October 6, 2006
Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.
In this week’s issue: done and dusted, the Checks by any other name, biological trucks, the human economy, why critics get it wrong and the quote of the week.
Done and dusted
A few minutes ago I signed off the final proofs of Idealog #6 and now it’s in the hands of the printer mavens at Image Centre. Subscribers will get their copies by next weekend and it will be on newsstands nationwide on the following Monday. More on the new issue next week. Is it any good? Well, it’s probably our best yet. Stay tuned.
The Checks by any other name 
Checks singer Ed Knowles and drummer Jacob Moore in Blighty
The Checks’ assault on an unsuspecting Britain is well underway. Takapuna’s Finest, who kicked off our Independents’ Day CD in such fine style, are all but finished recording their debut album in London studios, mainly the legendary RAK Studios in St Johns Wood. Our spies tell us they’re also playing tracks from the record live around town under a different name so as not to tip off the UK press, who are itching to see The Checks’ progress since playing on the NME New Music Tour of England ’05, a private showcase for the president of Capitol Records in Hollywood and support tours with Oasis in Australia, REM in New Zealand and The Hives in Tokyo. A band confidante tells us that producer Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Zutons, The Coral, The Subways) has been “inspirational”—getting off to an excellent start by bringing his collection of vintage amps and guitars to the recording sessions.
A first single from the album is due for release in January, although the band will make a quick trip home to Enzed for Christmas before heading back to the UK to tour and promote the record.
Biological trucks
SUV manufacturers are fond of suggesting their machines can go anywhere, do anything. Today’s air-conditioned, tinted-window, 16-speaker, bucket-seat 4x4 will let you get in touch with nature without ever having to, er, touch it. So we like this ad—not only does it suggest that there are some landscapes that even the gnarliest Queen Street tractor might struggle with, but it has the kind of effects that Hollywood would build a movie around just a few years ago.
The human economy
It’s not easy to sell a product or service if you don’t understand the people you hope to sell it to. Tonight and tomorrow a conference in Auckland will focus on the importance of the arts, education and the humanities in economic development. Transformations ’06 launches with a keynote lecture by Professor Greg Hearn of the Queensland Institute of Technology. Hearn says innovative economies can only flourish in a culture that is constantly innovating. Catch his talk at 5.30 tonight at AUT University. Among the four sessions tomorrow is a 1.30 panel on arts and media in the knowledge society, featuring Idealog co-founder David MacGregor.
Transformations ’06: Working Knowledge
Friday October 6, 5:30pm, and Saturday October 7, all day
WH Building, Wellesley Street Campus, AUT University
Why critics get it wrong
Some critics get Vertigo and some, apparently, just don’t. Next week Associate Professor Laurence Simmons of the University of Auckland’s Department of Film, Television and Media Studies will take a look at how and why critics get things wrong, discussing some of the critics’ misperceptions of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and what it can tells us about the film.
Simmons’ public lecture on Tuesday kicks off the launch of the seventh issue—after seventeen years!—of Interstices: The Journal of Architecture and Related Arts. This issue explores genius and genealogy as common threads within architecture and art, including the first English translation (by Simmons) of Giorgio Agamben’s 2004 essay, Genius.
Interstices launch
10 October, 6pm
NICAI Conference Centre, 22 Symonds St, Auckland
Quote of the week
“The morale of an organisation is not built from the bottom up; it filters from the top down.”
—Peter B Kyne
More at Idealog online
Read more on our website: Web exclusives, opinion, Idealog IP and the Idealog blogs. See you at idealog.co.nz.
Matt Cooney
Editor
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