Rants
Welcoming 2015, Hanoi style: A New Year’s Eve traveller’s tale
‘Hanoi rocks, scooters roll, pedestrians just try to cross the road’ Regular readers of this column (who they, Dunk? Ed) may remember me writing a few years ago about how I’d never been to Vietnam, despite the offer of an all-expenses paid trip from the government back in the early 70s. As luck would have…
Read MorePush out the Cowboys. Why we need ACCREDITATION
Our lead news story in December CX shows at least one government events department thinks we should work for nothing. They didn’t just decide to cut their sound and lighting budget by 75%. Someone is prepared to do the work. My solution is to accredit legitimate operators, using an industry scheme. It would be simple…
Read MoreAvoid Commonwealth Bank of Australia
You have choices, and anyone considering a bank would be well advised to avoid the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, or CBA as it is better known. This is harsh advice, but I will make the case now. For example presently CBA are under pressure to pay well over a hundred million dollars (stop and consider…
Read MoreHow Market Power is Abused
Coles face fines of $200 million In 2011 Coles supermarket chain merchandise director John Durkan had a brilliant idea. He approved a plan to hit on 200 suppliers and demand money. The way retail has worked for the past thousand years or so is that suppliers sell goods to retailers, who then mark up and…
Read MoreWhat Woodie Wanted
Talking about male cancer issues is REALLY freaking boring. I know, I track what you click. If I write about a punk who runs a crap festival and rips off crew, you click 28 x more than if it is about men stuff. Especially THIS man stuff, cancer of the gland that helps you ejaculate.…
Read MoreBand by name alone. When should a band name extinguish?
CX learned a long time ago that music fans get riled about whether ‘their’ band has been dissed. So when Australian Story detailed the terminal illness and decline into loneliness of former Angels front man Doc Neeson, we had some flaming. Because we suggested (on Facebook) that it was time to put the band name…
Read MoreBiz Talk: Mad Crazy Money
It was back to the future at CX Roadshow when I did an encore performance of my Crazy Money seminars from 2012. They were very popular then, and again this summer, pitched at small businesses that are the backbone of entertainment. Almost every freelancer is a small business, and we had plenty from all walks…
Read MoreStudio Dummy Spit
Normal on Friday, demolished on Monday Amazing stories sometimes take a few years to ferment and for the shock and residual dismay to wash off. This is one superb example. We had Julius Events College inside a warehouse near Parramatta and reasoned adding on a working recording studio would be a handy foil against the…
Read MorePassion and Money: the lo$$e$ I don’t regret
You’re looking at an Australian Monitor AM 1600 mosfet power amplifier, made by my firm and designed by Stuart McLean. Greg Hicks was the foreman at the factory we set up behind Graftons Sound and Lighting in Campbell street east Sydney in 1986. Hundreds of these still solider on, testimony to the brutal engineering.…
Read MoreBad Reps. Pick the ‘A’ team!
Every February the CX team tour Australia and meet a lot of industry types, covering all corners of our exciting niche industry. Plus we get to travel with up to 70 product specialists. Some of them are ‘product reps’. Not sure why, but of late the discussion has centred on just how good most of…
Read MoreInside the NEW Sydney Exhibition Centre @ Glebe Island
SYDNEY: CX today toured the completed Sydney Exhibition Centre at Glebe Island, (SEC@GI), a temporary venue intended to provide trade show space until the new International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney), Exhibition Centre and Theatre open in late 2016. The exhibition industry are sweating on the temporary facility delivering the goods. Joyce DiMascio, Chief Executive,…
Read MoreAnother gig. Another Lightie Screws it up! And about PYRO……
Disturbed at the pontoons loaded with ordinance floating near the publisher pile at Birchgrove, I took a flight as far south as possible to escape New Years Eve. Hobart was booked solid, so I settled for Launceston. Surely they’ve never heard of Foti or met any of the Howard Sons down there, I reasoned? But…
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