Daily News Channel
Tom O’Dell still has fond memories of the year he spent in New Zealand. The BRIT’s Critics Choice Award winner, who recently released his debut album Long Way Down was still a youngster when his dad was offered a job as a pilot for Air New Zealand
X Factor judge and multi-platinum selling pop star Daniel Bedingfield is putting his hand up for taxpayer cash to promote his latest song. He has applied for a $6000 grant from the latest round of New Zealand On Air’s “Making Tracks” funding to produce a video for his song Out Of My Head
Back in 2007 guitarist Ruban Nielson decamped from Auckland to Portland, Oregon, with his brother Kody Nielson and Paul Roper, all members of popular Kiwi indie punk band The Mint Chicks. The move came after the band, founded in 2001, cleaned up at the New Zealand Music Awards that year, winning five categories including album of the year for Crazy Yes! Dumb No!
LONG WAY DOWN Tom O’Dell (Sony) The BRIT’s critics choice winner, who spent a year of his childhood in New Zealand, is the best kind of everyman songwriter. Somewhere in between the soaring and earthy vocals, where a song such a Hold Me, has Beatlesque influences and throbbing piano flourishes O’Dell shows he has the touch of a classic tunesmith about him on a debut album which is unfashionably accessible, self-aware and confident.
So many
Popstar, The X Factor judge and actor Stan Walker is coming into the Stuff office today to answer all your questions. The Australian born Maori boy whose trademark “yous-isms” and “bro-ups” have drawn some criticism is hitting the road for his “World Tour of New Zealand” in September.
Talk about talking heads. Oscar’s Guide to the Chinese Zodiac, TV3’s Inside New Zealand documentary which went to air on Wednesday at 9.30pm, had so many Kiwi celebrities and New Zealand notorieties in it, it was distracting viewing and hard to absorb the information
He was the first Kiwi to record an overseas No 1, gave the world a signature dance move, and mentored a host of successful entertainers. But now pioneering rocker Ray Columbus, best-known for the 60s chart hit She’s a Mod, is terminally ill.
Veteran director Geoff Murphy is hoping to get some revenge on film critics when a remastered version of his classic 1983 movie Utu premieres in Wellington. New Zealand critics savaged the film at the time.
Culture vulture and freelance journalist Peter McLennan has written extensively about New Zealand music for Real Groove, Rip It Up, Pavement, NZ Musician and North and South. He recently published his first book I Believe You Are A Star – a collection of articles he wrote between 1992-2003 on some of New Zealand’s most influential music makers including Che Fu, Bailterspace, SJD, Sola Rosa, Hinewaji Mohi, Dawn raid and Mark de Clive-Lowe.