I was listening to some live music last night* and one of the performers said something like here is a song about some of the monkeys in my circus. Your circus will be different but we all have monkeys. He had me at monkeys. That is a great way to… read more →
Ever had that feeling that when times are challenging you learn more. No one actively likes having a tough time but if everything was easy / peasy I suspect we’d be in cruise mode and oblivious. Many years ago a wise friend referred to some of this as the growing… read more →
TEDxSydney is a TEDx event that probably has more music in it than most. The idea is that layering music and short films between talks helps with absorbing and nourishing the brain food from the speakers. Every so often a musical performance comes along that is an absolute show stopper.… read more →
Every so often I hear a song that really moves me. One of the things that makes a song great is when others can sing the same words, the same song yet bring other layers of meaning into their performances. Which is what happens here. One song that has stood… read more →
Last Wednesday was the 1st anniversary of my fathers death. Due to the vagaries of timezones he died on the same day as David Bowie last year. (11th of Jan in NZ was 10th of Jan in U.S). Of course Bowie’s passing was big news unlike my Dad. At the… read more →
Imagine if we lived in a country where 160,000 kids learned songwriting each week and a few hundred of them even got paid and made a living at it? Sounds far fetched? Apparently around 160,000 New Zealanders play rugby every weekend. I’m guessing most of them are happily terrible but… read more →
I went to the New Zealand music awards a couple of weeks ago. There were some surprising performances from Shapeshifter and Tami Neilson who were both stunning but not exactly popular music I would have thought. Most of the music was from mainstream popular “not that there is anything wrong… read more →
Just last week Bob Dylan was awarded a Nobel prize for literature. That was the prompt for dinner conversations about the extent that music and literature can cross over. And then if Bob can win why wasn’t Leonard Cohen also in the frame? Bob has made 37 studio albums and the first… read more →
Film festival time here and I have managed to catch a few films including “A Flickering Truth‘ and “Shadow World‘ which are both documentaries. ‘A Flickering Truth’ is a story about rescuing the film archive in Afghanistan made by NZ film maker Pietra Brettkelly. A nation’s film history is a… read more →
Sonita the movie is based on the story of Sonita Alizadeh. Sonita moved to Iran as a 10 year old from Afghanistan and started writing songs and wanting to perform as a rap artist. “After her family attempts to sell her into marriage, a young Afghan refugee in Iran channels… read more →