Industrial Strength: November 20, 2013
Joan Warner to keynote at country music radio seminar
Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner is the keynote speaker at the third Country Music Radio Seminar. Organised by the CMA Australian Advisory Group with Tamworth Regional Council, it is held in Tamworth on Friday January 24 at the Centrepoint Shopping Centre 9 to 11.30 am. This year’s theme is: what it takes to make it on radio. Entertainment Edge CEO Rob Potts will moderate the panel with Lee Kernaghan, The Music Network’s GM Matthew Cowley, Dennis Dunstan of Front Row Management and ABC Commercial CEO Robert Patterson.
Certifications
Eminem and Rihanna’s chart topping duet The Monster has gone Gold. Dami Im’s Alive is now Platinum. The remix of Lana Del Ray’s Young & Beautiful is double-Platinum, as is OneRepublic’s Something I Need. Miley’s Wrecking Ball is 3 x Platinum. James Blunt’s Moon Landing album has picked up its first Gold
Festivals #1: $450,000 funding for Junction Arts
Launceston’s Junction Arts Festival received a $450,000 lifeline from Events Tasmania, boosting the current $300,000 agreement over three years to $750,000. This ensures the event will be safe until 2016, Junction board Chairman Steve Henty said. Last year it drew 55,000.
Festivals #2: Falls wins tourism gongs
The Falls Music & Arts Festival received two tourism awards last week. Lorne Victoria won Excellence in Sustainability, for harvesting 468,000 litres of rainwater for 64% of use during the event and saving 180 kilolitres of water from flush-free composting toilets. The Marion Bay event took the Tasmanian Tourism Award in the Major Festivals and Events category for bringing 55% of its crowd from outside Tasmania and injecting $15 million into the economy.
Festivals #3: Airlie Beach Music a success
The Airlie Beach Music Festival will become an annual event, promoter Gavin Butlin announced, after the inaugural event this month drew over 5,000 over three nights. Exact figures are still being finalized.
Festivals #4: Bluesfest gets bluesier
Bluesfest Byron Bay’s fourth artist announcement was tagged as Damn Right We Got The Blues! It was led by festival fave Buddy Guy, with Jake Bugg, The James Cotton Blues Band, Booker T. Jones, Charlie Musselwhite, Eric Bibb, Beth Hart, North Mississippi Allstars, Devon Allman, Walter Trout, Candye Kane Band teat. Laura Chavez and Saidah Baba Talibah.
Festivals #5: inaugural The Farmer & The Owl settles lineup
Inaugural Wollongong The Farmer & The Owl (University of Wollongong, Sat Nov 23) has finalised its bill. Organised by Yours & Owls and Music Farmers, it includes The Drones, Dappled Cities, The Laurels, Glass Towers, Surf City and Machine Translations among others. Its art aspect includes sculpture, live street art, light projection/installation and 3D projection.
Oceania report EON profits
Oceania Capital, parent company of EON Broadcasting (Sea FM, Mix FM on the Sunshine Coast), revealed that in the first six months to September 30, its pretax earnings were $0.9 million, from revenue of $3.6 million.
SWIPE
What announcement is the Victorian state government making at tonight (Wed’s) The Age Music Victoria awards in Melbourne?
Which two Australian R&B singers is Prince’s music director eying?
One Direction tweeted they were “annoyed” that their third album was leaked in full a week before release but did not blame their enthusiastic fans.
Which band’s internal politics stopped three major acts from doing a national tour together?
Wild weather has played havoc with music events. Mackay’s Wake Sessions concert last Saturday featuring The Living End was cancelled, although promoter Adrian Young said he was covered by insurance so he wouldn’t be “too far out of pocket”. In Sydney, the Kings Of Leon show had to be put back a day.
Speaking of Kings Of Leon, they promised to be back to tour next year.
Which Kylie Minogue impersonator faced a dilemma when a cashed-up Kylie fan sent over an expensive bottle of champagne in a bar thinking she was the real thing? Accept the gift or embarrass him by pointing out his mistake?
Spanish prosecutors are seeking a 20-month jail sentence for a classical pianist whose neighbour complained practised her piano for eight hours, five days a week from 2003-2007. They also want a six month ban on her tickling the ivories. Somewhere an elephant’s graveyard is in turmoil.
During the festival promoters’ panel at Face The Music in Melbourne, NZ promoter Ian ‘Blink’ Jorgensen congratulated Big Day Out’s Ken West on going through with the NZ show last year despite the financial odds. West wryly chuckled that his wife wouldn’t have agreed. Jorgensen, who developed quite a fan club in Australia for his tips on how to tour globally on $10 a day (some of which were legal…) also had advice for Aussies who might think New Zealand is an easy market. “Don’t think anyone in New Zealand has heard of you…we couldn’t give a fuck about you.”
While a recurring theme at the industry launch on Monday of the 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne music exhibition was that the industry desperately needed the return of ABC-TV series Countdown, Michael Gudinski let slip he’s working on a two-part TV doco of the Countdown period.
According to Triple M Sydney’s resident gossip Supergrass, next year’s The Voice judging panel will be Delta Goodrem and Joel Madden joined by John Farnham and Mel B, whose Seven contract finishes early next year. So it’s goodbye Seal and Ricky Martin?
Speaking of Farnham, the historic Miami Ice sheds on the Gold Coast, used in the video for his Two Hearts, were demolished despite community action to save the one time 1940s army huts.
To stop this year’s X Factor UK winner from getting the #1 Christmas slot, a Facebook campaign has begun to start buying AC/DC’s Highway To Hell in droves to get it to top spot!
LIFELINES
Expecting: Mix106.5 breakfast co-host Yumi Stynes announced on air this week that she and husband Martin Bendeler will have their first child in June. She already has two children from her eight year relationship with Regurgitator’s Ben Ely.
Engaged: Normie Rowe, 66 and his partner of two years, Penny Perrin. Apparently when her divorce papers came through in the mail, she put down the envelope and announced it to him. “In that case…” he said and proposed right then and there. They get married next year.
Engaged: 101 FM Logan announcer and Content Director Paul Barrett and station staffer Yvonne Carter.
Hospitalised: Darwin singer songwriter Reggae Dave is in Royal Darwin Hospital after losing a leg due to complications after he fell ill during a concert last month. Last Saturday there were three benefit concerts held simultaneously to pay for his rehabilitation.
Ill: veteran radio and TV presenter Graham Webb’s macular degeneration has worsened so much in the last 12 months that he can’t read info on texts and computer screens, so the 77-year old has to stop producing audio tributes for community radio stations (Radioinfo).
In Court: Mark Currie, 37, manager of Geelong’s Rumors nightclub was fined $1000 and convicted. He pleaded guilty to kicking a disgruntled patron who was already being involved in a scuffle with his security staff.
In Court: 18 people who jumped the fence to December’s Meredith Music and March’s Golden Plains festivals will appear before the Geelong Magistrates Court this month. The festivals have a “no dickhead” policy on unauthorised entries because they cause a security and bushfire risk, and had no compulsion handing them over to police.
Vale: Byron Bay jazz musician/surfer Dave Ades, 52, passed away after a two year battle with lung cancer. He was born in the UK, and moved with his family to Australia in 1969. In his early teens he found surfing and taught himself to play drums and flute. At 18, he discovered jazz pioneer Charlie Parker and started playing locally. He also lived in New York for a time. In August he went to New York, knowing he was at the end of his life, and recorded his final album A Life in a Day. At his memorial in Byron Bay, a Dixieland band played while surfers took his ashes to his beloved ocean.
NUMBER CRUNCHING
50 millionth takedown request sent by the British Phonographic Industry to Google.
8th #1 single in Australia for Eminem this week with The Monster. Still on the 8 theme, all his eight albums are this week in the US Top 200.
1200 kg brahman bull Wildfire was the main attraction when the Tamworth country music festival was launched in Sydney’s Martin Plaza.
1 million copies of Sony PlayStation 4 video game consoles sold in first 24 hours.
21 university unions around Britain have now banned Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines for its sexual politics.
$1.3 million earned by Justin Timberlake for a solo acoustic performance for the 10th wedding anniversary bash of Smartwater and Vitaminwater founder J. Darius Bikoff and wife Jill.
5th Top 10 single in Australia for Ed Sheeran with I See Free from the upcoming Hobbit soundtrack.
$1 million a month is what Quickflix is bleeding cash, its Chairman said.
120,000 people attended the Beaufort Street Festival in WA last Saturday.
$837,000 raised by Sydney’s talkback station 2UE for medical equipment for the Children’s Hospital at Westmead which will allow many of the kids to spend Christmas at home.
INSIDE TRACK
Flume/Chet Faker EP out this week
The Flume and Chet Faker collaborative Lockjaw EP is out this week on Future Classic. They originally worked on the track Left Alone from Flume’s debut album. But after touring on Laneway and Flume’s national run and realizing they cancelled out each others’ weaknesses, they headed to Sandy Point and Narre Warren in Victoria for a four-day writing spree. Flume reckons that it’s doubtful that the two new besties will stop at a three-track EP, and that a full blown album is more than likely.
Unreleased Zeppelin material next year
Jimmy Page confirmed that Led Zeppelin’s albums will be reissued from next year, and that they will each have a companion disc with unreleased material. What Page did while he remastered the albums was to also look at alternate mixes. For Led Zeppelin III, for instance, he found an outtake of Since I’ve Been Loving You. “There’s an incredible version of that which is totally different, it’s really raw in its approach, it’s quite dramatic, it’s cool.”
The Jezabels announce album title, release date
The Jezabels announced that their second album is titled The Brink and is set for a January release. The band’s Hayley Mary admits that despite their success (a #2 album, winning the Australian Music Prize, 8 ARIA nominations) the album comes from a dark place. Inevitably. “To me, pop is the darkest music of all. If you look not at what pop artists are consciously doing but at what they’re reflecting about the world, pop is the most twisted, weird and scary stuff. If you wanted to study the Earth from an alien perspective, listen to pop music.” They played 180 and 200 shows last year but Mary says the lows came from NOT performing. New single The End is “a song about a time that I think we all reach at some point in our lives, where you are not sure you can go on, not sure that you have anything left to give.”
Delta unplugs Innocent Eyes
2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the release of Delta Goodrem’s landmark debut album Innocent Eyes. It went 15 x platinum after selling 1,090,000 copies in Australia alone and 2.5 million worldwide, spent 29 weeks on top of the ARIA chart, yielded five chart topping singles, and reached #2 in the UK. To celebrate it, Goodrem returned to 301 Studios with a band and re-did all 14 songs in acoustic mode. Innocent Eyes – Ten Year Anniversary Acoustic Edition is out on Friday Nov 29. Goodrem signed to Sony as a teenager.