The Opinionated Diner

Look at the graceful way she dances / one foot speaks / the other one answers

And then just when you wonder how stupid a major record company can possibly be, along comes another to prove that they are not all as boneheaded as Universal. That WMI can work out a deal with YouTube shows that not all the dinosaurs are without a clue. Of course this raises a whole bunch more questions, the most important being: where does the money come from, as YouTube doesn’t, as far as I can see, have any reasonable income stream, and will have a very hard time surviving with a subscription.

Still it’s interesting to see at least two of the majors, Warner Music and EMI, trying to come to grips with the future, whilst Universal and SonyBMG flounder around trying to resurrect the past. It reminds me of a time a few years back when the head of one record company said I wish this dance phase would pass so we could get back to signing proper artists.

Not that I think all this matters one iota in the long run…the two words, writing and wall are still valid. The record industry as we have known it for the past seventy years is over, it’s just a matter of how long the death rattles take to subside.

Talking of Warner Music, I scratch my head with bemusement at the forthcoming 25^Th Anniversary of Flying Nun Records. Uh…ok….

The current owner of the name Flying Nun is celebrating the quarter century of the brand. Twenty Five years since my old friend Roger Shepherd rang me and said he was thinking of starting a label in Christchurch. I, in my misguided wisdom, and in the midst of dealing with the inevitable mish mash of artist babysitting and financial stress that is indie labelism, told him not to be so silly.

Roger was at that time, and still is, a good friend, but I am damned pleased he didn’t take my advice. What Roger created, not only in its recorded legacy, but, more so, in its ethos, was without question the singly most important and defining label and community in the short history of New Zealand popular music. Over the next 15 years he, and a handful of crucial allies, the likes of Chris Knox, Gary Cope (his original partner), Doug Hood, Lesley Paris, Paul McKessar, and others, played a massive part in inventing the landscape that is contemporary NZ Music. They released hundreds of records, the bulk of which were screamingly uncommercial, but that is why it was what it was. The one off 7”s, the bands that were fantastic but would never cover costs, the playing cards (they must be worth something now, no?), the totality of it all, was what made Flying Nun, Flying Nun.

But that was then and this is now. Flying Nun…the thing that really was FN that is…ceased to exist in any real terms about 2000. It had long been owned, partially at first, by Rupert Murdoch and / or Michael Gudinski, who were bought into the picture some years earlier by Simon Baeyertz from FMR to provide a much needed financial lifeline. The relationship worked well initially. Mushroom was a silent partner in NZ, but provided funding and international support, and as a result of that the Headless Chooks, Chills and Straightjacket Fits all made headway outside New Zealand. And Mushroom Publishing got their hands on the FN publishing catalogue which was a potential goldmine.

After Roger left the label was helmed successfully by Paul and Lesley from the dusty Queen Street offices with the same ethic, until about the turn of the century, in a corporate (the hand of Murdoch cannot forever stay hidden) cost cutting measure, the whole thing was uncomfortably squeezed into FMR’s tiny offices in Scanlan Street in Grey Lynn.

And that, despite records coming out on the label, and signings to the “Flying Nun” label being announced, was when the label started by Roger out of a notion that these undoable things could be done, back in 1981, effectively ceased to exist. There was a winding down process over the next years but a massive full stop was clearly placed at the FN story when its benevolent parent was closed down last year.

Very good, inventive and smart, people have worked with and on “Flying Nun” acts since 2001 but it’s a brand, a logo, and that’s all it is. And even more so now that it’s a desk in Warner Music International. That’s not Flying Nun, and never could be. I know things change but owning a name doesn’t mean the legacy automatically comes with it, and in this case the thing that was is no longer, and hasn’t been for some years.

That said, the ethic that was Flying Nun lives and breathes in New Zealand. There are a dozen examples I could point to, but Loop fits the bill as well as any. Or check out the list of labels here. If anyone should be celebrating the 25^th Anniversary of the founding of FN, its labels like these that couldn’t exist without Roger and his crew.

An after note: the iTunes shuffle bought up Toy Love’s live (at The Cook) version of Positively 4th Street segued into Yummy Yummy Yummy as I finished this post. I guess there is an odd coincidental irony in that…