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)

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.

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)

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 

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

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.

Dig the bop girl start to move, down inside that microgroove

Thursday music corner: Australian singer and journalist Pat Wilson achieved fame in 1983 when her single Bop Girl reached number 2 in the Australian pop charts. The song was written by her then-husband, Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock co-founder Ross Wilson, who also appeared in the Gillian Armstrong-shot music video. Another cast-member of the video was 15-year-old Nicole Kidman, for whom this was her screen debut. Most of the video was shot in the eastern Sydney suburb of South Coogee. Bop Girl received airplay in the US and also charted in New Zealand (number 10) and South Africa (number 28).

Pat Wilson - Bop Girl (1983)

See also:

Music: Pat Wilson - Strong Love (1984)

Music: Mondo Rock - Come Said The Boy (1983)

Music: Daddy Cool - Eagle Rock (1971)

If you have a hard time getting there, maybe you're gone

Thursday music corner: American alternative rock group the Dandy Warhols were formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1994. Members Courtney Taylor-Taylor, Peter Holmström and Zia McCabe have participated since 1994, while drummer Brent DeBoer, Taylor-Taylor's cousin, joined in 1998. They have released 12 studio albums to date, including four on Capitol Records from 1997 to 2005. Two of these major label records, ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997) and Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (2000) were certified gold in the UK. Seven Dandy Warhols singles reached the UK top 40 from 1997 to 2003.

Get Off was the first single from the Dandy Warhols' third album, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia. Written by Taylor-Taylor, it reached number 34 in the UK singles charts in 2000. It preceded their breakthrough single Bohemian Like You, which attracted considerable attention after featuring in a Vodafone ad.

Dandy Warhols - Get Off (2000)

See also:

Music: Dandy Warhols - Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth (1997)

Music: Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You (2000)

Music: David Bowie w/ the Dandy Warhols - White Light / White Heat (live, 2002)

How the telegraph knitted the world together

The electric telegraph allowed a conversation. It connected points on the globe as messages sped through copper at nearly the speed of light.

Not everyone was welcoming. Henry David Thoreau [...] groused: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

While Texas may not have had much important to learn from Maine, in the summer of 1860 Texas had a great deal to learn from Chicago: the Republican Party National Convention meeting at the Wigwam nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for president. So started a chain of events that would kill twenty-five thousand white adult Texans and maim twenty-five thousand more, and that would free all two hundred thousand enslaved Black Texans within five years. Maine may not have had much to learn from Texas, but telegraphs reporting relative prices of Grand Bank codfish in Boston, Providence, New York, and Philadelphia were of great importance to Maine fishermen slipping their moorings.

Knowing the price of codfish is valuable, the freeing of hundreds of thousands of Americans is profound, and both only hint at the shift that came with telegraphed intelligence. Ever since the development of language, one of humanity's great powers has been that our drive to talk and gossip truly turns us into an anthology intelligence. What one of us in the group knows, if it is useful, pretty quickly everyone in the group knows, and often those well beyond the group, too. The telegraph enlarged the relevant group from the village or township or guild to, potentially, the entire world.

- J Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, New York, 2022, p.52-3.

I can tell my sister by the flowers in her eyes

Thursday music corner: Three Dog Night are a Los Angeles-formed band that were at their prime from their formation in 1967 until their initial split in 1976. The band featured three vocalists: Danny Hutton (who still leads the group in its current incarnation), Cory Wells and Chuck Negron. Three Dog Night has released 12 studio albums, the first six of which hit the top 20 of the US album charts from 1968 to 1972. The band scored 21 US top 40 singles from 1969 to 1975, including three number ones: Mama Told Me Not To Come (1970, originally written by Randy Newman for Eric Burdon), Joy To The World (1971, written by Hoyt Axton), and Black And White (1972, written by David Arkin and Earl Robinson). 

Hippie pop anthem Shambala was the first single released from Three Dog Night's 1973 album Cyan. Written by Joe Cocker songwriter Daniel Moore, Shambala sold a million copies in the US and reached number three in the Billboard charts. It also topped the New Zealand pop charts.

Three Dog Night - Shambala (1973)

See also:

Music: Three Dog Night - Eli's Comin' (1969, written by Laura Nyro)

Music: Randy Newman - Mama Told Me Not To Come (live, 1971)

Music: Hoyt Axton - Joy To The World (live, 1985)

Reporting in 1979: "We're nearly out of Bond"

We're Nearly Out of Bond!

With Moonraker, the latest James Bond movie, due for release next year film producers will soon have to look beyond the books of author Ian Fleming for further adventures of 007.

Fleming, an old Etonian and newspaper-man who died in 1964, produced 12 Bond novels and two books of JB short stories, beginning with Casino Royale.

The movie industry began its Bond run in 1962 with Doctor No and with Moonraker had used all of Fleming's material except for the short story collections, Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only.

No doubt there will be no shortage of screen writers ready to dream up new dangerous assignments for Bond, perhaps expanding the Fleming short stories into full-scale epics. But will they be the same?

On past performances and estimated total of 1000 million admissions to Bond pictures world-wide Moonraker is likely to be one of the major box-office attractions of 1979.

Cameras began turning in Paris on August 14 and the five-month shooting schedule is to be completed next month.

In addition to France, sets for Moonraker include the canals of Venice, the jungles of Central America, Rio de Janeiro, the falls of Brazil and (created in Britain's Pinewood Studios) an outer space set.

For Roger Moore who, incidentally, will be appearing on TV next year in his Saint guise, Moonraker will be his fourth 007 stint, following his successes in Live and Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun and, last year, The Spy Who Loved Me.

In keeping with Fleming tradition Moore, and Sean Connery before him, have had a different playmate for each movie. The line-up has included Ursula Andress (in Doctor No), Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore in Goldfinger), Diana Rigg, Jill St John, Britt Ekland and most recently, Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova.

Theatre-goers have an opportunity to size up Moonraker co-star Lois Chiles. The Texas-born actress, who once modelled for Elle magazine covers, is appearing as Linnet in the Agatha Christie story Death on the Nile. Previously she appeared in The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby and Coma.

No other book character has made a greater impact on the motion picture business than James Bond, but there is no mystery about it.

Fleming, who had an honest commercial approach to the 007 books, once wrote: "The target of my books lies somewhere between the solar plexus and the upper thigh. "I write for warm-blooded heterosexuals in railway trains, aeroplanes and beds."

- 'Talking pictures with John Berry', NZ Truth, 9 January 1979, p.24

[To date there have been 14 Bond movies since Moonraker]

Japan meets the West

While Japanese experimented with bustles, bonnets, and beef, on the other side of the world, Westerners were discovering a new and enchanting culture. In 1858, after Japan opened to trade with the West, Japanese goods suddenly became widely available. Poverty-stricken samurai sold their heirlooms, often at reduced prices, and swords, helmets, armor, kimonos, and exquisite porcelain found their way into the curio shops of the West.

Everyone was intrigued and charmed by the delicacy, precision, and beauty of Japanese art and artifacts. Trendsetting women wore kimonos, fashionable people collected woodblock prints, and filled their homes with screens, fans, lacquerware, blue-and-white porcelain, vases, curved swords, netsuke, and artifacts inspired by Japanese art. Audiences flocked to see Japan-inspired plays and operas, from The Geisha with Marie Tempest to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and David Belasco's play Madame Butterfly, which opened in March 1900 and inspired Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Japonisme, as the craze was dubbed, swept the West, inspiring artists, architects, and interior designers and spawning Art Nouveau. In 1856, the artist Félix Bracquemond discovered a collection of manga engravings by Hokusai in Paris (manga simply means "whimsical drawing," the same term used for manga comics today) and soon a generation of Western artists were collecting, being inspired by, and sometimes copying Japanese woodblock prints. In 1876, Monet painted his wife Camille in an extraordinary Japanese kimono. Van Gogh had six hundred woodblock prints and wrote that he yearned to visit Japan or at least learn to see with Japanese eyes.

- Lesley Downer, The Shortest History of Japan, New York, 2024, P.163-4

See also:

Japan: Affordable Tokyo studio living, 15 January 2021

Japan: Hutt Japan festival, 19 November 2017

Japan: Ueno Park Tokyo, 14 January 2009

Maybe I love you 'cos I'm thick & you make me feel clever

Thursday music corner: Amelia & The Housewives are a Brighton band formed in May 2024, offering sunny female-fronted indie pop. Maybe is their debut single, released on 11 April 2025. They played Dust in Brighton yesterday, and on 29 April will be playing Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes in London along with Scattered Ashes and Camber.

Amelia & The Housewives - Maybe (2025)

See also:

Music: Amelia & The Housewives - Pantomime (2024, via Soundcloud)

Music: The Courettes - Shake! (2024)

Music: The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me (2006)

Zealandia tui

 

"I've never yet had a failure"

Edmonds "Sure to Rise" Baking Powder advertisement, Dominion, 6 April 1925 - via PapersPast

Iona Tower

 

I've got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome

Thursday music corner: MJ Lenderman, who played Wellington's Meow Nui on Monday night, is a 26-year-old North Carolina alt-rock / alt-country artist with a penchant for numerous collaborations. He has been a member of indie rock outfit Wednesday and played and recorded with fellow artists Waxahatchee, Indigo De Souza and This Is Lorelei. He has released five solo albums, five EPs and six singles.

Wristwatch is Lenderman's most recent single, and features on his current album Manning Fireworks. This performance is from the Jimmy Fallon show in September 2024.

MJ Lenderman - Wristwatch (live, 2024)

See also:

Music: MJ Lenderman - She's Leaving You (live, 2024)

Music: MJ Lenderman - Joker Lips (live, 2025)

Music: Neil Young - Lotta Love (1978) - as covered by MJL on Monday night

Samba ao Vento, CubaDupa

 

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

From Makara Peak

 

Wind turbines & Marlborough coast

Karori from Makara Peak

West Wind (northern half)

Makara hills

Still alive still alive still alive still alive

Thursday music corner: Khruangbin are a world music-infused Texan three-piece who formed in 2010, whose name is Thai for 'airplane'. The band has released five studio albums, with the most recent, A La Sala, released in April 2024. Khruangbin has also released 19 singles, including two featuring fellow Texan singer-songwriter, Leon Bridges.

The infectious groove of People Everywhere (Still Alive) appeared on the band's 2015 debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You. This extended performance is from the Austin City Limits festival in October 2024.

Khruangbin - People Everywhere (Still Alive) (live in Austin, 2024)

See also:

Music: Khruangbin - Summer Madness (Kool & the Gang cover, 2020)

Music: Khruangbin & Leon Bridges - Texas Sun (live at Glastonbury, 2022)

Music: Noah Cyrus & Leon Bridges - July (2019)

Not talkin' 'bout religion, no - not talkin' 'bout fashion, no

Thursday music corner: The Dynamic Hepnotics were an Australian soul band formed by "Continental" Robert Susz in Sydney in 1979. Although the band released only one album, 1985's Take You Higher, they achieved considerable chart success with their most memorable single, Soul Kind of Feeling. Written by Susz and appearing as the final track on Take You Higher, the exuberant soul single reached number five in the Australian pop charts in 1984, driven in particular by Susz's dramatic falsetto vocals, and popularised further by numerous appearances in the soap Neighbours. The song charted even higher in New Zealand, reaching number three in March 1985. 

The band had one other Australian charting single, Gotta Be Wrong (Way to Love), which reached number 20 later in 1984. The band split in 1986, but reunited for two music festival shows in 2015.   

Dynamic Hepnotics - Soul Kind of Feeling (1984)

See also:
Music: Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back (1984)

Music: Eurogliders - Heaven (Must Be There) (1984)

Music: Pseudo Echo - A Beat For You (1984)

Precolonial maritime New Zealand

That record, since December 1642 when Abel Tasman first sighted 'Clyppygen Hoeck', to December 1840, when colonisation began, had the records of 1758 vessels arriving on the [New Zealand] coast.

They came, first to explore, then to exploit, little schooners and brigs out of the infant seaport of Port Jackson, the whaling barques out of the ancient port of London, the full-riggers from the whaling ports of Maine and Massachusetts, from Lisbon, Copenhagen, Le Havre, Bremen and Hobart Town. Sealers and whalers, spar ships and flax traders, sandalwood schooners on their way home from Fiji, ships laden with tortoise shell and coconut oil from Tahiti, and ships of war from Trincomalee and Toulon.

New Zealand, and many of its precolonial seaports, enjoyed a trade by sea that was truly international, and today, as one sails up the harbours of Akaroa, Port Underwood, Hokianga or the Bay of Islands, with only an occasional fisherman or pleasure boat in sight, it is difficult to imagine those waters thronged with barques, brigs and schooners flying the flags of many nations, of whaleboats, in countless numbers, trafficking between ships and from ship to shore.

They came in their hundreds, seeking grog and girls, pork and potatoes, and the natural products the coast had to offer: oil to light the lamps of Europe and America; whalebone to corset their women; sealskins to robe the Manchus of China or to appear on the streets of London as 'beaver hats'; flax to provide canvas, rope and cordage for their ships; and solid kauri spars for masts and yards. Whatever they sought, they came by sea, stayed a while and went on, about their seafaring business. A few were left behind, seamen from America, France, Australia, England, Scotland and Ireland, ship deserters of many nations, living with their Maori wives and laying the foundations of what was to become a multiracial society.

To some perhaps, the most significant maritime activity of these years will be seen as that occurring in 1840, the arrival in Port Nicholson of the chartered ships of the New Zealand Company, carrying between them close on 2000 intending settlers, to be landed haphazardly on the beach at Petone in the rude collection of tents, shacks and whares they proudly called 'Britannia'.

- Rear-Admiral John O'Connell Ross,* New Zealand Maritime History to 1840: People, Ships, Trade & Settlement, Wellington, 2024, p.146-7.

(* Ross was Royal New Zealand Navy Chief of Naval Staff, 1965-69)

See also:
History: The itinerant life of a tramp steamer, 11 December 2021

History: The lifeblood of a young colony, 12 June 2009

History: Tales to tell back on shore, 21 January 2009

Like two Christophers in the snow

Thursday music corner: Ocean Colour Scene are a rock band formed in Birmingham in 1989, consisting at the outset of Simon Fowler, Steve Cradock, Damon Minchella and Oscar Harrison. They first attained wider fame after being invited to tour as support to Paul Weller in 1993 and Oasis in 1995. The band achieved success as part of the Britpop boom, including scoring three top-five UK albums from 1996 to 1999. Moseley Shoals, the most successful of their albums, went triple platinum in the UK, and its successor, Marchin' Already, topped the UK album charts. Ocean Colour Scene have released 10 studio albums between 1992 and 2013, and scored 17 UK top 40 singles between 1996 and 2007. Six of the band's singles also reached the Irish top 40. 

Travellers Tune was the second single (after Hundred Mile High City) from the band's third album, Marchin' Already. Released in 1997, it peaked at number five in the UK singles chart, and number 30 in Ireland. American soul singer P.P. Arnold, another frequent Paul Weller collaborator, provides guest vocals. 

Ocean Colour Scene - Travellers Tune (1997)

See also:
Music: Ocean Colour Scene - You've Got It Bad (1996)

Music: Paul Weller -  The Weaver (w/ Steve Cradock, 1993)

Music: P.P. Arnold - The First Cut is the Deepest (1967)

The measure of Pope John Paul II

[Pope John Paul II] was a hard man to measure. Sternly authoritarian he nevertheless abandoned the use of the Royal plural in his encyclicals and allocutions: he was the first pope to write not as 'we' but in his own persona, as Karol Wojtyla. He was also a passionate believer in religious liberty, and at Vatican II played a key role in the transformation of Catholic teaching in that area. Often seen as dismissive of other faiths, he had an intense interest in Judaism, born out of a lifelong friendship with a Jewish boy from Krakow: he was the first Pope to visit the Roman Synagogue, and in 1993 he established formal diplomatic relations with the State of Israel. His openness to other religions extended to the non-Abrahamic traditions. In October 1986 at Assisi he initiated acts of worship involving not only Muslims, but Hindus, the Dali Lama and assorted Shamans. When praying by the Ganges at the scene of Gandhi's cremation he became so absorbed that his entourage lost patience and literally shook him back into his schedule. The uncompromising defender of profoundly unpopular teaching on matters such as birth-control, he was nevertheless the most populist pope in history, an unstoppable tarmac-kisser, hand-shaker, granny-blesser, baby-embracer. Convinced of his own immediate authority over and responsibility for every Catholic in the world, he went to the people, showing himself, asserting his authority, coaxing, scolding, joking, weeping, and trailing exhausted local hierarchies in his wake [...]

John Paul II's pontificate, the longest since Pius IX and the second longest in history, will also be judged one of the most momentous, in which a pope not only once more reasserted papal control of the Church, and thereby sought to call a halt to the decentralising initiated as a result of the Second Vatican Council, but in which the Pope, long since a marginal figure in the world of realpolitik, once more played a major role in world history, and the downfall of Soviet Communism. John Paul's own contradictions defied easy categorisations. Passionately committed to the freedom and integrity of the human person, he was the twentieth century's most effective ambassador for such freedoms, setting his own country on a path to liberation and thereby helping trigger the collapse of the Soviet empire. Two of his major encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio, celebrate the ability of the free human mind to grasp fundamental truth and to discern the will of God which is also the fulfilment of human nature. Yet under his rule, the last quarter of the twentieth century saw a revived authoritarianism in the Catholic Church, in which, in the judgement of many, theological exploration was needlessly outlawed or prematurely constrained. Passionately committed to reconciliation with the Orthodox, his pontificate saw an expansion of Catholicism within the former Soviet Union which outraged Orthodox leaders and hardened the ancient suspicions he so painfully and sincerely laboured to dispel. This Polish pope did more than any single individual in the whole history of Christianity to reconcile Jews and Christians and to remove the ancient stain of anti-Semitism from the Christian imagination: his visits to the Roman synagogue and above all to the Holy Land in 2000, and his repeated expressions of penitence for Christian anti-Semitism, were imaginative gestures whose full implications and consequences have yet to appear. Yet he canonised Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who voluntarily took the place of a married man in a Nazi concentration camp death cell, but who had edited an anti-Semitic paper between the Wars. Wojtyla also canonized Edith Stein, the Jewish convert to Catholicism who became a Carmelite nun and died because she was a Jew in Auschwitz in 1942. The Pope saw Stein as a reconciling figure. Jews saw her as an emblem of proselytisation and, as in the case of Kolbe, an attempt to annex the Shoah for Catholicism. Wojtyla was not deflected from his purpose, and despite protests both canonizations went ahead.

- Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale, 2006, pp.377 & 382-3.

From Mt Kaukau

 

Iona Tower

 

Songs discussed in Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022)

Bobby Bare - Detroit City 1963

Elvis Costello - Pump It Up 1978

Perry Como - Without a Song 1951

Jimmy Wages - Take Me From this Garden of Evil 1956

Webb Pierce - There Stands the Glass 1953

Billy Joe Shaver - Willy the Wandering Gypsy & Me 1973

Little Richard - Tutti Frutti 1955

Elvis Presley - Money Honey 1956

The Who - My Generation 1965

Harry McLintock - Jesse James 1928

Ricky Nelson - Poor Little Fool 1958

Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard - Pancho & Lefty 1983

Jackson Browne - The Pretender 1976

Bobby Darin - Mack the Knife 1959

Bing Crosby - Whiffenpoof Song 1947

Eddy Arnold - You Don't Know Me 1956

The Temptations - Ball of Confusion 1970

Johnnie & Jack - Poison Love 1950

Bobby Darin - Beyond the Sea 1958

Willie Nelson - On the Road Again 1980

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes - If You Don't Know Me By Now 1972

Johnnie Ray - The Little White Cloud That Cried 1951

Marty Robbins - El Paso 1959

Alvin Youngblood Hart - Nelly Was a Lady 2004

Johnnie Taylor - Cheaper to Keep Her 1973

Ray Charles - I Got a Woman 1954

The Fugs - CIA Man 1967

Vic Damone - On the Street Where You Live 1956

The Grateful Dead - Truckin’ 1970

Osborne Brothers - Ruby Are You Mad? 1956

Johnny Paycheck - Old Violin 1986

Domenico Modugno - Volare 1958

The Clash - London Calling 1979

Hank Williams with his Drifting Cowboys - Your Cheatin’ Heart 1953

Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou 1963

Allman Brothers - Midnight Rider 1970

Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes 1956

The Platters - My Prayer 1956

Warren Zevon - Dirty Life & Times 2003

John Trudell - Doesn't Hurt Anymore 2001

Little Walter - Key to the Highway 1958

Mose Allison - Everybody Cryin’ Mercy 1968

Edwin Starr - War 1970

Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two - Big River 1957

Sonny Burgess - Feel So Good 1957/58

Dean Martin - Blue Moon 1964

Cher - Gypsies Tramps & Thieves 1971

Uncle Dave Macon - Keep My Skillet Good & Greasy 1924

Tommy Edwards - It's All In The Game 1958

Ernie K-Doe - A Certain Girl 1961

Waylon Jennings - I've Always Been Crazy 1978

Eagles - Witchy Woman 1972

Jimmy Reed - Big Boss Man 1960

Little Richard - Long Tall Sally 1956

Charlie Poole - Old & Only in the Way 1928

Santana - Black Magic Woman 1970

Jimmy Webb - By the Time I Get To Phoenix 1996

Rosemary Clooney - Come On-A My House 1951

Johnny Cash - Don't Take Your Guns to Town 1958

Judy Garland - Come Rain or Come Shine 1956

Nina Simone - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood 1964

Frank Sinatra - Strangers in the Night 1966

Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas 1964

The Drifters - Saturday Night at the Movies 1964

Pete Seeger - Waist Deep in the Big Muddy 1967

Dion - Where or When 1959

Sex & Agriculture

Thursday music corner: Dance Exponents, founded by vocalist Jordan Luck and guitarist Brian Jones, were the original 1980s incarnation of the truncated Exponents that took the New Zealand music charts by storm in the 1990s. Formed in 1981 and relocating from Timaru to Christchurch, the Dance Exponents released three successful albums: Prayers Be Answered (1983), Expectations (1985) and Amplifier (1986) and had nine New Zealand top 40 singles; the first, 1982's Victoria, being their most popular. 

As the Exponents the band went on to greater success in the 1990s, including three top ten albums and ten more top 40 singles. They attained their peak popularity thanks to the Something Beginning with C album from 1992, which featured twin New Zealand number three-charting singles in 1991, Why Does Love Do This To Me and Who Loves Who The Most.

Sex & Agriculture was a non-album Dance Exponents single from 1984, which followed up the barroom stomper I'll Say Goodbye (Even Though I'm Blue).

Dance Exponents - Sex & Agriculture (1984) 

See also:

Music: Dance Exponents - Airway Spies (1982)

Music: Exponents - Sink Like A Stone (1992)

Music: Jordan Luck Band - Under The Mercury Moon (2017)

Remnants of the band that didn't play on

One day I had to go and inspect the huge Sitmar Cruises neon at the end of Elizabeth Street on Flinders Street Station. It was about 50 foot long (15 metres) and displayed three different messages, including a great big ship revolving around. It had blown a fuse, and I thought, 'Oh bugger, where's the fuse for this thing?' Because, of course, the railways had bloody switchboards all over the place. So I got on up on the roof. I was walking along the roof following this conduit to one of those little beehives along the side of the railway building. There was an old rusty lock on the thing. I just ripped it off with my screwdriver and I went in. There was a little trapdoor up in the roof and the bloody conduit went up into that and I thought, 'You bastard!'. So I had to go downstairs and get a big pair of steps and drag it up. Got them into the bloody thing, got up, pushed the trapdoor open and stuck my head in.

There was about 100 musical instruments in there. All beautiful silver trumpets and trombones, violins, guitars, banjos. All the glue had come undone and they'd fallen into a heap of three-ply on the floor and all the skins had gone off the drums. And I thought, 'What a strange f***ing thing this is'. So I went down to the man in grey and asked if he had ever lost anything here. [It turned out] the bloke who hid them up there was told to hide the instruments because at the start of the Second World War everybody thought the Japs [the Japanese] were coming. He built a false ceiling in and put all the stuff up there and closed it up. He belonged to the Salvation Army band in Brunswick and they all went away with the Second 21st Australian Brigade [sic.] to Singapore.

"They were all captured by the Japs. As they were getting taken to Japan for forced labour, the troop ship they were on was torpedoed by a Yanky [US] ship. They were locked down in the hold. Two thousand of them went to the 'bottom bank' - one of the biggest Australian losses of life in the War. And he was the bloke that hid them; he'd worked for the railways.

They searched everywhere for these instruments – in Flinders Street, Spencer Street - couldn't find them. And so I said to the man in grey, 'Well, I think I've just found them. Apparently after the Second World War there was a reward of 100 quid for finding them. Well I said, 'I'll expect a cheque'. And I'm still waiting...''

- Ian 'Podgy' Rogers, neon maintenance man, in Stephen Banham, Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, Melbourne, 2017, p.252-3.

I've been used and I've been scorned

Thursday music corner: Thomas Lee Barrett, known as Pastor TL Barrett (b. New York, 1944) is an American preacher and gospel musician who has worked mainly in Chicago and released four gospel albums on four different labels from 1971 to 1976. Recording with his Youth for Christ Choir, Barrett's music first attained wider recognition after a 1976 track Father I Stretch My Hands was sampled by Kanye West in 2016. Since then Barrett's music has been widely sampled and featured on numerous TV programmes. 

Nobody Knows appeared on Barrett's 1971 album Like a Ship (Without a Sail). In addition to its many TV soundtrack appearances, it has also appeared on the soundtracks to the 2022 film Alice and Sofia Coppola's Priscilla (2023).   

Pastor TL Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Nobody Knows (1971)

See also:

Music: TL Barrett - Like a Ship (1971)

Music: TL Barrett - Here I Am (1973)

Music: TL Barrett - Father I Stretch My Hands (1976)

Zealandia

 

You throw your pearls before the swine, make the monkey blind

Thursday music corner: Peter Gabriel (b. Surrey, 1950) first came into the public eye thanks to his teenage band Genesis, formed with Charterhouse schoolmates Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. From 1969 to 1974 Genesis released six albums, with Gabriel providing lead vocals and wearing increasingly elaborate and theatrical costumes, some of which annoyed his bandmates. After a breakdown in band relations in 1974 Gabriel went solo and was replaced by Phil Collins as Genesis' lead vocalist. 

Gabriel has since released ten solo albums, the first four of which were all self-titled, and three of which topped the UK album charts: Peter Gabriel (1980, aka Peter Gabriel 3), So (1986) and I/O (2023). Gabriel has also released ten UK top 40 singles, including the 1986 MTV hit Sledgehammer, which also topped the US pop charts. 

Shock the Monkey appeared as the first single on Peter Gabriel (1982, aka Peter Gabriel 4). Gabriel has stated that the simian reference is a metaphor for jealousy. The single failed to reach the UK and New Zealand top 40 but reached the top 40 in Australia, Canada and the US, and reached number 2 in Italy.

Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey (1982)

See also:

Music: Peter Gabriel - Red Rain (live at Giants Stadium, 1986)

Music: Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill (live in Athens, 1987)

Music: Peter Gabriel & Youssou N'Dour - Shakin' the Tree (1989)

Nga Manu Nature Reserve

 

I've been drinking down your pain, gonna turn that whiskey into rain

Thursday music corner: Singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos (b. Myra Ellen Amos in North Carolina, 1963), a child prodigy on the piano, came to fame after an abortive record-company attempt to fashion her into a popstar (1988's Y Tori Kant Read), gaining widespread attention for her richly autobiographical songwriting and classically-trained piano performances. Her first five solo albums all went platinum in America, and her second album, Under the Pink, entered the UK album charts at number one in February 1994. She has released 16 solo albums plus two live albums, and scored a UK pop number one in 1996 with the Armand van Helden remix of her track Professional Widow.

Big Wheel was the first single from Amos' 2007 album American Doll Posse. The album features 23 tracks, each under the aegis of one of five personas derived from Greek goddesses. Some American radio stations refused to play Big Wheel due to the lyric, "I am a M.I.L.F, don't you forget".

Tori Amos - Big Wheel (2007)

See also:

Music: Tori Amos - Crucify (live at Montreux, 1991)

Music: Al Stewart & Tori Amos - Year of the Cat (live, 1991)

Music: Tori Amos w/ Trent Reznor - Past the Mission (1994)

What East Germans wanted in the 1950s

Given that most of the men and women who were involved in the governmental and party structures of the newly established GDR had suffered horrendous political persecution during the Hitler years, one might have expected more resistance to the lack of democratic process within the new constitution. Here was a chance to build the better Germany many had dreamt of, why was there not more anger at the corruption of this ideal? Paradoxically, the answer lies precisely in the experiences of fascism and war, which had led many Germans to value stability and unity over pluralistic discussion. This was true East and West. Germans were exhausted and the majority wanted little to do with politics. Since 1914, there had been little respite from ideology, war, economic turmoil and rapid political change. A middle-aged German in 1949 had seen the whole spectrum of political systems in their lifetime, but none of the offerings had shown a functioning democracy. Where was a love for voting, citizens' rights and a pluralistic society meant to come from? What the German public wanted was not an array of parties on a voting slip every four years but food on the table, a restored roof over their heads and a future without war and economic disaster.

The difference between East and West was that the West delivered these things immediately while the East did not. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the FRG, was re-elected with results that modern politicians can only dream of: in 1953 and again in 1957, when his party received an astonishing 50.2 per cent of the vote despite a system of proportional representation which usually leads to coalition governments. This enabled him to run the country without forming a coalition for the only time in its history since 1949. All of this under Adenauer's famous slogan: 'Keine Experimente' - No Experiments.

East Germans too wanted no experiments in the 1950s. They wanted peace, secure jobs, food and an opportunity to rebuild their disrupted lives...

- Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990, 2023, p.109-110.

An afternoon at Wellington Zoo

A first visit in several years to take in the red panda encounter and enjoy the other animals, on a fine capital Saturday.