Who loves who the most?

Uh oh, here comes the annual New Zealand Music Awards ceremony!

I greatly admire many of our local musicians and songwriters, no doubt about that. I greatly do not admire the notion of lining them up and handing out some meaningless slab of sculpture which states that this muso is better and more deserving than that one over there.

The promotional material did lots to soften my view. Fronted by someone in need of a shave, and dressed in a circus outfit. He is the host, oh no, woops, I mean ringmaster. Tee hee, how very innovative. Sheer comic genius that. And who are the three offsiders? Young blond skinny white thing. I wonder how she got the role. One skinny pale white guy, and another very very skinny pale white guy. Or is he just excessively tall? Rampant sizism and racism.

Like the baby boomers themselves, who really developed these things to where they are now, the New Zealand Music awards ceremony is racking up the years, but has it really grown up and matured at all? This awards ceremony should go the way of Kiwi beauty pagents-on a one way trip to the refuse station.

Oh dear, I suppose I could actually watch it this year, and keep the venom locked away until after the event. The closest contested individual category is usually 'dickhead of the night'. Closely followed by 'embarrassement of the entire event'. Maybe this year will be different. After all, New Zealand music has apparantly come of age.

Sir HM Tribute?

Who else is completely over the media coverage of Sir HM? And I accentuate, the media coverage. OK, so I have a few little issues with the enormous, week long farewell ceremonies which accompanied his death, but the man is resting in peace now, so I need to pay my dues.

The superlatives which flowed his way were somewhat over the top in my opinion. Why do we do this when someone passes away? The media reminded me many times daily that the entire country was in mourning. Well...not really. Prominent, and not so prominent New Zealanders were very quick to annoint Sir HM as the absolute and undisputed king of New Zealand entertainment. Well...there are others, actually. And many of them write their own material.

I'm not wishing to diminish the contribution he has made to the New Zealand musical and cultural landscape whatsoever. He was truley a great entertainer, who endured and crossed cultural and musical boundaries. I just ask for perspective here. I think my next entry better be on the living....