I love new words, and there seem to have been a lot coined recently.

With the financial crisis in Europe we had Eurogedden; in America the Republicans have been hit by Obamagedden. Here in New Zealand we now have Marmagedden.

I hadn't realised quite how much Kiwis – apparently – depend on thick brown spread to enliven their toast. Hell, I hadn't even realised that most New Zealanders actually think that Marmite comes from New Zealand.

Because I spent my formative years as a little Watusi far across the seas in England I was aware at a young age that marmite actually originated in Britain, in the early years of the 20th Century. It does taste a bit different there of course, though, unlike the case for Heinz baked beans, I think you could happily claim that the Kiwi recipe is superior.

English Marmite (sold here as My Mate) has more salt; New Zealand Marmite has more sugar; each to their own I guess…

I thought I'd spend the week catching up on a few threads I've been following recently, but first, there are a couple of online petitions that you might be interested in checking out.

The first is a ‘Save TVNZ7' petition.

I happen to agree with the folk who reckon the state of television is plunging ever-downward (with the exception of all that fantastic drama on – admittedly pay-as-you-go – Sky's SOHO channel).

TVNZ7 provides intelligent current affairs and talk and analysis and all the sort of stuff that public service broadcasting means.

So of course it's being closed down as too expensive, going the same way as Stratos, which also provided good local content and extensive news from different perspectives.

I'm unconvinced that anything can save TVNZ7 from the government's cost-cutting, but if you want to register as one of the voices of protest go to http://issues.co.nz/savetvnz7/Sign+The+Petition

The other one is all about ‘the loudness wars'.

In the last few years, as I've mentioned from time to time, music has been getting ‘louder'.

Presumably to sound better on devices like iPods and in the misguided belief that songs will sound louder on the radio, producers have been making music louder by decreasing the dynamic range.

Put simply, they have been doing what we all complain about with the ads on telly, which is to make the quiet bits loud so they sound (overall) louder.

In musical terms, this is called compression.

Assume you have a maximum volume to work to, but if one particularly loud bit – a climactic note from the singer for instance – is louder than that, the whole track is calibrated to that level and the rest will sound quieter (relatively).

So compression squeezes all those loud bits to make them quieter and you can then turn up the whole overall thing. Just like those irritating ads.

What you lose is a certain excitement because everything is squashed (albeit loud).

What you probably didn't know is that last Friday was Dynamic Range Day.

You can find concrete examples to explain this much better than I have at http://TurnMeUp.org – it really is fascinating to hear how badly music is being treated to follow (largely imaginary) commercial beliefs.

And, talking of new music, I got an advance copy of the debut Bonjour Swing album, The Flame, which I touched on a couple of weeks back. It's fantastic!

Marion Arts and Robbie Laven have recorded a little gem here, another great collection of songs from Marion, sung and played with skill and dexterity, and fun.

It will be launched shortly after Easter – I'll have more information and a review before then. In the meantime you can check out a track at www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Pg72vCTWw.

And I think I'll start adding a regular bit about the new music you can see at Soundtree – Tauranga's own internet music webcast – each week.

This week is a ‘Special'.

Shane Davies has unearthed the video footage (beautifully shot by Mike Butler) of Hard To Handle's 2007 reunion gig at The Colloseum.

Though he has yet to pair it with the audio from the official album, the sound from the desk is pretty good and gives the whole thing a real feeling of the sweat and excitement of the night.

Have a look at www.soundtreeproductions.com

watusi@thesun.co.nz