Chatterbox: Solo Tim gives it a whirl again

Last year Tim Finn and some mates set some attendance records on their national tour, but this time Finn is heading out solo. Well, sort of.

His 19-show countrywide jaunt, which starts at the Kaitaia Community Centre on Monday October 1 before heading to the far south and back again, comes with a band consisting of drummer Ross Burge (the Mutton Birds), bassist Mareea Paterson (ex-Delta) and guitarist Ian Greenstreet ("from Mt Roskill").

Last year Finn toured with Dave Dobbyn and Bic Runga and they packed 'em in around the country. Finn says his new band is learning a lot of old Split Enz stuff and some of his past solo hits, and there will be a few new ones from his album Feeding The Gods (which won't be released until early next year) in the set as well.

However, Finn's support act, Christchurch-bred, Auckland-based singer-songwriter Anika Moa, will have her debut album Thinking Room out early next month and the tour will be an introduction to the country for the performer who is hotly tipped to "do a Bic Runga".

The 21-year-old, who is signed to Atlantic Records in the US, recorded her album there last year with producer Victor Van Vugt (whose credits include PJ Harvey, Beth Orton and Nick Cave) and leading American session musicians. She's already had one lucky break with the results of the recording session - one of her songs, Falling in Love Again, was included on the soundtrack to the romantic comedy America's Sweethearts which stars Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack.

Tickets go on sale on Monday.

RUDE BOY ROADSHOW: You've seen the show. Well, the ratings would indicate that quite a lot of you have. Now you can experience all that quivering flesh up close and personal. No, not The Weakest Link. It's the men of the "reality" show Stripsearch - think Pop Stars for blokes minus the singing but with velcro-detachable clothing - who will be getting a dose of reality (the no-quote-marks version) when they head out on the road In late September on a tour entitled Kiwi Fire.

They start with a season at Sky City from September 24 before flaunting it in the heartland for 52 dates to such salubrious venues as Wairoa's Gaiety Theatre (October 23), the Petone Workingmen's Club (November 12) and Twizel's Top Half Pub (November 28). Wonder if it will be as good as Ladies Night?

BEST BOY GRAPE: See the movie, buy the wine. Sam Pillsbury, the director of Crooked Earth, which opens next week (and is reviewed on F5), is the latest in a line of local cinema luminaries (Sam Neill, Roger Donaldson, cinematographer Michael Seresin) to start a vineyard - not in Marlborough or Central Otago but in the Apache country of Arizona. American-born Pillsbury made his start in movies here (he wrote and produced The Quiet Earth, directed Heart of the High Country on television and the 1987 feature Starlight Hotel) but has been based in LA since the late 80s, directing for both small and big screens, though not much to write home about (Free Willy 3, for example).

But he's bought an interest in a vineyard called Dos Cabezas (Two Heads), named after the mountain range in whose shadow it lies.

He says the area has the same microclimate as the Rhone Valley but is "a mile closer to the sun" and produces "awesome" wines. The vineyard sells only a few hundred cases a year of eight grape varieties and it's hard to source outside Arizona - unless you have connections. The White House serves his pinot gris at state dinners.

DOWN WITH THE KIDS: These are worrying times in commercial radio what with all that talk of quotas and youth networks and - as you might have noticed by all the radio promotional stuff about the place - that comes on top of the current radio ratings survey.

One campaign has particularly caught our eyes and ears, possibly for the wrong reasons - the ZM network's advertisements which depict the channel's Wellington-based breakfast team of Pauline Gillespie, Grant Kereama and Nick Tansley as animated super-heroes who look a couple of decades younger, slimmer and infinitely hipper than their flesh and blood counterparts on the mainstream pop station. They're using a song by local rock band Tadpole behind the telly version, not something you'd probably hear between the trio's zany high jinks in the morning.

EVERYONE'S A WINNER: The winners of our Dimmer/ Sola Rosa/ sjd album and ticket giveaways were: Grant Power, Onehunga; Nicola Brown, Eden Terrace; Steve Jacques, Ponsonby; Carol Cousins, Maraetai; and Claire Mason, Sandringham.