Thursday music corner: Our Daughter's Wedding were a New York-based synthpop trio founded in 1979, showing influences of Gary Numan's Tubeway Army. The band released an EP and an album in 1981-82. Their first single, Lawnchairs, was released on Design Records in 1980, and reached number 31 on the Billboard Disco Chart and number 49 on the UK Singles Chart in August 1981. The band toured with a range of other artists including U2, Duran Duran and OMD, and appeared on various UK TV programmes. Following a year-long US tour supporting the Psychedelic Furs, Our Daughter's Wedding split up in 1984.
Thursday music corner: New Zealand music stalwart Sir Dave Dobbyn was born in Auckland in 1957. He is famed for both his band career - with Th' Dudes from 1975 to 1980 and DD Smash from 1980 to 1986 - and as a solo artist since 1986. With Th' Dudes he had three New Zealand top 40 singles, plus the classic Walking In Light. With DD Smash he scored a New Zealand chart-topping album, 1982's Cool Bananas, the platinum-certified The Optimist from 1984, and three New Zealand top 10 singles: Outlook for Thursday, Whaling and Magic (What She Do). All nine of his solo albums have reached the New Zealand top 20, with 1998's The Islander hitting number one and 2005's Available Light being certified double platinum. He has achieved three New Zealand chart-topping singles, and his first, Slice of Heaven, also topped the charts in Australia driven by the success of the Footrot Flats animated movie soundtrack. He was knighted in 2021.
Lament for the Numb(1993) was Dobbyn's third solo album, and was credited to Dave Dobbyn and the Stone People. The band consisted of Crowded House producer (and, much later, band-member) Mitchell Froom, plus two members of Elvis Costello's band, and the album was recorded and mixed in Hollywood by Tchad Blake, also a frequent Crowded House collaborator. In 2009 he discussed the album with Simon Sweetman:
I went to Hollywood to record the Lament for the Numb album; I was on a label that had connected me with Elvis Costello's great rhythm section [Pete Thomas and Bruce Thomas] so I couldn't help but want to pay tribute to him; and I was offering nods to Randy Newman and all of these heroes. I delivered an album that I thought was edgy. The record label called it 'un-releasable' and they shelved it. It sat for a year before being released."
The sparse romanticism of Belltower was a Lament for the Numb album track. Dobbyn performed it solo last year for RNZ Music.
Thursday music corner: Jazz and funk singer Louella "Spanky" Wilson was born in Philadelphi around 1947. She has released six studio albums between 1969 and 2006, including four between 1969 and 1975: Doin' It and Spankin' Brand New (both 1969), Let It Be (1970) and Specialty of the House (1975). After a period living and working in Europe, she returned to live in California, and collaborated with other artists including Philippe Milanta, the François Laudet Big Band and the Quantic Soul Orchestra.
Wilson's funk-soul cover of Cream's 1967 hit Sunshine of Your Love appeared as the second track on her debut soul recording Doin' It. The album also included covers of Light My Fire and Who's Sorry Now.
