In local music awards news, the APRA Silver Scroll Awards top twenty has been announced. The award celebrates songwriting across musical genres. APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association) members vote, and the five finalists will be announced mid August. The winner will be presented the Silver Scroll Award on 10 September 2008.
Among the candidates are Bright Grey by The Phoenix Foundation, Dreams in my Head by Anika Moa, Tane Mahuta by The Ruby Suns and Gather to the Chapel by Liam Finn.
Visit the APRA website to view the contenders, read the lyrics and listen to the songs.
31 July 2008 at 8:00 am
Just like punkrock never happened… So many good songs from so many people are out there, but I’ll mention just one example: The omission of the Renderers from both Gareth Shute’s NZ Rock 1987 – 2007 and from any songwriting awards in the last few decades indicates that real songwriting won’t even be noticed until the retro-retrospectives are written, and then probably only as a footnote.
Mental exercise that works for songs, books and films is to read the lists from five or ten years ago and see how many choices actually added to the vocabulary of songwriting. Both Lou Reed and Mark E Smith (to uses nonnz examples) were unrecognised as songwriters until they became elders-tatesmen of music, and I doubt the awesome Jagger-Richard combination were recognised until well after they’d stopped being relevant.
Very happy to engage in dialogue and will read the entries in question once I’ve enabled java to visit the APRA site. This I guess is just morning grumpiness at being awake before 9:00 and seeing my favourite bands yet again unrecognised as equally as adept at writing songs as what seem like safer choices, who definitely have written good songs, but I’m guessing 90% of the choices won’t be ‘em.
OK, I’m off for a breakfast of sour grapes!
6 August 2008 at 2:45 pm
It’s great to hear such passion. I totally agree that The Renderers are some of the country’s best songwriters, but I am fairly sure they haven’t put out a record in the last year, thus making them ineligible for the Silver Scroll.
It sounds like you know a bit about New Zealand music – you might want to contribute to our Christchurch Music Timeline.