable future, because you still have to pay for it somehow.

There was some discussion about advertising but not enough for my interest. It was all centred for some reason around banner ads; although Tucker did mention his “sell-out” tactics using Microsoft and Bacardi to sponsor CDs and podcasts.

I won’t go too far into it because no doubt it will all be up on Public Address very soon.

After the blast and some very, very funny clips that had been trolled up from the internet (including one of these) we went into the foyer to listen Ladi6 and network. Unfortunately one could not do both at the same time.

I stopped [New Zealand Blog-Overlord] Russell Brown and asked if he could point me in the direction of Wellington’s Che Tibby. Che is a nice enough fellow, Taller than I thought. We went to the same primary school, Arataki Primary at Mount Maunganui, but possibly not at the same time. Russell introduced Andrew Ecclestone who impressed me no end by recognising me by my blog. He had arrived here from Tom’s blog (of which he had only nice things to say).

We swapped emails and then Amy and I went home with our free Karajoz plunger coffee. Yay Karajoz!

I was supposed to blog about Sunday yesterday but got bogged down with work. Yeah, I know. Here are some of the photos I took of the sinking of F69 (click for larger images):

Look at all the people!

Even up in Strathmore

Look out F69! They've got a bomb!
Going
Going
Gone

After she went down a group of us retired to our place which, as Tom pointed out, was close to hand. There we drank wine, watched free-to-air rugby (and tried to drown out Hamish McKay) and then ate fish and chips (with more wine).

It wrapped up a nice weekend for me which started last Thursday at Circa. A certain Christmas function was held there and some friends and I partook of the hospitality on offer (one partook too much didn’t he Dom?). The play was good too.

On Friday I went to Indigo for Hollie Smith’s first gig. It was awesome. Her EP doesn’t capture the energy she creates at a live venue (although it’s still bloody good!). The final song was an old fashioned funk-soul mash up improvisation that was awesome. Dallas (aka Joe Dukie) came back out (he had done an opening set earlier) and joined in. It made me glad they were recording it. That’s right, Hollie announced at the end that the session was being recorded possibly for a “Hollie: Live at Indigo” to go with your “Fly My Pretties: Live at Bats” and “Fat Freddy’s Drop: Live at Matterhorn”.

Tonight it’s drinks at the Shepherd’s Arms with my quiz team. Please God let me have tomorrow night off.

Mahalo