Record to test radio policy?

Press, 10 April 1987, Page 8

Record to test radio policy?

PA Wellington A Band Aid-style single by Crowded House’s Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn of D D Smash may be recorded to promote calls for a compulsory New Zealand music quota on radio. The idea was proposed at the first New Zealand Music Convention in Wellington, and was revealed yesterday by the Taranaki entertainer, Dalvanius Prime, who was elected to the New Zealand Music Promotion Committee during the conference. He said the committee hoped to commission Finn and Dobbyn to write the song and have it recorded by all New Zealand’s major music artists. Finn is enjoying Top 10

success in America, Australia and New Zealand with his band, Crowded House. Dobbyn had a big hit recently with "Slice of Heaven,” the theme song for the “Footrot Flats” movie. The New Zealand music record would be a test of Radio New Zealand screening policy, Prime said. “If it can play a song about a piece of plastic (the America’s Gup challenge single, ’Sailing Away’) it would virtually have to play this,” he said. A song about the survival of New Zealand culture, both pakeha and Maori, was just as relevant as something he described as “corporate rock.”