17 November 2024

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.

14 November 2024

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) 

07 November 2024

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)

31 October 2024

Your parents are people, and that's all we can be

Thursday music corner: American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III was born in North Carolina in 1946, and since his self-titled debut album in 1970 he has released a large body of work: seven studio albums in the 1970s, four in the 1980s, four in the 1990s, five in the 2000s, four in the 2010s, and two so far in the current decade. In 2007 he worked with musician Joe Henry to create the score for Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, and in 2010 he won a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy for his album High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, and was previously married to folk singer Kate McGarrigle.

The poignant divorce ballad Your Mother and I appeared on the Richard Thompson-produced 1986 album More Love Songs, which was recorded in England, during a period when Wainwright lived there, and attained greater public recognition by appearing regularly on Jasper Carrott's TV show.

Loudon Wainwright III - Your Mother and I (1986)


See also:
Music: Loudon Wainwright III -  I Knew Your Mother (live, 2016)
Music: Loudon Wainwright III - Me & My Friend the Cat (1971)
Music: Kate McGarrigle, Rufus & Martha Wainwright - Talk To Me of Mendocino (live, 1999)