If we take a summary, boys and girls just ain't the same

Thursday music corner: Can was a pioneering German experimental rock band chiefly active from 1968 to 1979, with members including the avant-garde and ambient devotee Holger Czukay (1938-2017) and Japanese lead singer Damo Suzuki (1950-2024). The band released eleven studio albums over a twenty-year period from 1969, including perhaps their most successful and experimental effort, Tago Mago in 1971.

The android funk track I Want More was a single and the opening track from Can's seventh's studio album, Flow Motion (1976). The single was a rare commercial success for Can, reaching number 26 in the UK pop charts and earning the band an appearance on Top of the Pops. As with most of the other six tracks on the album the music was by the four band members and the lyrics were by the band's sound engineer, Peter Gilmour.      

Can - I Want More (1976)

See also:

Music: Can - Little Star of Bethlehem (1968)

Music: Can - Spoon (1971)

Music: Holger Czukay - Cool In The Pool (1979)

Gellhorn on philosophy

And finally, dear boy, I think philosophy is a parlor game. I do not see how it relates to life at all; nor to the condition of man. It is a very high-toned entertainment between men of equal and detached intellect. And in a way, it repels me. I think more highly of Florence Nightingale who did something about human suffering in hospitals than about any philosopher.

For where has philosophy saved; and where - when possible - has it not been used for evil ends. (Think of Hitler and Nietzsche.) I am an admirer of Galileo, who discovered a fact, and died saying: E pure si muove ['And yet, it moves']. But not philosophers. Finish your stint and leave it. Join the endless chain of people living here on the ground: we are lost, but the best we can do is, each one, be the boy with his finger in the dike. And somehow, I find the higher flights of the mind very cold. And if they hadn't flown so goddamned high we wouldn't have the H-bomb either.

- Martha Gellhorn, in a letter to her stepson Sandy Matthews, 27 April 1968, quoted in Caroline Moorehead (ed.), Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, New York, 2006, p.342

Blinded in the white light and the crowd

Thursday music corner: Straitjacket Fits were a Dunedin indie group on the Flying Nun label who released three studio albums between 1988 and 1993, before splitting up in 1994. The second and third albums, Melt (1990) and Blow (1993) both reached the New Zealand album chart top 20. The band were inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame in 2008. 

Down In Splendour appeared on Straitjacket Fits' second album in 1990, and was written by bandmember Andrew Brough. Released as Melt's second single, it failed to chart in New Zealand. But since its release it has gained greatly in stature, and now regularly features in polls of the greatest New Zealand songs.

Brough left the band before its third and final album. He later formed the band Bike, and died in Dunedin aged 56 in February 2020. Following the Fits' break-up lead singer Shayne Carter formed the group Dimmer, which had four successful album releases in the 2000s.

Straitjacket Fits - Down In Splendour (1990)   

See also:

Music: Straitjacket Fits - Such A Daze (1990)

Music: Straitjacket Fits - Done (1992)

Music: Bike - Save My Life (1996)

There'll come a time when you'll regret it

Quite possibly the scene that earned Shirley MacLaine her first Oscar nomination, in the otherwise sub-Sirkian 1958 melodrama, Some Came Running. Stealing most of the scenes she appears in as the unpolished good-time-girl Ginny Moorehead, this nightclub sequence sees MacLaine belting out a drunken rendition of the 1918 Layton and Creamer standard After You've Gone, with an audience of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. (The Best Actress Oscar that year went instead to Susan Hayward in I Want To Live! MacLaine would finally win her acting Oscar on the fifth attempt in 1984 for Terms of Endearment).

Shirley MacLaine - After You've Gone (from Some Came Running, 1958)

The mean streets of Karori

Burned-out Ford at the Johnson's Reserve carpark, at the end of Hatton St, Karori.

You used the words but you're only guessing

Thursday music corner: The 13th Floor Elevators were a Texan psychedelic rock band founded in Austin and led by Roky Erickson. The band issued three studio albums from 1966 to 1969, and scored one US Billboard top 100 hit in 1966 with You're Gonna Miss Me.

Tried To Hide was the final track on the band's first album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. The use of 'psychedelic' in the album title may be a first - it predates two other similar uses by a month, including the Blue Magoos' Psychedelic Lollipop.

13th Floor Elevators - Tried To Hide (1966)

See also:

Music: 13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me (1966)

Music: Blues Magoos - Tobacco Road (1966)

Music: Mogwai & Roky Erickson - Devil Rides (2008) 

On safari in Lower Hutt

 

Meet and shake the other's hand, work together for the good of the land

Thursday music corner: Soul and R&B legend Curtis Mayfield (b. Chicago 1942, d. Georgia 1999) started his performing career as a teenager in The Roosters, which soon became The Impressions. He quickly matured into a talented performer and songwriter, with a burgeoning talent for socially conscious musical expression. His 1965 Impressions song People Get Ready was an enduring success, and following his 1970 departure from the Impressions his solo career expanded with successful album and single releases, displaying a particular talent for soundtrack albums. 

His 1972 Super Fly soundtrack album reached number one in the US pop charts and was certified Gold. Six of his albums topped the US R&B charts. He also wrote numerous hits for other artists, including two US chart-toppers in 1975: Let's Do It Again by the Staple Singers, and He Don't Love You (Like I Love You) by Tony Orlando & Dawn.

We Got To Have Peace was the third single from Mayfield's second studio album, Roots. It reached number 32 on the US R&B charts in 1972.

Curtis Mayfield - We Got To Have Peace (single edit, 1972)

See also:

Music: The Impressions - People Get Ready (1965)

Music: Curtis Mayfield - Freddie's Dead (1972)

Music: Staple Singers - Let's Do It Again (1975)