Support Your Locals
Ardie Savea x Roc Nation, Steven Adams Jump Balls & 10 Great Aotearoa Albums of 2021
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 44
The Niche Cast - The Odyssey
Reading Menu
Flying Kiwis – December 7 (Football)
What Did We Learn About The Welly Nix Women From Their First Ever Game? (Football)
Blackcaps vs India: Test Series Debrief (Cricket)
2021/22 Women's Super Smash: Otago Sparks Optimism Manifested (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Ardie Savea joins Roc Nation…
News that Ardie Savea joined Roc Nation sports provides a natural escalation from Monday’s email in which I yarned around Ardie Savea and Brandon Smith sharing their contract journeys. Of course when Roc Nation is mentioned, so is Jay-Z and for younger folk this is cultural currency - instantly cool. Roc Nation first popped up in hip-hop for me and among various RN expansion tentacles is representing sports stars around the world.
LaMelo Ball is part of the RN NBA stable. There are many familiar names in the NFL department and expansion into other sports has resulted in South African cricketers Lungi Ngidi and Temba Bavuma (both regular Test players) getting RN deals. The Roc Nation website lists all RN players and there is a clear trend here as South African rugby players Siya Kolisi, Tendai Mtawarira and Cheslin Kobe are joined by England’s Maro Itoje.
RN is a cultural force. They predominantly work with African-American NFL/NBA players and RN expansion is headlined by a strong South African contingent. All the rugby, cricket and one netballer (Bongiwe Msomi) are all black - now hearty Samoan-Kiwi Savea joins the aiga.
All of Savea’s work in building content channels and his own business around his athletic prowess made him an attractive player for RN to snare. This does open a pathway for RN to ramp up their All Blacks staple, or kiwis who play overseas and I’m curious about A) what joining RN looks like in two years time and B) how RN expand further in this little pocket.
Like any record label, RN has had ups and downs with artist relations. Jay-Z makes everything cooler and many of the world’s biggest artists are on RN, however artists still leave RN. A quick Google search threw up NBA’s Lonzo Ball leaving RN while his brothers stayed, plus Marcus Rashford and Kyrie Irving headlines about possible departures. All this is to say that just because RN is a massive thing, it’s not ideal for everyone.
One other thing happened this week…
We know who the bottom ‘All Black signs on with Jay-Z’s sports agency is’, while the ‘Another senior All Black signs long-term deal’ is (didn’t read the yarn but probably) Sam Cane. Cane signed on until 2025 and has the same sabbatical/general rinse-repeat structure for All Blacks stars. That above snap is bonkers though.
First it shows Savea’s unique vibe as Cane went as mellow as possible. Savea and Cane probably had very similar deals, but Savea was very public in how he went about it and Cane was chillin’. Two different dudes, going about the same thing very differently.
All Blacks have no names though according to one half of Aotearoa’s journalistic bastions. That shows the whole psyche that Savea and RN are trying to break; Savea signed with RN to build his profile in a market that appears to keep a lid on those profiles. I don’t really believe in ‘tall poppy syndrome’ as it just sounds like a wise name for having haters (haters is just the cool term of Negative Neds/Nellies) and I’d suggest that many of the tall poppy syndrome things we see fall into the ‘older folks hating on young stars’.
Israel Adesanya isn’t a tall poppy, he’s just a young star who is easy to hate for old folks. By older folks, I mean older folks who control narratives through their cozy standing in the fish-bowl of Aotearoa media and Savea’s moving beyond that.
These moves mean something right now - the deal represents Savea’s mana. These moves mean a lot more when time has passed and stuff has either been done, or not been done. Like Cane and many of the top-tier All Blacks, Savea is entering his prime years and he does so with almost a decade of cultural relevance saved up. In thinking about this all week, I reckon we are about to see what the most marketable/visible All Blacks can do in the world of player empowerment, brand deals and the art of spreading abundance around.
I don’t think Savea is quite at Beauden Barrett’s level though. When Neymar’s around and the brand folks want one All Black for the photo opp, they go to Beaudy Barrett…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Steven Adams, Up You Get…
25 out of 30 for the season he is from those opening tips, giving his team first possession more often than not (which also comes with first possession in the fourth quarter). That 83% success rate is better than anybody else in the league with more than six jump ball attempts and considering that the league average is obviously gonna be 50% given that two dudes compete for the thing each time directly against each other... to be that far above is kinda bonkers. 25 total wins is also the best in the league right now.
For further context, per the aptly named Other Basketball Stats website...
And for further context on top of further context, guess what? Last night I spent a bit of time compiling the video of all those tip-ins. I’ll put it up on YouTube at some point but I wanna wait until the streak eventually ends first so I can get ‘em all. In the meantime here’s the 11-game streak as it stands on Streamable.
Did you notice from that how the Memphis commentary team on Bally Sports seem to have this patter thing going on as they introduce the refs each game? Buzzed me out while I was compiling the clips, made me think I’d doubled up but nah there’s different officials each time. This is just a thing they do.
Pete Pranica: “And Brevin as you well know we have three officials”
Brevin Knight: “And they showed up on time”
Pete Pranica: “They have been assigned by the NBA”
So that was something. Also something is this Fred Katz article for The Norman Transcript in 2018 which actually goes into a bit of detail on this exact jump ball scenario. Because winning jump balls is not something that Adams all of a sudden got good at recently. He won the second most tips in 2017-18 too and it was during that season that this piece was written detailing the extra lengths that Steve-o has gone to since the start of his career to gain this advantage...
“Each official throws a jump ball a little differently — even if most have general fundamentals. No other NBA referee, however, lobs them quite like veteran ref Ken Mauer. Instead of standing between the two players vying for the tip, Mauer shades off to the side and lofts them from an angle, an approach he switched to after taking an elbow to the face in the middle of a jump ball years ago. Even in those odd, non-replicable situations, Adams has the advantage — if only because he’s prepared himself to a degree many other players wouldn’t go. When he first came into the NBA, he watched film not just of players but also of officials.”
According to that piece, Adams’ will tell you that winning the jump ball is not a matter of height but a matter of reaction speed. Stacks up when you watch the clips back. He seems to take it more seriously than most for one thing. Gets set into that partial crouch nice and early and doesn’t flinch until it’s time to go. Once or twice in there he and the other dude have a false start reacting to each other but mostly it’s how you play the ref, it seems.
The Grizzlies are about to play the LA Lakers as this is published so hopefully the streak is still alive when you read this. The Lakers have split jump ball duties between Anthony Davis (63% from 19 attempts) and DeAndre Jordan (47% from 17 attempts) depending on who actually plays. Jordan’s been benched from the starters lately so we’ll see how that goes.
Play That Jazz
That there is a table I put together for a piece I’m working on about Ajaz Patel. Look at every spinner to have taken 15+ wickets for Aotearoa and look at the respective bowling averages. The piece will get into a bit on why kiwi spinners tend to have worse averages than foreign tweakers (hint: they play in New Zealand) but you can wait for the article for the yarns.
The Sounds of Aotearoa, 2021
I’m currently working on trying to figure out my annual top ten albums thing. Through excruciating effort and tireless work ethic I’ve been able to narrow the long list down to about 45 albums, lol. Still got a way to go. I don’t try to rank them or anything, rankings are silly. I just wanna highlight the ten musical works that I dug the most this year and hopefully anyone who reads the piece will find something they like which they might not otherwise have discovered. Generally how I do it is a top ten but I will chuck up like 20 or so honourable mentions too just so I can have a little peace of mind about all the records that miss out. Here’s last year’s version.
Some of my options are popping up on heaps of other end of year musical lists, some of them don’t seem to be on the big dog radar at all. Don’t you think it’s dumb how much those major lists seem to overlap? That’s the beauty of only writing from one person’s perspective is I get to claim that certain albums are underrated or deserved more lovin’ whereas Pitchfork or whoever surveying all their staff writers are gonna lose those ones through the cracks.
Dunno if I’ve seen enough new movies or telly to do a proper list there but maybe I’ll use these emails as a home for those things. I can’t claim to be definitive but I can at least shine a spotlight on a few 2021 movies that I reckon are worth a punt. To be fair, I think my favourite movie of the year is this clip of Aussie striker Sam Kerr absolutely laying out a pitch invader with a shoulder charge that a young Sonny Bill Williams would have been proud of...
Anyway, here’s a more specific spinoff of my albums thing focussing only on the kiwi tunes. Ten of my faves from the past year. Plenty more where these came from too. Support yer locals, aye.
Wildcard’s Top 10 Aotearoa Albums of 2021
Opposite Sex – High Drama
These aren’t in any particular order but I kinda think this is my favourite album of the year fullstop. Just fantastic, raw, experimental post-punk sounds here rising up out of Dunedin. Ranging from punchy (and violent) rockers like Shoots Me Like A Knife and Combine Harvester to extended, droney, slow-stompers like Dick on a Throne (the best MeToo song you’ve heard yet) and Owls Do Cry. Great tunes. Dark but with a smirk. Fantastic distorted guitar noises. Really booming bass. Absolutely love it.
Mara TK – Bad Meditation
Curtis Mayfield stylings for the tāngata. Groovy, dreamy neo-soul psychedelia. These are the sounds of spiritual healing. Intricately crafted and self-produced, steeped in traditional wisdom. If you ever wondered what it would sound like if Troy Kingi (who features on this album) worked with Flying Lotus then this is probably the closest you’re gonna get... whilst remaining distinctively MTK’s own vision. Brilliant for the vibe-outs.
Fat Freddy’s Drop – Wairunga
Speaking of vibes, the dub kings of Aotearoa are at it again. Their latest brought the bush-alchemy to record with an hour of live-tracked aural excellence. Recorded outdoors where the elements contribute to the creative process and you can almost feel the grass between your toes as you listen, Wairunga was also released as a concert film which is equally joyful. Got seven stretched out and breezy tracks here (five new plus two classics – Bones & Wairunga Blues) proving that after two decades the kings remain the kings.
Wurld Series – What’s Growing
Dig this Pavement inspired indie rock hailing from Christchurch. The second full length from the band shows a strong Stephen Malkmus lineage... but that’s not the only major influence. Chuck in some pastoral British folk tinges (founder Luke Towart was born in England) as well as some of that McCartney-esque melodic playfulness and you’ve got a thrilling album that packs plenty into its half-hour run-time (15 songs in 30 mins – lots of ideas). Plus obviously there’s that kiwi DIY/Flying Nun thing going on. Love this album.
French For Rabbits – The Overflow
FFR’s bio refers to their music as “whispering dream-pop sad songs”. That at once sums it up perfectly but also doesn’t do them justice. This new one only got released a month ago and it already feels timeless. Gorgeous song-writing and performances. Lush productions. It’ll have you floating on air. One lovely song after another lovely song working all the way up to the closing track Middle Of The House which is where it peaks in gloriousness.
Swords – Everything Anywhere Anytime
Five songs, 16 minutes in total length. More of an EP than an album... but all five songs are pop-rock bangers that deserve so much more exposure. Brilliant Swords is one of several projects from the super prolific Campbell Kneale (Our Love Will Destroy The World, Birchville Cat Motel). I caught it on a Bandcamp Essential Releases thing and otherwise have hardly seen a peep about this album which is a travesty because we’re talking about some undeniable toe-tappers here. Think The Beths but more obscure. High energy, massive hooks, great riffs. Give it a go.
Lorde – Solar Power
Yeah yeah yeah, gotta have it. The most high profile of these releases by a mile. Not seeing it on a lot of international lists out there but that’s not surprising because it seemed to be misunderstood from day one. People wanted Melodrama 2 and what they got instead was a hippie album. Lorde at the beach, smoking grass outta a fennel bong, hanging out and reflecting. They’ll come around to it eventually.
Wet Specimen – Wet Dreamin’
Extremely similar areas to the Opposite Sex album here... because two-thirds of the bands are the same. Lucy Hunter and Reg Norris backing it up with a different drummer. The difference here is more of a bounce, more of a sense of yearning, perhaps even a bit more of a sense of trippiness. Still with that flamethrower guitar though, phwoar. And that gothic overshadow. And Hunter’s supreme vocals and lyrics. Two classic albums within a month of each other.
Troy Kingi – Black Sea Golden Ladder
At the halfway point of his 10/10/10 project, Troy Kingi served up a folk inspired album recoded with Delaney Davidson. And it’s great. Maybe not as immediately triumphant as his funk-soul masterpiece The Ghost of Freddie Cesar from 2020 but that was by design – these songs are intended to be slower and more reflective, rolling through the circle of life with themes of birth, choices, love, search, retirement, death. It’s a gorgeous work. Deeply resonant. This dude honestly just nails it no matter what genre he’s working in.
Vera Ellen – It’s Your Birthday
A late addition to the list, with all due respect to Flying Nun labelmates Sulfate who got bounced because of the excellence of Vera Ellen’s solo debut. Starts off with these awesome Stoogey punk numbers and then increasingly adds depth and variety as it goes along. Such a well crafted record. Standout tunes include Telegram 2, YOU!, It’s Good It’s Simple, and Godspeed. Love how much Ellen can do with her voice, love her sense for a hook. Only heard this for the first time this week and it was an instant jammer.