Industrial Strength: October 30, 2013

Festivals #1: inaugural Panama launches in Tasmania

Music and arts experience Panama will be held March 8 and 9 in the forests of North-Eastern Tasmania. It features Australian and  International bands, with sideshows of bebop jazz,  vinyl soul club DJs and pop-up cabarets. First artists announced are Daptones’ Charles Bradley, Husky (debuting most of their new album) and The Frowning Clouds. See the official website.

Festivals #2: Fat As Butter draws 10,000

The sixth Fat As Butter drew almost 10,000 to the Newcastle Foreshore, most of whom packed the stages when Bliss N Eso and The Rubens came on. There was a heavy police presence – 170 officers with several drug dogs – and 45 intoxicated teenagers were handed back to their parents.

Festivals #3: venue change for Scorcher

The Scorcher Spring Summer National Circuit’s opening Melbourne leg (Nov 17) is moved from Noise Bar to The Espy. Starting time remains at midday with acts as EMPRA, The Controllers, In Colour and False Kingdom.

Festivals #4: first acts for Australian Blues

The 2014 Australian Blues Music Festival (Goulburn, Feb 6 to 9), now in its 18th year, has unveiled its first round of artists. They include America’s Lynwood Slim and Brazil’s Igor Prado, as well as bands fronted by Bondi Cigars’ Shane Pacey and Screaming Jets’ guitarist Jimi Hocking.

APRA AMCOS planning changes

APRA AMCOS is looking at making changes, which they are asking members for feedback on. These include APRA’s licensing and distribution practices applicable to concerts and live performances, the calculation of APRA’s administration costs, and the use of music recognition technology by APRA as a substitute for existing music use reporting systems.

SWIPE

Will Twitter’s Australian-made #Music app, strongly tipped to be heading for the eject button after six months due to “abysmal” download numbers and product engagement, now be “saved” by being folded into the social network’s primary platform?

Within hours of Dami Im winning The X Factor, the mayor of Queensland’s Logan, Pam Parker, had tweeted to (a) offer her the key to the city; and (b) wants her as a cultural ambassador to help lose the high crime rate and racial brawl area its Logan Bogan image.

After her final Auckland gig, Beyonce was prepared to race offstage and to the airport to fly in a private jet to Australia. But waiting in the wings was her opening act Stan Walker who performed a haka (Maori war dance) in her honour. Ivy Blue’s mum was tearful (presumably Walker didn’t stop on her feet during the dance) and tried to do a haka herself. Maori fashion designer Kiri Nathan gave her a korowai (Maori cloak) she made herself.

Where else but at the launch of Tasmania’s avant garde Mona Foma 2014 festival could you have seen TSO violinist Monica Naselow and Tasmanian extreme metal band Psycroptic stand on the same stage?

Is there a legal case brewing over one exec. leaving a company with their database and launching a company offering a similar service.

Jon Stevens has officially denied he and fashion designer fiance Jodhi Meares tied the knot in America.

Which reality TV finalist took a two month drive through America to “decompress” himself from the show?

Which label guy thought he met the new love of his life at a gay club – and got so into the moment that he was thrown out of the place for being drunk?

An air of irony pervades the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards. Lorde’s Royals is up for the Best Music Video category, which is sponsored by funding body NZ On Air. All videos financed by the Government body needs to feature its logo. But Lorde refused to get funding from it, saying to Metro, “You know how much negative power that logo has for my generation?” Over 22 years, NZ On Air is more associated with business than art.

INSIDE TRACK

U2 to wind up recording by late November

U2 fans might not have to wait too long for the follow up to 2009’s No Line On The Horizon. Bassist Adam Clayton says the four are trying to finish it off by the end of November, so they can chill out through the Christmas break. “We are still at it,” he told Irish radio station 98 FM. We hope to have it finished very, very soon. And it will be out, oh, sometime early next year. But it’s a very exciting bunch of songs right at the moment. It’s just about to be finished, so it’s hard to know which way they’ll go.” Fans were curious about where the band would head musically, especially as Danger Mouse was mixing some tracks. Clayton offered: “I think it’s a bit of a return to U2 of old, but with the maturity, if you like, of the U2 of the last 10 years. It’s a combination of those two things and it’s a really interesting hybrid.”

Matt Corby goes “umm” on album talk

Matt Corby remains busy with his live shows, doing his first trip to NZ at the end of October, playing the Brass Monkey in Sydney to family and close friends under the pseudonym W. Brocett Haym, and set to make his debut at the Woodford Folk Festival in December. But as for news of a debut album, “Hopefully soon,” he told triple j when asked about a release date. “I really don’t know. I just want to release music when I feel okay about doing it. I just don’t want to add to the bad parts of music so I’m just waiting to feel good about it. I’m pretty sure I’ll put out an album within the next year.”

Clint Boge listens Like Thieves

Former The Butterfly Effect singer Clint Boge says of his new band Like Thieves, “I really want to make this the rest of my rocking life.” He was working with the band’s guitarist Oden Johansson on another project when Johansson asked if he fancied joining. Their debut EP The Wolves At Winters Edge debuted at #2 on the iTunes Rock Charts in May. Of the wolf imagery, Boge admits, “I got this amazing visual from the music. It was so visceral, cutting, hard and emotional. The image of wolves and the weakness and fragility of the human condition was impossible to ignore. Our mortality and the inevitability of what will come manifested itself [in my mind anyway] into the shape of a pack of wolves.” With a new single out called Killing Reasons (‘about understanding why we have to destroy something to help us live and be born again”) the band has hit the road again.

Ed Sheeran‘s mystery visit to NZ

A tweet from Ed Sheeran kicked off speculation about his next project and what he was doing in New Zealand. “In kiwi land making music for kiwi things. Great days work, roll on tomorrow”. The visit was so secret that not even his record company Warner Music knew about it. It seems Sheeran is doing some music for NZ director Sir Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. The two met earlier this year when the Brit toured NZ. Sheeran visited Jackson’s studio, Jackson gave him a prop sword from The Hobbit, and Sheeran gave him one of his guitars for his daughter. He told US morning show Live! With Kelly And Michael that meeting Jackson was “probably the coolest day of my career.”