I was actually going to lay off the New Zealand stuff for a bit. Cultural history, localism and identity are going to be major themes in the book, but I planned to mix it up a bit in the blog. However, a good case study has pretty much fallen into my lap in the last few days, and it would be a shame to let it pass.

This story – just to lay all the cards on the table (and underline just how small New Zealand is) – comes from within my own family. Mark Loveys (pictured left, with the Dr Who look going on) is my sister’s partner. He was in a band called Satellite Spies who had a major NZ pop hit in the mid 80s called Destiny in Motion, which Mark wrote.

Throughout May, for New Zealand Music Month, I put one NZ music clip a day up on my personal blog, and I thought it would be cool to put Destiny in Motion up there – far and away Mark’s biggest hit (but far from his only single).

However… when it came time for the video to go live on my site, it disappeared from YouTube. Mark picks up the story…

Mark: You might recall that Satellite Spies was initially a 2-man band consisting of myself and Deane Sutherland. I was the singer, songwriter & bass player. Deane was the guitarist and did backing vocals. All the songs on the Destiny in Motion album and all the songs that we played at that time were written by me – mostly during the time of my previous band – Blasé.

During the peak of Satellite Spies’s time in the spotlight in NZ (following strong airplay of Destiny in Motion and being support act for the nationwide Dire Straits’ concert tour in 1986), the excitement of being popular went to Deane’s head in a destructive sort of way. Without getting in to details, this led to all sorts of conflict with fellow musicians, band management, the record company and general music industry people etc.

Eventually I had to sit him down and give him the hard word to sort his behavior out. Deane immediately took the “stuff you” approach and quit the band.

That left me in the lurch a bit, because we had an extensive nationwide tour booked to go in a couple of weeks which was too close to cancel (and too expensive to cancel, given the advertising already spent). Fortunately I was able to hire Brett Adams (of the Mockers) to join the band for a while, along with Tim Wedde (also Mockers) for keyboards. Gordon Joll was by that time a full member of the band as our drummer. The tour (suitably named “Living in a Minefield”) went reasonably well and the audience hardly noticed Deane missing – mainly because Brett looked very much like him with the black curly hair and leather jacket look etc.

After this, Deane disappeared and we lost contact completely. Satellite Spies went through a further few line-up changes (due to the fact that we were borrowing people from the Mockers & DD Smash etc) and then settled long term on the combination of Gordon Joll on Drums, David Curtis on keyboards, Eddie Pausma on guitar and myself on bass & lead vocals. We continued touring, recording and playing live around NZ until around 1989, when I got caught up in software development and decided to give music a rest for a while…

A few years later, (I think around 1993) I started getting calls from people saying they heard my band was playing again. Furthermore I started getting the story from friends that they went to a “Satellite Spies” gig and it was a totally different band to what they were expecting. Basically, Deane had appeared on the scene with a new band he was calling Satellite Spies. When I called him about it, he said that he’s registered the trade mark of “Satellite Spies” in NZ and Australia and it was now legally his property.

At the time, I thought that what he was doing was too ridiculous to get away with and that it couldn’t last long. I also received advice that fighting the trade marks would be expensive and difficult, especially since he was now using the name and I wasn’t.

In hindsight I should have fought the trade marks back then, because he kept on doing the Satellite Spies thing for many years since then. He got constantly ridiculed in the music industry and people who realized what he was doing – but he’s thick skinned and carried on regardless. Satellite Spies under Deane reverted to a covers band from what I’ve been told. He did release a single called “it must be love” and managed to buy up enough records to put it on the charts – but it never got much airplay, thankfully.

Over time I realized that after all the damage done to the name Satellite Spies by Deane would prevent Gordon, Dave, Eddie and myself from being able to use it again – which is a pain.

Recently I heard that someone had uploaded Destiny in Motion onto YouTube. The kids and friends at work thought it was cool (perhaps funny and interesting etc), so I got enthusiastic about the idea and loaded another 6 videos of our other singles up there. I also set up a little web site called http://www.satellitespies.net.nz with some photos and links to the videos and MP3s etc.

Deane has obviously noticed these and realizes that most of the videos don’t include him – which negates the story that he has been perpetuating that I quit Satellite Spies and he was the one that kept it going, not me. He’s continued running his version of Satellite Spies over the last 20 years and lies that it is the original band that I quit. Rather embarrassing for him to have the evidence on show, so he has sent a letter to YouTube claiming Copyright violation and spooked them into removing all the Satellite Spies videos. Trying to shut down history in my opinion.

I have since lodged a counter claim letter to YouTube and they say they will reinstate the videos within 14 days unless Deane (through his company SERL Science Research Trust Ltd) files a court order against me. This will be interesting. I will gladly go to court and overturn his fraudulent trade marks if pushed any further.

In the meantime I’ve loaded the Satellite Spies videos onto http://www.metacafe.com and linked these back to my little website http://www.satellitespies.net.nz. I wonder how long it will take for Deane to try and remove those?

Deane’s lawyer has also sent me a legal letter demanding that I close down my little web site too – but I have written back saying that his trademarks won’t stand up in court and so I will ignore his demands.

Deleting media to construct fake memory
And that’s where things stand at the moment. Mark’s not trying to make money out of the music, but he takes issue with the idea that part of New Zealand’s pop culture history can simply be deleted or hidden away for the sake of commercial gain. Deane may be trying to rewrite history, but the ‘inconvenience’ of media sharing sites makes it all very difficult.

For reference – here’s the song, and the video. See if you can work out whose band this is – or, to put it another way, which one’s Hall and which one’s Oates:

Satellite Spies (the ‘trademarked’ Deane version) seem to be planning to release and tour in 2010, and in order to build on the story of being a classic kiwi pop band, are eradicating all evidence that actually, Mark ran the original Satellite Spies, and variations on it for some years after Deane quit.

But, most importantly, Mark owns the copyright on the song ‘Destiny in Motion’ and has permission from the owner of the sound recording and video (Glyn Tucker Jr., who released it on his Reaction Records) to use the material however he sees fit.

The only really contentious bit is the trademark, which Mark’s lawyer believes can be overturned fairly promptly. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

But while NZ Music historians are reluctant to give the song or the band any significant role in the canon of kiwi popular music, there’s no denying that the song forms part of our collective memory and culture.

Deleting reference to it on sites like YouTube in order to tell a different version of events is, I would hope, an ultimately fruitless endeavour – even if they remove clips on the merest breath of legal murmurings.

I’ve interviewed Mark about this via Skype and will be keeping an eye on it. It’ll make an interesting case study for the book.

1) A lot of people seemed alarmed when some Flying Nun catalogue disappeared from your site. What happened?

Warner Music (WM) has taken the decision to not repress the Flying Nun catalogue on CD. As they run out of stock of a given title then that title will cease to exist physically. We were given a list of FN titles and their current stock levels. Several were already out of print and a dozen had such small stock levels that we couldn’t be guaranteed supply. To the dismay of the office we were left with no option but to remove those titles from sale. Many more will also be removed over the coming weeks/months as stock levels fall.

WM are making these titles available digitally through iTunes, however we have no digital agreement in place with WM so we’re left with no way to retail Flying Nun.

The explanation that we were given by WM was that the titles were commercially unviable and that a re-run of 500 CDs would take years to sell. From a business perspective I can’t fault this however when you’re dealing with art, and music is art, I feel there should be some level of custodianship taken into account. Also I know that for the majority of NZ CDs are still the primary media for accessing purchased music.

2) What’s the commercial imperative for a New Zealand only music website?

There is no commercial imperative for only selling NZ music. If it was only about making money I’d be selling the latest Eminem album or Ronan Keating’s Songs For My Mother. Amplifier exists because a handful of people are willing to make survival money to do something that we believe in. And that belief is in the ability and talent of local musicians.

3) I found it impossible to buy the incredibly successful Smashproof single online from the UK. Why do some record labels want to prevent audiences from purchasing music?

Territories. Universal probably only have the right to sell Smashproof’s single in NZ/Aus. And that’s fair enough as they most likely wouldn’t be able to muster the promotion for Smashproof outside NZ/Aus to warrant them signing over the rights. Unfortunately it probably also means that some kid sat in their bedroom in Herne Bay has already loaded the song up to a torrent and everyone in the Northern Hemisphere will currently be getting it that way.

We’ve been able to fill the gap for many bands in this respect. If you buy Scribe or P-Money from iTunes in the UK/US/EU/JP/CA then you’re buying it via our aggregation company DRM NZ, if you buy it on iTunes in NZ/AUS then you’re getting it from Warners. Same with Goodnight Nurse’s cover of Kelis’s Milkshake.

4) How does kiwi music connect to New Zealand identity, do you think?

Probably more so than any other country that I’ve lived in. And it’s a hard thing to define why. I guess if you ever saw a crowd react to TrinityRoots then it would be apparent.

5) What proportion of Amplifier’s sales are to ex-pats like me who want to connect to the sound of home?

A good number go overseas, though the majority are still to New Zealand. It’s getting harder to find places to buy CDs over here and online services are becoming more important.

Of those going overseas we know that a lot of them are to ex-pats though there are also a lot of people, especially in Europe, who are really into the whole roots scene down this way. We also have a large market in Queensland, Hawaii and the West Coast of America with the Samoan diaspora. The second biggest selling artist on Amplifier is the Laughing Samoans.

WHAT THE???? Amplifier.co.nz just had to delete titles by JPSE, Mint Chicks, The Bats, HDU, Garageland, Kilgour, Knox, SJF, as Warners not repressing. Lets hide our musical heritage under a rock so no-one can hear it! IDIOTS! Haven’t they heard of the long tail? Jeeeeeeeezzz…..

These are legendary and important artists in the NZ Music canon, released on the Flying Nun label over the past 25 years or so. Originally a staunchly independent and groundbreaking record label, Flying Nun’s catalogue is now owned by a major.

The idea that a site that provides digital download site would be required to stop making available this material because it isn’t being ‘repressed’ seems insane. It’s possible, of course, that there’s a lot more to this – and that the material is only being removed from Amplifier because of some deal elsewhere (Vodafone’s music website perhaps? NZ iTunes?).

However – as NZ’s oldest and most established local music download platform, not having your classic Flying Nun albums available in any form is beyond bizarre. The only thing I can think of is an attempt at artificial scarcity in the build-up to another FN boxed set.

I’m going to try and get an interview with someone at Amplifier about this. And Warner Music NZ.

Sadly, I lost a good deal of the recorded interview thanks to a technical cock-up, but I was able to retrieve quite a lot of it. As he put it:

Why is it important that we get more New Zealand music played on the radio? I guess there are several answers to that, one of which is that it is important for the strength or robustness of the local culture that when you turn on the radio you get to hear music made by New Zealanders – and you’re not constantly bombarded with American or British music which is kind of almost like a cultural imperialism.

So from that point of view, it’s important for a robust local music culture, and economy for that matter. That there is a good representation of local music on the airwaves.

But I think probably if you go deeper than that into people feeling good, feeling passionate because they identify with the music, they identify with the artists, all New Zealanders love New Zealanders doing well – whether it’s the All Blacks, or Michael Campbell playing golf. Whenever a New Zealander does well, locally or internationally – especially internationally – New Zealanders just love it. It’s self-affirming and gives people a sense of pride.

I mean, these are all cliches really, but it’s very real that sense of pride that we feel in our own doing well. Particularly on the international stage. And I guess it’s all part of that, you know? If you turn on the radio, and you hear a lot of New Zealand music, then you identify with that music, you feel proud about that music…

From an economic point of view, you get to like the music, you get to buy the music (however you buy it…), you get to go to the gigs – but you also get to feel a sense of pride in it.

So I guess it’s all of those reasons.

I suspect the theme of prioritising the cultural feeding into the commercial benefit will crop up a lot as I do this. That seems to be true of a lot of aspects of popular music culture… but that’s something I’ll come back to.