Stock, Aitken and Waterman (Kylie the showgirl princess? - Part two)

This is part 2.

Part 1 is here.

"In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

Makes perfect sense if you think about it, and yet this particular phrase has confounded scholars for millenia. Personally, I wonder myself why people don't just call it a punctuation error and move on once and for all.

Kylie Minogue moved on from Stock, Aitken and Waterman many years ago. But it is important to note the disgraceful role that these miscreants played in shaping, not only Minogue's career, but also modern popular music.

SAW got their name by producing a Hi-NRG disco style that they rapidly got a reputation for, initially by producing acts like Divine and Hazel Dean. They soon hit the big time with serious hits from the likes of Banananarama and Dead or Alive.

At this point, SAW had complete control over the music that they made - writing, playing and producing. The singer soon became an afterthought.

They developed a sausage-machine method where they could pretty much write whatever they liked and then get in anyone off the street to sing over it. One of their toys was a microphone that allowed them to do all sorts of playing around with singers' voices to ensure that dud notes never came out. (Minogue had this used on her a bit)

Hits followed from a bunch of insipid and vacuous popstars who were pretty much never heard from again - Rick Astley, Mel and Kim, Sinitta the list went on and on and on.

At one stage, SAW had every position in the UK top 5 singles chart nailed down. Oh my poor ears!!

It was at this point that - and there seems to be no consensus as to who approached whom - but Minogue signed a deal with PWL (SAW's record label) and proceeded to get them to give her the once over.

The most likely version is this: Minogue wanted in to the music industry. Minogue's management would supposedly have sold her first born in order to get her there. If she wasn't successful first go, her career was cactus (she'd already given notice to Neighbours). It necessarily follows that SAW were more important to her than she to them.

At any rate, if SAW weren't big before, this pushed them over the edge. Minogue was a chain of smash hits and, theoretically at least, SAW should never have needed to work ever again.

This was the period that she perpetrated "the Loco-motion", "I (we all) should be so lucky", "Got to be certain" and more on us.

By this stage, a certain sameyness had crept in. SAW were lampooned for this mercilessly for this by comedian Tony Hawks with his band Morris Minor and the Majors who released the satirical "This is the chorus" which, I felt, did a reasonable job of imitating SAW's style.

There were several reasons for this sameyness - most notably, SAW's refusal to deviate from their tried and tested formula of a Fairlight CMI sampler-synthesiser, Linn LM1 drum machine (cutely credited on all their releases as "Drums - A. Linn") and Hi-NRG disco.

Actually, I have this theory that SAW owe the Fairlight Corporation lots of money. Most of their "tunes" were allegedly written by feeding a couple of chords into their CMI and using the auto-arpeggiator button to churn out a random tune. At the very least, Fairlight should have had a co-write credit on every tune that these cloth-eared nincompoops churned out. But I digress.

Putting two and two together, their luck would have to run out eventually, so SAW tried other possible avenues, just so that they'd be ready if and when this eventuated.

Firstly - they recorded a few ballads. What they recorded with Rick Astley and Jason Donovan were successful enough initially. They even did something approaching pop-rock with Donovan.

Then they did a big charity single - "Ferry cross the mersey" with a number of musicians including Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson and others.

Lastly, they had a go at moving well outside their comfort zone and produced a Judas Priest album. Fortunately for all concerned, this never got a release. I understand that bootlegs exist and are spectacularly funny.

However, none of these moves worked consistently well for them, and they were back to the disco that worked for them. Their overall preferred style moved gradually away from Hi-NRG disco towards plinky-plonk piano house. And this was reflected best in their work with Minogue, by this stage, pretty much the only one left on their roster.

And then she left too.

The three producers stopped working together. They did other stuff. Matt Aitken got into motor racing. Pete Waterman ran a rail vehicle maintenance business. No idea what Mike Stock did. Any efforts they've made to get back into music have been largely unsuccessful.

Do you know how good that makes me feel?

Meanwhile, Minogue's career just sauntered on...

Stay tuned for part 3.

Kylie the showgirl princess? - Part one

Jack Marx's blog in The Age is required reading.

And today, he has had a very much needed shot at Kylie Minogue.

Have a gander:

The Age Blogs: The Daily Truth / Kylie The Showgirl Princess Archives

Now, after this kind of bagging, I couldn't let this one rest. Because Minogue needs to be bagged, and here's where it continues.

Kylie Minogue's career started off, not in singing, but in an annoying, yet inoffensive Australian soap opera called Neighbours. Neighbours is a lightweight family drama that has more in common with the great soap operas of Britain (think EastEnders or Coronation Street) rather than those of the USA.

She was only young when she worked on Neighbours, but already, at the age of about 16 or seventeen, she was easily one of the most popular people on the TV show. This was in about the late 80's.

Actually, she was easily the most popular TV star in Australia (with the kiddies anyway) full stop. She won something called a Gold Logie - which would deserve kudos, if it actually was something, but instead, it's the award for the Most Popular Personality on Australian Television. Although it greatly pains me that the most prestigious award you can win in the Australian TV industry is a popularity award, I found Minogue relatively innocuous up until this point.

Minogue had her eyes set on bigger things than just TV. And as a middling actor who wasn't a classic Hollywood beauty, she really was not going to set the acting world alight.

So she launched herself along the career path that the world now knows her for. Singing.

This is where she started to annoy me. The critics were similarly annoyed, because they completely went to town on her. They've long since lightened up.

Incorrectly so, in this blogger's humble opinion, because, with the exception of one period where she actually churned out something interesting, the bulk of her career has been unrelenting claptrap, out-bubblegumming all other bubble-gummers along the way.

And boy, were there some when she started. Remember Tiffany? Debbie Gibson? The entire Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable?

Minogue outlasted all of them.

One of my friends has, incidentally, this theory that suggests that Minogue is the only Australian artist to have never "sold out".

That word "artist". I'm going to come back to it later on. Maybe not necessarily in this post, though. Sorry.

Also, the term "sold out" is a loathsome term originated by mindless cucumber impersonators who think it's admirable to have suffered for one's art. Not to mention highly subjective.

But getting back to his theory. And to stop my blood pressure creeping over the scary level, we'll replace the offending word "artist" with "musical act." I did think for a moment of using the word "musician", you know. Oh yes, I will be self-flagellating for this.

Anyway the theory. Have any Australian musical acts been successful without having "sold out"? I can only think of two:

• AC/DC - they never caved in to record company pressure and recorded the power ballad that The Man so desperately wanted from them. Kudos; and
• The Wiggles - these guys couldn't possibly sell out their core demographic. In fact, we often hear about acts growing with their audience - the Wiggles seem only too happy to say a big metaphorical, "f2ck you," if their audience was to collectively say, "The Wiggles are too juvenile for me - I'm into Ashlee Simpson, now."

But Minogue?

I can think of at least 4 points in her career, where didn't just slightly sell out. Oh no, Kylie went into full on artistic whore mode.

So why is it that I believe that Minogue needs to be literarily keel-hauled?

Firstly, Minogue is an unrelenting sadist who perpetrates some horrible crap on us. I work in an office where Melbourne's most annoying teenybop station NOVA is on high rotation on several desks. I get to hear Sandi Thom's "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)" several hundred times a day.

Minogue has made a career out of such sh!te, only in Minogue's case, hers comes with a delightfully camp dancy rhythm.

EWWW!

Secondly, Minogue has demonstrated more than amply that she is a morally bankrupt capitalist swine. Normally, I'd defend arch-capitalism as a quality to my dying day. However, Minogue isn't just any kind of capitalist: Just like tobacco and alcohol companies, Minogue has both barrels of her marketing 12 gauge aimed squarely at the kids of this world.

This is getting kinda long, so I'm gunna have a go at stopping here.

Stay tuned, though. This woman is bad!!

Sleep deprivation

Amnesty International says sleep deprivation is torture.

Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock says it is not.

Ruddock does not agree that sleep deprivation is one of the cruelest and inhumane punishments there is. That's because Ruddock is one of the nastiest pieces of work to ever get a job in a federal government ministry.

You can read some more of his fucked and wrong opinions on what constitutes torture here:

Sleep deprivation is torture: Amnesty - Yahoo!7 News

Honestly, why Amnesty doesn't post his membership fee back to him is beyond me.

Not long after that, Amnesty came out with this. Major General Bill Crews - not this Bill Crews - who is the national president of the RSL - represents quite a few members who received precisely this torture at the hands of the Japanese in World War II.

I bet they're thrilled to hear the comments that their membership subs have bought them. Read them here:

Amnesty rejects Ruddock's view of sleep deprivation - Yahoo!7 News

And why not?

I have a platform, so I can let rip with full impunity.

As a completely unrepentant Swans fan, I couldn't let this go.

Congratulations to Adam Goodes for winning the 2006 Brownlow Medal (pictured left).

It comes at the start of a momentous week, which, I hope, will result in the mightly Swans lifting the silverware in what promises to be a huge 2006 AFL Grand Final.

Sadly, I will not be able to watch it. My sister is getting married that afternoon, and I will be required to attend the wedding.

Which is good, of course. But it doesn't make me feel any less disappointed that I won't be able to see the moment of glory as the Swans take away their second premiership in a row.

So we're taping it and watching it on Sunday. If anyone tells me the result before the end of Sunday, they can consider themselves cactus.

Go Swans!

A lack of activity explained...

Those of you who read this blog regularly will notice that my output has slowed to a crawl over the past few weeks.

I would like to reassure the pair of you that it is not because I'm dead. Or lazy. Well, maybe the last point can be reviewed.

It's simply impossible for me to post anything at the moment, because I'm getting married on Sunday, and there is still a hell of a lot left to do.

So this will be my last word for a couple of weeks. The next two weeks will see me cooling my toes on a beach in Malaysia.

In the meantime have a look at Crikey - it's got a great new look, and it's now way easier to navigate around.

Happy hunting.

RRR Radiothon now on

We're rather fortunate in Melbourne. We have a very strong community radio network that few other Australian cities have.

We're fortunate enough to have 3RRR and 3PBS, two of the most eclectic radio stations you could ever listen to.

My good buddy Mohair Slim has a show on Sundays, Blue Juice on PBS where he just plays music that he's extremely passionate about, being soul, R&B (the real stuff), blues, jazz, ska and reggae from the 40's through to the 60's.

And this is fantastic stuff. It's not music that I'm 100% into, but the fact that he can play it is 100% excellent.

On other parts of the dial there is 3CR, which concentrates less on music and more on discussion and LOTEs, and 3MBS which is fully devoted to classical music.

There are other stations in Melbourne that are local to only a few suburbs, too.

These stations only exist through public subscription, and RRR has its annual radiothon on at the moment.

If you subscribe now, you go into prize draws where you can win tonnes of stuff.

Please support your community radio stations - if you don't, who will?

Live streams can be found here:

• Triple R
• PBS
• 3CR
• MBS

The state of my blog is a mess

Please excuse the state of Dikkii's Diatribe at the moment.

I decided to do some surgery on it to fixup the layout and clean it up a little, and it seems to have decided to have a spazz attack in several areas, mostly the advertising content provided by Google.

I am hoping to have the problem rectified soon, but in the meantime, please pretend that my blog is a little better organised.

40th Skeptics' Circle

Some excellent reading here, this fortnight.

There are interesting things to being a bloke.

One of these things is that mention of "colon" is guaranteed to raise a smirk.

That's why my favourite this time around has been Orac's Your Friday Dose of Woo: Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

Brilliant stuff.

As always, tonnes of stuff for everyone.

Read it here:

Daylight Atheism » The 40th Skeptics' Circle

Hate mail to Bobby Henderson (updated)

I wrote this post on 27 July.

Since then, Bobby has updated his site to include spots for commenting on each of the hate mails.

So, so much more quality reading. And so many comments in the space of 24 to 48 hours.

This is going to be a rip-roaring success.

Ramen!

Note: (13/08/2006) Since I wrote this, I've realised that I didn't put the new link to the comments page, as I thought that Bobby hadn't changed it. Seems that I made an erroneous assumption, but anyway, the new comments page is here.

You must check it out.

Why AMP got busted

This is something that I didn’t think that I’d re-visit for a little while, however, the whole situation that blew up last week requires some reflection.

For those who don’t know, AMP Financial Planning was pinged in a big way by ASIC for an large ongoing amount of inappropriate advice being given out.

Basically, what was happening was that advisers were recommending that their clients roll over their superannuation to another fund, which was, more often than not, administered by AMP.

This isn't bad in itself.

But they were doing it enough to warrant a second look by the corporate regulator. And they were giving inadequate reasons for such recommendations whenever they did it. Finally, they weren't discussing what it was going to cost clients to roll over.

Now it’s the worst kept secret in the industry that advisers are under pressure to do exactly that – sell the products provided by the company that you represent.

And why not? It’s bleeding obvious to even the most financially illiterate observer that an AMP-branded adviser, or anyone else for that matter, is going to be told to push the products of the hand that feeds them.

But from the other perspective, how many mug investors know that Godfrey Pembroke, for example, is a member of the National Australia Bank group of companies, which also includes MLC? How many investors know that RetireInvest is part of the global ING group?

This blogger was formerly employed by and represented another financial institution which also just happened to have funds management, life and general insurance and banking operations.

Yes. We were told in no uncertain terms that, although we had various products from various providers on our approved product lists, we were to make sure that our first choice was from the providers in our group of companies.

This, when it was painted in such stark language, caused me to re-think my career in financial services.

Now I left the advice business in 2003 when it became clear to me that working for the same company as the product provider caused all sorts of dodgy situations.

My personal experience went something like these:

Story 1:

Boss-man: (at a meeting of advisers in the area/region/zone/district) We need sales to improve. So we’d like you to “churn”.

Adviser 1: Isn’t that unethical?

Boss-man: Other areas/regions/zones/districts are doing it.

Adviser 2: Surely that doesn’t mean that we should.

Boss-man: Look. All you have to do is find some good reasons to get your clients to do it.

Adviser 3: Could you provide us with some written guidelines that illustrate how we can do this ethically?

Boss-man: No. This is simple, straightforward stuff. You should be able to work out how to do this. Or maybe you think that a job here is not for you?

Note that “churning” is a particularly smelly practice that involves swapping existing clients from one product to another for no reason at all other than to collect another fee on the way through.

Story 2:

Boss-man: (at a sales seminar) I’ve brought in a “BDM” to explain to you why you should consider moving your clients in product X to product Y.

BDM: Thank you, Boss-man. Folks, your clients are currently in the equivalent of a Mitsubishi Magna (large-medium family sedan, for those outside Australia). How good would it be if you could move them to a Rolls-Royce?

Adviser 4: Sticking with your car analogy for a moment, what if what they really need is not a Magna or a Rolls Royce, but a Toyota Corolla?

BDM: Who wants one of those, really?

Adviser 4: Isn’t that between us and our clients?

Note that a BDM (Business Development Manager) is a representative of the product provider who liaises with the advisers similar to how a drug company sales representative might liaise with a doctor.

Doctors don’t get sales commissions, though.

But let’s put that aside and look at the argument.

Financial institutions such as life companies, fund managers and banks all rely on a dealership network of sorts to market their products.

“So what?” they say, “Doesn’t Ford and Toyota rely on a network of dealerships to sell their cars? Don’t Telstra and Vodafone relay on a network of dealers to sell their mobile phones?”

This is a valid argument.

If an investor goes into the office of a financial adviser from AMP or anyone else who also manufactures financial products, he should expect to receive advice that products from AMP are the best for him.

And, in some way, shape or form, he will receive a Statement of Advice to that effect. It will say that the product that the adviser is recommending is most appropriate for him for reasons A, B and/or C.

It’s at this point that the uninitiated usually ask “Hang on. If they’re providing advice, shouldn’t they be considering all products equally?”

Well, they should at least be considering a broad spread of products, yes.

Certainly, that spread should be a lot broader than what would be on your typical Approved Product List (APL) for your adviser from the particular dealership that that adviser works for.

Where a financial institution’s argument about being a dealership for in-house products comes unstuck is in the question asked above. And if you muttered "Conflict of Interest" under your breath, give yourself a point.

Does a car salesman for Toyota consider that they are an “auto-adviser”?

Should a mobile phone salesman at a Vodafone branch be considered an adviser?

The answer is a no-brainer. Product advice of any sort requires products from a variety of providers to be considered. At least, if you would like objective advice to be provided, anyway.

The dealership argument is a sound one. However, it is rendered null and void by the fact that the dealers themselves are simply not advisers – they are salespeople.

A financial institution, at this point, will jump up and down and scream, “How, then, do we get our product out there, for Joe Public to invest in/buy/use?”

The answers to this are pretty easy, actually:

1. Produce stuff that is worth it to consumers to use. Concentrate on old-fashioned values like high returns, low fees, simplicity and ease of use and easy to read documentation. There are companies out there who are doing this now, and who do not rely on a network of financial advisers to sell their product.
2. Cut out the middle man and advertise directly to clients. Clearly, you’re uninterested in providing a service that’s worth anything to anyone if your advice network is merely an expensive rubber stamp. Why would, or should, clients accept bits being sliced off here or there if there is no value being provided?
3. Call your network of advisers, “salespeople”. This is just telling it how it is. Why mislead clients further by creating the expectation that they are getting something objective?
4. Put advisers’ APLs into a client friendly brochure. Why continue to be bashful about the fact that advisers are tied to a particular provider? What is it that you’re really ashamed of?

The fact is that AMP got busted. But it could have been anyone.

AMP are to get an enforceable undertaking from ASIC and this will probably last for the next few years at least.

Bravo to ASIC for targetting the dealerships.

It should, of course, be remembered that the advisers are every bit as complicit as the dealership that they represent. Yes, I know it's hard saying no, but if soldiers can be found guilty at war crimes trials for merely following orders, then advisers should, most certainly, not get off lightly in the least.

But it is clear to even the most disinterested of observers that it was AMPFP's internal policies in the first place which has lead to ASIC's action.

Having an interest in the industry, the very important piece of wishful thinking is that the progressive move away from commissions towards fees-for-service should prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.

Sadly, I'm not positive that this will be the case. AMP will still require sales. So too will other institutions that produce their own products. And thus there will always be some kind of pressure on advisers to tow the line.

But the four points I've outlined above would, at least, make the whole thing a lot more honest.

Disclosure: This blogger owns shares in National Australia Bank Limited.

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.