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