Greetings and salutations to everybody out there in hospitality land, and welcome to 2006! Hope you had a fantastic festive season and the hangovers have subsided for now. Traditionally this time of year is "quiet" in terms of music releases, but this year sees us still pumping out quality programs...
	With his recent Grammy nomination for Album Of The Year, Kanye West really is the unstoppable man of the moment. His sophomore LP Late Registration has not only reinvigorated rap music, but has also put the producer-come-rapper atop of the high rollers. Now he teams up with Maroon5's Adam Levine for Heard 'Em Say, the third single from said album. The sublime sampling of Natalie Cole's Someone That I Used To Love makes this a smooth melodic hip-hop track with a groove to die for. This sure fire hit coupled with his upcoming support slot for U2 will surely bridge the crossover gap for this phenomenal man. Play the track from CR118.
	This month Bad Boy Records will release the most eagerly anticipated album in hip-hop history, The Notorious B.I.G. Duets: The Final Chapter. The Jazzee Pha-produced Nasty Girl, featuring Nelly, Diddy, Jagged Edge and Avery Storm, is the first single lifted from the set and features an all-star line up of familiar rap faces. Check it out now on CR118.
	Gyroscope has to be one of the most exciting Aussie bands around at the moment and their new album Are You Involved? hasn't left my CD player since its release. It has already spawned the excellent cruiseworthy number Fast Girl (easily gets one of my Hottest 100 votes) and now comes the groove-tastic Beware Wolf, which bridges the gap between Britpunk and Franz Ferdinand. Even Rolling Stone is raving about them, so be sure to check out one of their gigs. Play it from RD118 and play it loud!
	Those who know me will curse my predictability, but I really can't go past mentioning the new song from Prince. After all, he is rock royalty and now has inked a onealbum deal with Motown to distribute his forthcoming album simply titled 3121. The album is preceded by the divine Latintinged first single Te Amo Corazon with a video shot in Morocco starring Mia Maestro and directed by Salma Hayek. He's also promised us another world tour, fingers crossed Australia is on the schedule. For now you'll have to be content with the new video featuring on CR118 and ED118.
	Our January easy listening program is carrying some excellent, stripped back yet captivating Aussie talent who are all currently sitting atop their game. 'Finger frontman Bernard Fanning releases Songbird, his second single from his acclaimed number 1 solo album Tea & Sympathy. Sydneysider Josh Pyke is all over the J's at the moment with his Feeding The Wolves EP and its superb first single Middle Of The Road. Brisbane troubadour Nik Phillips is another artist worthy of the spotlight with his latest track Not In This Life from his excellent Songs From The 4th Floor album. Hifi Mike, Dan Kelly, Karl Broadie and Simon Bruce are just four more excellent artists making ED118 the best in a while and adding some texture to the SURFnCITY playlist.

	Author - Ben Preece Music Programming
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DJ Tony Dee - The Shed. At thirtysomething, Tony Dee lives life to the max. He's the full time DJ at The Shed, a massive Aussie-themed venue in Perth's happening entertainment suburb of Northbridge. He also runs his own business, Soundz Alive DJs and works a number of other venues, major functions and weddings in and around Perth and country areas. The busy Tony even finds time to indulge his passion for Mustangs and other American cars from the 60's - 70's era. In fact, he is a member of the Mustang Owners Club of WA.

After DJing for around 20 years, Tony finds working with Nightlife's HDMS™ far superior to the old ways of searching for and manually mixing music. "It's like comparing the carrier pigeon to the email", he says. He also makes the most of the electronic billboards feature for special notices and events.

Fave song of the moment is Gold Digger by Kanye West, with all time favourite being Ben Harper's "Steal My Kisses". If Tony could meet one person it would be Elvis because of his influence on music, style and attitude.

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At Your Service

How to create your own Billboard graphics

Create funky billboards to promote your brand on Nightlife's inhouse advertising system in just eight simple steps...

1. Scan any image(s) for use on the billboard at 75-150 dpi.

2. Import into your preferred graphics program.

3. Clean up and position scanned image(s) using editing tools. Make it suit your branding.

4. Resample the image(s) or change the canvas size to 640 x 480 pixels and convert the RGB image to 24 Bit.

5. Save image as a JPEG. (No more than an 8 character file name)

6. Or you can make an HTML billboard supporting Macromedia Flash 7: The HTML control file can have extension .HTML or .HTM The file name should not be greater than 16 characters. The screen should be display only ie. not interactive. The HTMLs should be contained within separate folders off the CD-ROM's root directory. There should be no paths attached to any associated JPGs or GIFs.

7. Save your finished art (either JPG or HTML) onto floppy disk, CD Rom or USB stick if your HDMS™ has a USB port.

8. Go all the way into the billboards program on your HDMS™, press 'I' and import your designs!

Call Customer Support on 1800 773 468 for further assistance.

News from NZ

We trust that everybody has had a good start to the New Year. As always in the hospitality industry, the small provincial towns enjoy good January trading as the big cities empty of holidaymakers finding their way to the remote parts of New Zealand.

There was much social commentary on the so-called "success" of the No Smoking legislation, which has now been invoked for 12 months. Looking back on the turnover for 2005, it became quite evident that most on-license venues had one of their worst winters on record (in spite of the fact that the country was buoyed by a pile of "barmy army" supporters trying to drink pubs dry). Apart from being able to say it is a far more pleasant eating and drinking environment, we don't believe that the No Smoking law has had "no effect".

However, a strong trend has emerged within the industry, which we will see a lot more of, and that is designer-built smoking areas, which cater superbly to the smoker. These areas include sound systems, plasmas (with music videos), comfortable seating and table arrangements. Credit must be given to the Ministry of Health for taking a practical and reasonable approach when reviewing the design of these smoking areas. As always in business, the challenges must be met and many operators have done so. If you are out and about these holidays it would be a worthwhile exercise to have a look around and see what's on offer in some of these smoking areas, because the simple fact is that these venues are doing the business.

Bec's Special Project!

One week before Christmas Nightlife's project manager, the lovely Rebecca Dawson wed her sweetheart, Matthew Carter in a simple but stunning ceremony on their 57 acre property just outside of Ipswich. It was a family only affair on the day, but to ensure their close friends and workmates didn't miss out completely, they marked the occasion with a big party and BBQ the next day.

Just as the party was due to start, an uninvited guest in the guise of a cracking tropical thunderstorm gatecrashed with strong winds and a huge downpour to get things underway in true Queensland style.