She makes the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave

Thursday music corner: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes is an album track and the fourth single from Paul Simon’s most popular solo album, the 16-million-selling, 1987 Grammy Awards Album of the Year, Graceland. Written in Apartheid-era South Africa and recorded in New York, the track features backing vocals from Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Their Zulu refrain, Wikipedia reports, translates roughly to ‘It’s not usual but in our days we see those things happen. They are women, they can take care of themselves’. Simon’s band’s percussion section included Youssou N’Dour, the Senegalese singer who would later attain fame as an enormously popular African recording artist and as Senegal’s Minister of Tourism.

Paul Simon w/ Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (1986)

Down From The Mountain

Thursday music corner: Kak Channthy (1980-2018) was the founder and lead singer of the psych-rock outfit Cambodian Space Project, with her Australian husband Julien Poulson. The band released five albums between 2011-17, inspired by Cambodian singers from the 1960s and 1970s, and it was the first band to release a 45rpm vinyl record in Cambodia since 1975. The band’s activities were curtailed by Channthy’s untimely death in a March 2018 road accident in Phnom Penh.

Down From The Mountain, a garage-pop number sung in the Khmer language, was the opening track of the band’s 2017 album Spaced-Out in Wonderland, released on ABC Records in Australia.

Cambodian Space Project – Down From the Mountain (2017)

The Karori Lunatic Asylum

The following is an extract from Medical Practice in the Early Days by R. Fulton M.D, 1922.

'As for the Wellington Hospital, which was at Karori, it was a frightful place. Suddenly a great sensation occurred in Wellington with regard to the treatment of patients in the Karori Lunatic Asylum.

This wretched institution, in every way unfit for the purpose for which it was erected, was often quoted as an instance of what a lunatic asylum ought not to be, but no one seemed to have had the slightest suspicion that its miserable inmates were subjected to cruelty and ill treatment. In May 1872, the Government received information from a former attendant, making the most serious charges against the keeper and matron. These were of such a character as to demand an immediate investigation, and Mr. [Henry] Bunny (the Provincial Secretary), Dr Hector, and Mr Crawford were appointed a Commission to take evidence and report. A report from the Commissioners brought the following: "The buildings and accommodation were found to be quite inadequate, and there was no proper system of enforcing that discipline and cleanliness so necessary for the proper treatment of the mentally afflicted. The evidence disclosed that the patients were often treated with unnecessary violence. The master and matron are quite unsuited by want of the necessary training and education, and by infirmity of temper on the part of the matron, for the management of such an institution. Surprise was expressed that the medical officer in charge had not long before discovered the abuses which were now disclosed. The doctor deplored the fact that be could not lay all the evidence before his readers, much of it was so terrible and painful that he had not the courage to quote it."'

- Quoted in Joseph & Betty Keanneally, 'Karori Then: Past Images & Recollections from a Wellington Suburb, Wellington, 1980

See also:
Blog: The old route to Karori, 16 August 2020
Blog: Rich pickings at the Regal, 10 February 2020

Blog: Wright's Hill Fortress, 29 October 2013

New Zealand's first airmail flight

New Zealand's first [air]mail flight gained a recommendation from the Postal Department to Cabinet approving an experiment to investigate the practicalities of airmail. The trial was arranged to convey mail [from Auckland] to the town of Dargaville at the northern end of the Kaipara Harbour. The flight commenced from the Man-of-war Steps opposite end of the Albert Street where a crowd of 2000 had assembled at various vantage points. George Bolt was the pilot and Leo Walsh was in charge of the experimental run, being the person who officially received the mail when it was handed over from the launch. The mail comprised 825 letters weighing 22lb and an equal weight of newspapers. On 16 December [1919] the weather was sunny and fine. 

The flight started at 10.15 a.m. then went up the coast to Mangawhai where it would turn west towards Kaiwaka, staying over the Kaipara Harbour and up the Northern Wairoa to its destination at Dargaville at 11.50 a.m. The schools were closed and a great part of Dargaville's population had turned out. The route took the machine over post offices and the appearance of the seaplane was recorded: Hobsonville 10.27 a.m. Mullet Point 10.45, Leigh 10.48, Pakiri 10.55, Mangawhai 11.10, Kaiwaka 11.13, Bickerstaffe 11.20, Pahi 11.34, Hukatere 11.35, Ruawai 11.36, Raupo 11.39, Tokatoka 11.42, Te Kopuru 11.46, and Dargaville 11.50 a.m.

Greeting the aviators in Dargaville was Postmaster-General and local MP, the Hon. Joseph Gordon Coates. After the mails had been delivered aboard the launch sent out by the post office authorities, the two aerial travellers and leading inhabitants of the town were entertained at a luncheon. Responding to the toast of his health, Mr. Coates dwelt upon the possibilities of aerial mail carriage to the Auckland district and to other parts of the Dominion and praised the work done by the New Zealand Flying School in connection with the war. The floatplane's crew were also toasted and then cheered as they departed south down the Northern Wairoa River to Helensville.

- Terry Moyle, The First: The Walsh Brothers & the Aeroplane Days of Edwardian New Zealand, Auckland, 2019, p.139.

See also:

News: 'Mails by seaplane', NZ Herald, 17 December 1919

History: NZ's first regular airmail service begins, 31 January 1921 

History: First official airmail flight to San Francisco, 2 January 1938 

There's nothing to lose, but no more to win

Thursday music corner: The Walker Brothers (who were not related) reversed the traditional ‘British Invasion’ by moving from America to England, and achieved their first UK number one single in 1965 with Make It Easy On Yourself. Follow-up single My Ship Is Coming In reached number 3, and was swiftly joined by The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore as their second UK number one in 1966, making them bona fide pop stars. Written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, who wrote many of the Four Seasons’ hits, the song was initially released by Frankie Valli in 1965, although that version didn’t chart successfully.

Singer Scott Walker (birth name Noel Scott Engel, 1943-2019) was an American-born pop idol who attained fame in Britain as part of the Walker Brothers group, and then in later years garnered attention for his increasingly avante-garde musical experimentation. He went solo in 1967 and released a series of self-titled albums, including the highly influential Scott 3 and Scott 4, both released in 1969. The latter album inspired the name of the London indie band Scott 4, which formed in 1996 and is particularly known for its albums Recorded in State (1998) and Works Project (1999).

The Walker Brothers – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (1966)

Dylan Thomas' Laugharne

Thomas's final home at Laugharne - roughly midway between Llanelli and Pembroke - isn't on a main road from anywhere to anywhere. But Thomas became fascinated by it on his first visit (by ferry, across the Taf estuary), at the age of nineteen; he lived there intermittently for much of his adult life and settled there in 1949. Used to the Swansea lilt, he was struck by the fact that, for complicated historical reasons, the residents of this tiny seaside settlement spoke with English accents; he described it as 'the strangest town in Wales' and 'a timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town'. Although New Quay in Ceredigion, where Thomas also lived for a short while, stakes a claim to be the setting for his great 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood, Laugharne undoubtedly provided the inspiration for many of its characters. Brown's Hotel, where Thomas used to drink, has been refurbished as a boutique hotel, but there's still a certain thrill to be got from rubbing shoulders with locals who might have been citizens of Llareggub.

Perched somewhat precariously above the waterside, the boathouse where Thomas lived is now a museum dedicated to his memory. Entering it feels like stepping back in time to the 1950s. There's a tiled fireplace with china firedogs and an old-fashioned mantel clock above it, a dropleaf table, a table lamp with fringed lampshade - all the sorts of things your grandparents had in their living room. Except that your grandparents probably didn't have a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his own works playing in the background, nor a bust of him that used to be owned by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (two other former visitors to Brown's Hotel). The house is frankly a little shabby, but then it's probably meant to be. Thomas, for all his success, never had money to throw around. Just up the hill, the 'writing shed' - the converted garage where he did most of his work - has an air of studied disarray. A jacket hangs over the back of the chair, the desk is strewn with papers, the wastepaper bin is two-thirds full. The poet, dissatisfied with what he is trying to write, has clearly just thrown down his pen in frustration and gone to the pub. But the view! Stare out the window or, better still, head back to the boathouse, have tea on the terrace and gaze out to sea and you'll see why any artist would have sold his soul to live here.

- Caroline Taggart, The Book Lover's Bucket List: A Tour of Great British Literature, London, 2021, p.188-9.

See also:

Wales: Under Milk Wood, 1954 BBC Radio production

Wales: You're just a bubble-blowing boy in trouble, 23 September 2021

Wales: Aberystwyth, 12 September 2008

You did me dirty but you'll get yours one day

Thursday music corner: Robert Lee ‘Bobby’ Parker (1937-2013) released his best-known single Watch Your Step in 1961. Born in Louisiana but raised in Los Angeles, Parker paid his dues playing electric guitar for Bo Diddley and touring with a wide range of artists including Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and the Everly Brothers. Watch Your Step was inspired by both Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles, and went on to chart in the mid-ranges of the Billboard Hot 100. The song was popular in England too, and was covered by many British beat groups including the Beatles and the Spencer Davis Group. It was clearly the inspiration for the intro to the Beatles’ 1964 hit I Feel Fine, and John Lennon later indicated that it also inspired Day Tripper from the following year.

Bobby Parker – Watch Your Step (1961)