Retired layman looks on in scorn with a transplanted heart

Thursday music corner: Singer and actor Julie Driscoll (b. London, 1947) gained attention in the psychedelic music scene of London in the late 1960s due to her work with Brian Auger & the Trinity, including a UK number five hit when they recorded Bob Dylan's This Wheel's On Fire in 1968. 

This 1969 performance of Indian Rope Man is from the West German TV music show Beat-Club, which ran from 1965 to 1972, and is introduced by British DJ Dave Lee Travis. The track originally appears on the 1969 Driscoll / Auger / Trinity double LP Streetnoise, and was written by Richie Havens, Joe Price and Mark Roth.   

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity - Indian Rope Man (1969)

See also:

Music: Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity - This Wheel's On Fire (1968)

Music: Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity - Take Me To The Water (1969)

Music: Julie Driscoll - A New Awakening (1969, released 1971)

Just like that film with Michael Caine

Thursday music corner: The Godfathers are an English rock band formed in London in 1985, who performed together until 2000 before reuniting in 2008. After an initial album released on the Corporate Image label in 1986, the band released three major-label albums on Epic between 1988 and 1991. None of their singles cracked the UK top 40, but two singles (She Gives Me Love and Unreal World) did reach the US Modern Rock top 10 in 1989 and 1991. Birth School Work Death is their best-remembered song, which was the lead and title track on the band's first Epic album release in 1988. It features two guitar solos that rank amongst the best punk-pop efforts of the 1980s.

The Godfathers - Birth School Work Death (1987)   

See also:

Music: The Chords - Maybe Tomorrow (1980)

Music: The Stranglers - Waltzinblack (1981)

Music: Dr Feelgood - Milk & Alcohol (1979)

Hobson's many challenges

[New Zealand's first Governor, Captain William] Hobson was experienced neither as a politician nor a diplomat when he arrived in New Zealand in January 1840 to take up his appointment as Lieutenant Governor. A successful but unremarkable naval career had done little to prepare him for this posting and in retrospect, the Colonial Office's selection of Hobson as New Zealand's first Governor was ill-advised, and perhaps even careless.

Had New Zealand been a colony with a negligible European settlement, Hobson may well have been equal to the task, but by 1840 the country had already witnessed two decades of increasing European intervention, with the accompanying emergence of factionalism between the various interest groups that had by then established themselves. Hobson's arrival stirred the ambitions of the missionaries, obstructed the designs of the land speculators, and unsettled the expectations of many of the British immigrants. Moreover, the whole colony was couched in intrigue, which Hobson initially approached as a naive outsider.

To complicate matters even further, Hobson had to contend with the instructions from his political masters in London. The policy he was expected to follow was sometimes vague and frequently impractical in its implementation. The delay of several months for communications between New Zealand and London often left the Governor marooned in an island of opposition and hostility.

- Paul Moon, Hobson: Governor of New Zealand 1840-1842, Auckland, 1998, p.306

See also:

History: Precolonial maritime NZ, 22 February 2025

History: In memory of Captain Williams, 22 September 2019

History: Pre-1840 European visitors to Wellington, 21 February 2016

Steely-eyed surveillance

Pacific reef heron, Evans Bay

 

Acts of rebellious solidarity can bring sense in this world

Thursday music corner: Anglo-French experimental pop group Stereolab were formed in 1990 around the songwriting duo Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier. The band's original incarnation lasted until 2009 and produced all the band's ten studio albums. Since the band reformed in 2019 for live performances they have released two further instalments of their Switched On compilation album series: Electrically Possessed (Vol. 4) in 2021 and Pulse of the Early Brain (Vol. 5) in 2022. Stereolab's highest-charting UK single was Ping Pong in 1994, which reached number 45.

French Disko originally appeared in 1993 on the Jenny Ondioline EP (as "French Disco"). It was re-recorded the following year, and retitled French Disko. It was voted number five in the John Peel Festival 50 for 1993. The song also gained further attention from Stereolab aficionados after its inclusion on the 1995 rarities compilation Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Vol. 2). 

Stereolab - French Disko (1994)

See also:

Music: Stereolab - Miss Modular (1997)

Music: Air w/ Beth Hirsch - All I Need (1998) 

Music: Nouvelle Vague - This Is Not A Love Song (2004)

Photography: a suitable hobby for ladies

In 1924 the Eastman Kodak Company published a small book, At Home with the Kodak, that implored women to record their families and homes in order to 'tell the truth' of change over time (growth of children, ageing of elders) and create 'the most fascinating of all stories the story of us

The notion that making photographs was an acceptable activity for women was not new. In England, women such as Lady Caroline Margaret Kerrison had become full members of the Royal Photographic Society of London in its first year, 1853. From the late 1890s, articles appeared in newspapers detailing the female members of various royal families who enjoyed 'snapping' and collecting photographs, especially of their travel experiences. By 1898, Princess Beatrice, a daughter of Queen Victoria, was said to have 600 photographs on display in her residence and thousands more 'safely stored away'. Queen Victoria had a darkroom made for Beatrice at the royal residence on the Isle of Wight.

Young New Zealand women were just as enthusiastic about the hobby. In 1913 Jack Callan gave his bride, Margaret Mowat, a Kodak camera at their wedding in Dunedin and she took the camera on their honeymoon. A young Dunedin woman, Miss Bunbury, a fashion buyer for the department store Arthur Barnett Ltd, received an Autographic Kodak camera in 1922 as a going-away gift for her trip to Britain, Paris and the United States, so she could document fashion garments for her employer. Of all the 'beautiful and valuable gifts' given to Elsie Gleave of Gisborne for her 'coming of age' party in 1926, only the 'excellent camera' was singled out for mention in the local newspaper. 

The first and second prize winners in the Ladies' Mirror magazine's inaugural snapshot competition in 1923, Miss Ethelwyn Arthur of Auckland and Miss M King of Otago, submitted photographs that won them the latest Kodak cameras - a No.1A Folding Autographic and a Vest Pocket. For Christmas 1928 the Vanity Kodak camera was marketed nationwide in newspapers as the perfect Christmas gift for women. The camera, 'in delightful colours - distinguished, dainty, chic, intensely feminin[e]', was a version of the Vest Pocket Folding camera (but at more than three times the price) and came in a lined case that included a mirror, a combination powder and rouge compact, and a lipstick.

- Lissa Mitchell, Through Shaded Glass: Women & Photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860-1960, Wellington, 2023, p.239.

See also:
Photography: Cindy Sherman: chameleon, comedian, 15 January 2017 

Photography: Ans Westra: Wellington 1976, 30 June 2013

Photography: Three photography exhibitions, 22 April 2011