MTVA Awards announce first guests
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The MTVA Awards has announced Academy Award nominee Juliette Lewis and her band ‘Juliette & The Licks’ and Grammy award winning rapper Eve to perform and present at its April ceremony.
The rejuvenated event will be held on Saturday April 26 at Sydney’s Australian Technology Park.
The new-look event, to be stripped of its ‘glam and glitz’ and auditorium seating, will be broadcast live on MTV with an encore screening on FOX8 from 6pm on Sunday April 27.
“Creatively, we are planning a very different style of MTV Awards this year but one of the few things that won’t change is the calibre of talent the show will attract,” says MTV Networks Australia Talent Director Colin Blake.
Press Release:
The first lot of talent to participate at this year’s pioneering MTV Australia Awards was announced today with Academy Award nominee Juliette Lewis and her band ‘Juliette & The Licks’ and Grammy award winning rapper Eve confirmed to perform and present. This never seen before version of the network’s 24 year old award show will be held on Saturday April 26 at Sydney’s industrial entertainment mecca ‘the Australian Technology Park’. The show will broadcast live on MTV with an encore screening on FOX8 from 6pm on Sunday April 27.
“Creatively, we are planning a very different style of MTV Awards this year but one of the few things that won’t change is the calibre of talent the show will attract,” says MTV Networks Australia Talent Director Colin Blake. “If anything, the changes have amplified their interest which is a very nice position to be in. This is just the beginning of a long list of announcements to come.”
Rapper and actress Eve will be here for the MTVAAs on her very first visit to Australia. Since breaking onto the scene in 1999, The Grammy award winning starlet has released numerous critically acclaimed albums and films with the much talked about release of her new album, ‘Here I am’, slated to hit shelves late 2008.
Joining Eve at the MTVAAs will be Juliette Lewis who has been a cult figure amongst fans for her daring roles in films such as ‘Natural Born Killers’ and ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’. Most recently the star has dominated the live music scene with her band ‘Juliette & The Licks’. Already recognised by Rolling Stone US for their live performances, critics around the world have praised their dynamic performing persona and their raw gritty style.
The ‘MTV Australia Awards 2008’ will feature eight live musical performances and ten awards presented across music, film, television, sport, viewer-generated content and topical popular culture moments. Eight categories will be viewer-chosen with voting to commence early March. Selected by MTV Australia, the remaining three awards will be recognition awards given to a sports personality, movie star and the international music artist of the year as a way of acknowledging those who have had a significant influence on the Australian MTV audience.
Voting for the MTVAAs starts on Wednesday March 12, and closes on Friday April 25.
Winners will be announced at the MTV Australia Awards on Saturday April 26 2008. The show will broadcast live on MTV Australia with red carpet arrivals from 7:30pm and the main show due to commence at 8.30pm. The MTV Australia Awards 2008 will be accessible to all customers of Foxtel, Austar and Optus platforms. For the first time ever, all subscribers will be able to view the main show when FOX8 airs an encore screening on Sunday April 27 from 6pm.
The MTV Australia Awards 2008 will give fans a compelling interactive experience across all platforms. Viewers will be able to interact with the show via the red-button, catch exclusive behind the scenes action online at www.mtv.com.au, and watch highlights of the show on their mobile phones.
2 Responses
Not interested. Music video awards shows are a bore
The industry has always shown a distaste for these awards, of course the obvious reason is that the Australian Music Awards gets American Artists to headline the bill, another much debated point is that a lot of the artists nominated are hard working musicians that are generally, most of the time still on the dole and the cost of the sets alone would fund a musicians career for a few years to say the least.
Juliettes band has been around since the mid nineties and have never been able to secure a contract until just recently, their independent album sales have been well… laughable to say the least and its just another case of cashing in on an actor trying to spark a musical career with no music credability what so ever (remember Keanu Reeves band Dogstar? Will Smiths clean rap, Bruce Willis as “Bruno” in the late eighties, more recently Jared Leto’s Band 30 seconds to Mars, big time wrestler Chris Jerichos band Fozzy and of course the frightening sounds of Russell Crowes 30 odd foot of grunt recently re-named to Russell Crowe and the ordinary fear of god, no doubt Juliette will get paid more for this gig than any of the nominated artists would get in a year)
The past winners of MTVA awards have mocked the ceremony and just like the ARIA’s they find the winning of such awards to have no reflection on their careers and does next to nothing to boost record sales. In America, music awards are just one big advertisment for its artists aimed at increasing sales and in their case it has done exactly what it has set out to do.
Later this year Itunes is setting to announce that its sales have surpassed the now ill-fated CD sales of all stores combined.
Here in Australia back in 1996 the great Parrallel Imports debate (which musicians lost) was introduced by our government to reduce the overall price of a CD from $30 down to $15-20. This was supposed to be achieved by changing the law that states all Music Stores and outlets must buy the artists music from its recognized distrubutor/label too the now standing law that Music Stores can buy the artists albums from ANY distributor around the world, it didnt lower the price of CD’s and it allowed a huge influx of illegal copies to be imported from Indonesia and China and saw the destruction of the independant label. (The labels that did survive like Shock, Roadrunner and Rubber Records are not really labels anymore as they stopped signing artists and are now distributors for overseas record companies where their parallel imports laws are still intact)
Being a working musician in Australia is nearly immpossible, unless like I did and a few others, got into commercial writing and sound arranging for TV shows (I have worked for channel nine and Seven on a few shows and the advertising royalties are a good source of yearly revenue)
So the MTVA’s are just that, a farce, a glitzy shallow un-reputable despised setup that is mainly run to line the pockets of its producers and networks alike, the last people that benefit from the MTVA’s is the actual people who make the music.