You approach music as a business?
Kind of. It’s an awareness I have. I want other people to like what I do. I want things to get played on the radio. I bear in mind — I calculate — that I always need two or three tracks that radio will want to play. Like on the new album, there’s a cover version of ‘Love My Way’, the song by the Psychedelic Furs.

Great choice!
Yeah. At first I didn’t think it would work because that song is so much about the singer’s voice. But we’ve tried to look at it another way.

What’s the new album like?
Easy listening with style. Or should I say, easy listening for me. When it comes to music, I’m not that good at following the rules, because I don’t really know the rules. If I was to sum up my method, I would say I’m someone who’s always looking for the right accident to happen.

You work with Sony, a multinational company, right? That would suggest that your records tend to sell rather nicely.
They sell all right. Not big sellers. The best-of album probably sold about 15,000 copies, the album before that was gold, which is 7500, and Broadcast was the biggest seller — probably 25,000 copies. I think they see it as a boutique thing — not a big seller but something worth supporting. So, it’s an uncomplicated relationship. I do my thing, they do theirs. No drama.

Historically, though, there’s always been a tension between many New Zealand recording acts and what might be called business values, hasn’t there?
Well, perhaps I don’t see what I’m doing as art in quite the same way some other people do — you know, disregarding the market and that sort of thing. I’m not “pure” in the same way the 3Ds or the Verlaines may have been.

Why has this historical enmity existed?
Well, there’s a natural tension between those who create music and who want people to like it, and those who distribute it and want to sell x number of units. They’re coming at it from different angles. Don’t forget, though, that it wasn’t that long ago when a New Zealand act wouldn’t have expected to make any money at all. I mean, did Hello Sailor sell many units? It wasn’t even possible to make a living from music until not too long ago.

How does it make you feel to know that one of the industry’s most profitable lines right now is the marketing of mobile phone jingles?
Well, sure, you do get a sense there’s less money floating around than there may have been a while back. But at the same time, perhaps that’s not a bad thing that the great profitable era is over. I don’t know. But there’s still a lot of great music out there, however much companies may be screaming blue murder about profit margins.

Perhaps they’re paying the price for relying too much on back catalogues and proven sellers instead of investing in exciting new talent?
Well, there are still exciting things happening. And I don’t see too many record companies closing down. Okay, there isn’t as much money around, perhaps, but maybe that just means things are on a realistic footing.

As the producer-director of Eating Media Lunch, you’ve also enjoyed a bird’s eye of another business. Did you get through that experience unscathed?
I wouldn’t say unscathed. But it was great, after working on an album over the past two years on my own, to be part of a team again. I had missed that.

How interested are New Zealanders in the media?
Very. You’ve got to remember that media is now a course in secondary school. When I was going to university I applied for a journalism course at what was then called AIT and didn’t get in. And that was it. There wasn’t any other choice. Now kids are learning about it from an early age.

You’ve always been keen to learn about it, too?
Oh sure. I watch a lot of television, read as many papers as I can, read the Herald every day, and I’ve worked a lot in radio — bFM and ZB, including some shifts on talkback, which I was terrible at but I really enjoyed doing. I read as much as I can but I wish I read more. I wish reading were second nature for me, but it’s not, it’s more like third nature.

dcohen@xtra.co.nz