29 May 2025

It's time to wake up and face the consequences

Thursday music corner: Stalwart English indie rock band Pulp were originally formed in Sheffield in 1978 as Arabicus Pulp, and released three albums and twelve singles before finally achieving widespread fame in the mid-1990s Britpop boom with their albums His 'n' Hers (1994) and the dual UK-album-chart-toppers Different Class (1995) and This Is Hardcore (1998). Following the UK top ten album We Love Life in 2001 the band entered a long hiatus that included a solo career for the band leader and singer-songwriter, Jarvis Cocker. The band reunited in 2011 and released a single, and a full album release for their eighth studio album More will occur in June 2025.

Pulp have achieved twelve UK top 40 singles, including two consecutive singles that reached number two in the charts - Common People and Sorted For E's & Wizz / Mis-Shapes, both in 1995. Four of the band's studio albums reached the UK top 10, along with the 1996 double compilation album, Countdown 1992-1983.

Got To Have Love is Pulp's second single from its forthcoming album, after Spike Island. The video features archival footage of Northern Soul dancers knee-dropping in 1977 at the famous Wigan Casino dance club.

The clips below are from the 1998 Pulp In The Park gig in London that I attended. 

Pulp - Got To Have Love (2025)


See also:
Music: Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time? (Live in Finsbury Park, 1998) 
Music: Pulp - This Is Hardcore (Live in Finsbury Park, 1998) 
Music: Jarvis Cocker - Tonite (2006)

25 May 2025

Comedy Festival 2025

Nish Kumar (Hannah Playhouse, 2 May) 

A compellingly bracing and impressively coherent ramble through progressive polemic rant with discursions into the power of lousy South Asian role models, how the world is beset with psychotic billionaires, his mum's feud with Camilla Parker-Bowles, how not to interview Boris Johnson, his comedic feud with Ricky Gervais, and how to manage one's mental health whilst actively discussing unprocessed rage on stage in front of complete strangers when one's friends have become millionaires by doing a podcast about how sandwiches are nice. Also the evening was triply impressive because Kumar responded to weather disruptions by performing not one, not two, but three shows in a single night.

Abby Howells (BATS, 9 May) 

An expertly-constructed and charmingly delivered set illustrating the thorough unsuitability of Tiny Tim as gig warmup music, the psychological traumas of Michael Jackson impersonators, Willy Wonka & the housing ladder, the perils of becoming Insta-famous, an update on the (presumably) lifelong feud with Wanaka Puzzleworld (sic.), the pitfalls of improv group vendettas and discount group therapy, not looking like a pervert on the bus, and breaking up with her ex- and finding the love of her life. (See also: Conan O'Brien, who met her for his NZ episode of his Conan O'Brien Must Go series, described Howells as 'without a doubt one of the funniest people I've met').

Ray O'Leary (Te Auaha, 22 May) 

Slow-talkin', tan-suited purveyor of droll observational comedy, touching on the potentially accurate effrontery of a woman who approached him on the street to thank him for being a good role model for autistic people despite him never having being diagnosed as having autism, being insufficiently unhealthy to qualify for Ozempic, the lack of security at New Zealand rest homes, how to use Borat impressions to lighten up bleak standup material, and coaxing audience members to work on their comedic timing in a ramshackle three-person, one-act sitcom reading.

22 May 2025

Seasons turning, in a while she'll make it snow

Thursday music corner: Lindsey Buckingham (b. California, 1949) is a world-famous musician and producer who was a core member of Fleetwood Mac during its commercial zenith from 1975 to 1987. In his solo work in addition to his 1971 album Buckingham Nicks with his then-partner Stevie Nicks, he has released eight solo albums. One of these, 2017's collaboration Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVey originally started out as a Fleetwood Mac project. Buckingham rejoined Fleetwood Mac from 1997 to 2018, until he was fired and replaced by Neil Finn and Mike Campbell.

In Our Own Time was the first single from Buckingham's 2011 solo album Seeds We Sow, and is inspired by Buckingham's relationship with his wife, Kristen.

Lindsey Buckingham - In Our Own Time (2011 / 2018 remaster)


See also:
Music: Lindsey Buckingham - Time Bomb Town (Back to the Future s/tk, 1985)
Music: Lindsey Buckingham - Did You Miss Me (2008)
Music: Fleetwood Mac - Big Love (1987)

20 May 2025

Man Ray the photographic liberator

On the occasion of Man Ray's retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1966, the German Dadaist Hans Richter contributed a catalogue essay in which he succinctly captured the creative vision of his friend of forty years: There is no eggshell, no thermometer or metronome, no brick, bread or broom that Man Ray cannot and does not change into something else. It is as if he discovers the soul of each conventional object by liberating it from its practical function. Further elaborating on the artist's practice, he noted that Man Ray 'just cannot help to discover and reveal things because his whole person is involved in a process of continuous probing, of a natural distrust in things being "just so"".

Over the course of a half-century creative career spanning two continents and two world wars, Man Ray's process of continuous probing was nowhere acutely manifested than in his idiosyncratic photographic practice. Playfully experimenting with dramatic use of light, shadow, perspective and framing as well as inventive techniques such as positive / negative reversal, double exposure and solarization, Man Ray pioneered conceptual approach to the medium that liberated it from steadfast orthodoxies by which it had been bound since its inception. His rejection of the conventional belief in photography as a transparent reflection of reality and his radical approach to image making generated new appreciation for the medium's potential as an art form and a vehicle for accessing what Walter Benjamin termed the 'optical unconscious'. In the words of Man Ray, photography 'is a marvelous explorer of those aspects that our retina never records'.

- Wendy Grossman, 'Liberating photography', in Nathalie Herschdorfer, Man Ray: Liberating Photography, London, 2024, p.10 

18 May 2025

The world's first photographic portrait studio

How rapidly a combination of inventiveness and business sense can lead to success can be seen in the collaboration of [Alexander] Wolcott and [John] Johnson, partners in a New York manufactory which produced and distributed optical instruments and other equipment involving precision engineering. After their initial successes in early October 1839, the two continued to work on improving their mirror camera. This not only had the advantage of repгoducing the view the right way round but also avoided the loss of light which occurred with the usual lenses. In addition, the concave mirror focused the light, so that far more light reached the plate. With the exposure time thus reduced, the making of portraits became a practical proposition, although the construction of the camera permitted only a small format of, at most, five square centimeters.

Early in March 1840 Wolcott, with Johnson as a partner, opened a portrait studio in New York, the first anywhere in the world. On March 15 they moved to other premises and installed a lighting system by which two mirrors reflected light from outside onto the subject. On May 8 Wolcott patented the camera, which was to have a major influence on the early spread of the daguerreotype in the United States and Britain. The idea of using a mirror instead of a lens, which tended to swallow up light had. in fact, first been put forward in Scotland in April 1839, but had not been followed up. The deficiencies of Daguerre's process were thus being addressed very early on, indicating a desire to make it suitable for use by a larger number of people as quickly as possible.

It frequently happened that identical or similar ideas cropped up in towns that were far apart, and were developed further without the inventors knowing of each other's work. This simultaneity shows that the invention of the daguerreotype was in line with the current state of scientific thinking and that its further development was determined by the requirements of its potential users whether behind or in front of the camera. Almost all the significant inventions relating to the daguerreotype between 1839 and 1841 were arrived at independently by several different people. Which one of them first became publicly known was often a matter of pure chance.

- Timm Starl, 'A New World of Pictures: The use and spread of the daguerreotype process', in Michel Friztot, A New History of Photography. Cologne, 1998, p.39

See also:
Blog: A suitable hobby for ladies, 11 March 2025
Blog: Ans Westra Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013
Blog: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, 20 January 2013

16 May 2025

Three reasons the Great Depression lasted so long

A large part of what made the Great Depression so painful was that it was not only deep but also long. There were many reasons for this. Let me pick out three:

A first reason it stretched on for so long was workers' unwillingness to take risks. With so much instability, most were content to settle for what manner of living they could find that was most secure. The experience of long and high unemployment casts a large and deep shadow on the labor market. Risky but profitable enterprises had a difficult time attracting the workers they needed, and so investment remained depressed.

A second reason it was long was the memory of the gold standard and the belief that economies needed to get back to it. This belief dissuaded governments in the 1930s from taking many of the steps to boost production and employment that they otherwise might have pursued: the gold standard was dead by 1931, but its ghost continued to haunt the world economy. Few of these much-needed measures were undertaken. The only one that governments did take up was currency depreciation: stimulating net exports by switching demand to domestic-made goods and away from foreign-made goods. Commentators disparaged currency depreciation as "beggar-thy-neighbor." It was. But it was the only thing generally undertaken that was effective.

A third reason was that the lack of a hegemon to guide coordinated action in international monetary affairs not only pre vented anticipatory reforms but also blocked coordinated global policy responses. The major monetary powers of the world passed up their chances to do anything constructive together. Recovery, where it came, was national only, not global.

In general, the sooner countries went off the gold standard, and the less constrained they were thereafter by the orthodoxy of gold-standard habits, the better they fared. Thus, the Scandinavian countries that bailed first from the gold standard did best. Japan was second. Britain also abandoned the gold standard, in 1931, but Japan embraced expansionary policies more thoroughly. The United States and Germany abandoned the gold standard in 1933, but Hitler had a clearer view that success required putting people to work than FDR did with the try-everything-expediency of his New Deal.

- J Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, New York, 2022, p.219-220.