Girl power pushes hip-hop off the stage

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

The name "Runga" kept the engravers busy again at this year's New Zealand Music Awards.

Stellar*, the group fronted by Boh Runga - sister of past multiple-winner Bic - took away seven Tui awards out of the band's eight nominations connected to their 60,000-selling debut album Mix.

While it was her sister's night, Bic Runga again won the international achievement category, ostensibly for her two songs on the soundtrack of the hit Hollywood movie American Pie, her only release in 1999.

This year's honours were marred earlier by the outcry over nominee Don McGlashan of the Mutton Birds being on the judging panel - McGlashan withdrew his votes, necessitating an 11th-hour reshuffle of finalists - but the night skirted the early controversy.

A format change which emphasised music over speeches made the usually tedious ceremony highly entertaining, helped by wise-cracking MC Marcus Lush.

The night also showed the current pop-mindedness of the New Zealand music industry and its seeming domination by female voices, effectively shutting out hip-hop.

The genre figured only in the Polynesian category, won by Urban Pacifika's Pioneers Of A Pacifikan Frontier.

The evening's performances showed this, too, with girl groups Ma-V-Elle, Deep Obsession and TrueBliss, as well as the female-fronted Ardijah and Stellar*, sharing the stage with all-male rockers Shihad and Breathe.

Runga and the members of Stellar* traipsed up to the stage with monotonous regularity, picking up awards for single, album and top group, with Runga being named female vocalist and songwriter of the year during the public part of the ceremony at the Civic on Saturday evening.

Then, at an industry dinner later at the Sheraton Hotel, Stellar* added producer (one-time Thompson Twin Tom Bailey) and engineer gongs to their seven-award haul.

The closest anyone else got to their tally was Shihad, frontman Jon Toogood again winning best male vocalist, bassist Karl Kippenberger taking the best cover design for his artwork on The General Electric album and the clip for My Mind's Sedate, judged the best in the video category.

Toogood proved the most colourful winner, literally cartwheeling his way across the stage before giving the briefest of acceptance speeches: "Cheers Mum!"

His band was also the live performance of the night with a raucous blast through the album's title track.

Toogood took his hyper performance into the front rows in probably the most exciting rock'n'roll moment the old theatre has staged since the Rolling Stones played there in the late 60s.

Later in the night, Shihad posed a similar seismic risk to the Auckland Town Hall where they headlined radio station bFM's Private Function.

Weta, like Shihad a Wellington-born rock band now based in Melbourne, also took away two Tui for most promising group and frontman Aaron Tokona was judged most promising male vocalist.

Among the girl groups, only the chart-topping Deep Obsession figured among the winners, with one of the blond duo, Vanessa Kelly, winning most promising female vocalist.

Despite the sales of the television-created pop phenomenon of 1999, TrueBliss, the quintet only had one nomination - for producer. However, effusive Blissgirl Joe Cotton did get on to the stage to accept the gospel award on behalf of her absent brother, a member of winning Christian group The Lads.