It's New Zealand music month again. Every year it creeps up on me. This year, with all the seismic drama we've lived through here in Christchurch, the music month has not only crept up, bit has somewhat overtaken me. Yesterday, I pulled out one of those free weekend newspaper magazines from a pile of papers. It was dated May 2010, and featured Roger Shepherd on the cover. You know who he is, I know you do. I read the article inside, about how he has gone full circle and bought back a share of the record label he began, after spending years away from the scene. Well, it appears he was nudged out by corporate music influences, but the exact story is murky. The main thing is that he is back! The New Zealand music industry has changed so much since the golden years of Flying Nun records. I certainly hope that the commercial naivity and do-it-yourself bedroom technology which characterised Flying Nun records isn't lost entirely in the new regime. I believe there is room for both the worldly and the innocent. The giants and the minnows. Music should be allowed to be edgy, risky, low-brow, challenging, or even downright terrible. New Zealand has the ability of being at the very forefront of groundbrealking musical frontiers. We've done it in the past, and with the sense that Flying Nun records is now back home again, a brave new world of local music professionals beckons.