Because we'll see the mountains tumble before we say goodbye

Thursday music corner: English pop band Unit 4+2 weren't, strictly speaking, a one-hit wonder, having scored two UK top 40 singles, but their 1965 chart-topper Concrete and Clay is the only indelible contribution the band made to the 1960s pop scene. The single hit number 1 on 10 April 1965, supplanting the Rolling Stones' The Last Time, and the band appeared on Top of the Pops on 3 June 1965. Concrete and Clay also reached number one in Canada and was a middling hit in both Australia and the US. In America its chart success was limited by a pre-emptive cover version by an American producer. 

Unit 4+2 released two albums and 12 singles; the other chart success was Concrete and Clay's follow-up, (You've) Never Been in Love Like This Before, which reached number 14 in the UK. The band dissolved in 1970.

Unit 4+2 - Concrete and Clay (1965)

See also:

Music: Eddie Rambeau - Concrete and Clay (1965)

Music: Martin Plaza - Concrete and Clay (1986)

Music: Jurassic 5 - Concrete & Clay (2000)

The NZ Rowing team's trip to the 1975 World Rowing Champs in Nottingham

This is a special guest post from former senior Beehive official, 1976 Montreal Olympics rowing eights bronze medallist (and my former landlord) Alec McLean, on the 1975 World Rowing Championships in Nottingham. Reposted here, lightly edited, from Facebook with Alec's permission:   

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Fifty years ago yesterday! The 1975 World Rowing Champs, Nottingham. It was a funny old trip. From memory, Rowing NZ had very ambitious plans for that tour. In preparation for the Montreal Olympic Games, a lengthy North American tour was planned, even some talk of the team getting jobs while away (all amateurs in those days). The squad assembled in Christchurch quite early, anticipating a departure for North America before going on to the UK.

As it turned out NZ Rowing had absolutely no funds - the North American plans fell by the wayside, we would continue training in Christchurch, and fly straight to UK for a very short build up to the World Champs at Nottingham.

So began a very long training period through a Christchurch winter (NZ Rowing didn't move to Karapiro until 1976). We would occasionally turn up for training at 3pm, frost still on the ground, and very occasionally you would see snow building up on the ears of the guy in front of you as we plied the river at Kerrs Reach.

We also had some health issues with the guys, one having to pull out, plus some crew changes, making it hard to get some consistency going. After flying to the UK we settled in, accommodated at Pangbourne Nautical College in Berkshire.

 
We again had some crew changes through illness. The stretch of water on the Thames by the Pangbourne College sheds was not long enough for eights training, so the eight moved up the river to Hobb's boat-yard. It proved to be a great venue, and I have since been back to Hobb's boat-yard twice on visits to England. Despite all our setbacks, we had an amazing black Empacher carbon fibre boat, extremely fast, and great looking. It also hummed! Some sort of harmonic resonating in the aluminium riggers maybe. It was a bit surreal rowing up the Thames on a beautiful English summers day, just the sound of the oars going kachunk, kachunk, then at a certain speed the boat would start humming - unique. But we were running out of time. Rusty had said a couple of times, 'I think there is a better way of rowing this boat', but time was against us, and we were into the Champs at Nottingham in no time. 

We had a perfect row in winning the heat, going straight through to the final. I don't really recall the final - I see from the clippings that stroke Grant McCauley says we got a slightly shaky start, but we ended up with a bronze behind East Germany and Russia. Second bronze for me! I should emphasise that our three crews had travelled from NZ just four weeks before the finals, with three weeks training in the UK, and having had not a single race until the heats.

I must mention our (unofficial) training shirts. A colleague of mine in Customs had done a bit of a cartoon for me (pinched from one those old Ozzie weekly magazines - it was a cricketer). So I had some t-shirts made up for the guys. Well, what a hit - as soon as the boys saw them I had to get another big batch made up. They were also a hit when it came to swapping shirts at the end of the Champs (an age-old custom). Some crafty bargainers were even getting a three for one swap, or a track suit for a scrappy NZ t-shirt. I managed to trade mine for an East German racing singlet (the East Germans were forbidden from trading their rowing gear). I offered him my racing singlet, but he said 'No, I want the one with the club'. So that was 1975!

 
Final crew - David Simmons cox, Grant McCauley, me, Dave Rodger, Athol Earl, Lindsay Wilson, Ross Collinge, Trevor Coker (dec), Pete Dignan (dec).

AM: 'Departing Pangbourne College for training. No money that year - a clapped out Ford Transit with two wooden benches along each side in the back. Lindsay Wilson, me, Pete Dignan (sadly passed away from cancer and few years ago)'

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The NZ rowing eights came third at Nottingham (time 5:43.61) behind East Germany (5:39.01) and the Soviet Union (5:41.34). Wikipedia notes that 'Beginning in 1974, doping became a blanket policy imposed by the GDR [East German] sports federation' (source).

Cinematic amusements in Wellington 100 years ago today

The Amusements section of Wellington's Dominion morning newspaper for Monday 31 August 1925 carries the usual detailed advertisements for cinema and theatre offerings, illustrating the busy entertainment scene in the capital a hundred years ago. Four cinemas advertised their wares, plus one theatre with a jam-packed vaudeville programme.

The DeLuxe Theatre ('The Finest Theatre under the Southern Cross') 

The Thundering Herd was directed by William K. Howard and featured Jack Holt, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery Sr. and Raymond Hatton. The Paramount film was a lightning-fast page-to-screen journey for a Zane Grey western novel released in the same year. It features the entire bison population of Yellowstone in a climactic stampede scene. 

Howard was a busy director in the 1920s and '30s, and his 1933 Spencer Tracy film The Power & the Glory is now recognised as an early influence on Citizen Kane. 

Jack Holt was at this point a 37-year-old actor best known for his roles in Westerns. His son Tim Holt would also become a Hollywood Western star for RKO in the 1940s. Father and son would both appear in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Holt Sr. in a minor, uncredited role.  

One of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1922, Lois Wilson was 31 in 1925. The following year she would appear as Daisy Buchanan in the first film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. 

The Thundering Herd, like many silent films of the era, has not survived. The De Luxe was built the previous year and since 1945 it has been known as the Embassy, Wellington's premier cinema.

King's Theatre ('Wellington's Popular Picture House')

Locked Doors was a romantic drama directed by William C. de Mille, elder brother of the more famous Cecil. In melodramatic circumstances a married woman Mary (Betty Compson) becomes infatuated with another man, John (Theodore von Eltz), who is then invited to move in by the married woman's husband, Norman (Theodore Roberts) to forget about another failed love affair. High drama ensues when a house fire traps Mary and John together in her bedroom, and they are discovered by Norman. Like The Thundering Herd, Locked Doors is a lost silent film.

Utah-born Betty Compson was 28 in 1925 and had been a film actor since 1915. Her success in the early 1920s enabled her to start her own film production company. In 1928, the year of the second Oscar ceremony, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Barker, but lost out to Mary Pickford in Coquette.  

The King's was New Zealand's first purpose-built movie theatre, and opened on Dixon St in 1910. It was demolished in 1986. 

Queen's Theatre ('The Cosiest House in Town') 

Still enjoyed today, the 1924 silent comedy Sherlock Jr. is directed by and stars silent era comedy legend Buster Keaton. A 45-minute classic featuring a cinema projectionist (Keaton) who, unlucky in love, falls into a dream that he is the World's Greatest Detective. In this dream he solves a great crime to clear his name and win the heart of The Girl (Kathryn McGuire) from a dastardly villain. The Girl's father is played by Joe Keaton, Buster's father.  

One of Keaton's dozen or so silent comedy classics of the mid-1920s, Sherlock Jr. was constructed around Keaton's desire for a regular Joe character to walk into a movie-screen and become the hero. In 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 greatest films of all time. It entered the public domain on 1 January 2020.

The Queen's opened in Cuba St in 1916 and operated as a cinema until 1955, when it was converted into a billiard hall. It is now occupied by Loretta Cafe in the building next door to Slow Boat Records.

Paramount Theatre

The Great White Way was a boxing flick directed by E. Mason Hopper and released in January 1924. Made in cooperation with the New York City Fire Department, the ten-reeler features Anita Stewart as Follies dancer Mabel, who falls in love with prize-fighter Joe (Oscar Shaw). In it, Joe has to win a big bout to secure the funds to secure Mabel's show from an unscrupulous promoter. The film was produced by William Randolph Hearst for Goldwyn Pictures. It is also a lost picture.

Hopper was a prolific silent film director from 1917 until the end of the 1920s. He also appeared in an uncredited role as a doctor in the 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard. Stewart's real first name was Anna but Vitagraph accidentally publicised her as Anita, which she later adopted. For four years until 1922 she had operated her own production company, and shortly after The Great White Way she left the major studios and took roles in 'Poverty Row' studios to stay working; her final film was in 1928. She also wrote a murder mystery novel, The Devil's Toy, in 1935. Shaw was mainly a stage actor, and is now best known for appearing in the Marx Brothers' first film, The Cocoanuts (1929).

The Paramount operated as a cinema from 1917 to 2017. The last Wellington Film Society screening there was Wim Wenders' 1974 road movie, Wrong Move.

His Majesty's Theatre 

Offering a 'brand new bill that for entertainment value has never been approached in the history of N.Z. Vaudeville', His Majesty's presented Australian "Prince of Comedians" Jim Gerald and his titular Revue Company in their production 'Not Likely', which was billed as "A 100 per cent laughing show with Jimmy as a bonus Chemist's Assistant". Also on the bill was the New York comedy novelty act Three White Kuhns, and comedians George Edwards and Molly Hughes. His Majesty's opened in 1912, and since 1930 has been known as the St James.

See also:
Blog: 100th anniversary of the Embassy Theatre, 31 October 2024

Blog: What's on at the Regal Cinema Karori (1943), 27 August 2023

Blog: What's on at the Regal Cinema Karori (1929-30), 10 February 2020

As my name moves across your lips you see a grown man reeling

Thursday music corner: White Denim are an American rock group formed in Austin, Texas, in 2006. The band has released thirteen studio albums to date, with the seventh and eighth, Stiff (2016) and Performance (2018) achieving success in the UK album charts. Their two most recent albums have been released on the British indie label Bella Union.

The soul-funk-influenced Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah) was the second single from White Denim's 2016 album Stiff, an album in which the band went back to basics and recorded speedily in Asheville, North Carolina, after a fortnight's rehearsal. Mojo magazine later named Stiff one of the fifty best albums of 2016.

White Denim - Ha Ha Ha Ha (Yeah) (2016)

See also:

Music: White Denim - At Night In Dreams (live, 2014)

Music: White Denim - Holda You (I'm Psycho) (2016)

Music: White Denim - Crystal Bullets (2021)

As the crowds begin complaining how the Beaujolais is raining

Thursday music corner: Carmarthenshire-born John Cale has experimented with a wide range of musical styles over his long career, which was kick-started by his role as founding member of the enormously influential New York art-rock ensemble the Velvet Underground. He has released 23 solo albums, including collaborations with Terry Riley, Lou Reed, Brian Eno and Bob Neuwirth.

The euphoric, nonsensical baroque pop song Paris 1919 is the title track of Cale's third solo studio album, recorded in Los Angeles and released in February 1973. Cale has performed the entire album live with an orchestra, commencing in Cardiff in 2009.

John Cale - Paris 1919 (1973)  

See also:

Music: John Cale - The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy (1974)

Music: John Cale - Crazy Egypt (Cale / Byrne, 1996)

Music: John Cale - I Wanna Be Around (2001)

Shall I mourn your decline with some thunderbird wine

Thursday music corner: Ian Dury (1942-2000) was an English punk rock and new wave singer-songwriter who, with his band the Blockheads, released 11 studio albums, including one posthumously. The band's second album New Boots and Panties!! (1977) and fourth album Do It Yourself (1979), both on Stiff Records, reached the top five of the UK album charts. A former polio sufferer, Dury was a prominent activist in the music world for disability rights. He died of cancer in March 2000, aged 57.

Sweet Gene Vincent was the first single from New Boots and Panties!! While it failed to chart, it was ranked as number 13 in the NME tracks of 1977 list. The song focuses on the pioneering American rocker whose 1971 death purportedly spurred Dury into pursuing his rock career.

Ian Dury & the Blockheads - Sweet Gene Vincent (live, 1978)

See also:
Music: Ian Dury & the Blockheads - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick (1978)
Music: Ian Dury & the Blockheads - Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt.3 (1979)
Music: Ian Dury - Profoundly in Love With Pandora (1985)