What I say and what I mean are two different things

Thursday music corner: New Zealand new wave rockers The Swingers emerged in 1979 from the remnants of the Suburban Reptiles, and featured Split Enz founding member Phil Judd on guitars and vocals. Judd had left the Enz in 1977 after creative differences with Tim Finn, and his departure ushered in Tim's younger brother Neil Finn as his replacement. 

With a career lasting until only 1982, The Swingers were not especially prolific, but they released one studio album (1980's Practical Jokers, which hit number 2 in the New Zealand album charts), and five singles. Four of these hit the New Zealand top 40, and one, the bona fide classic Counting the Beat, topped the pop charts in both New Zealand and Australia in 1981. 

Their first single, the 1979 release One Good Reason, was a legitimate icebreaker, reaching number 19 in the notoriously conservative New Zealand pop charts. That same year The Swingers illustrated their cultural reach, both appearing in the top 40 and also contributing two tracks (Certain Sound and Baby) to the seminal punk compilation AK79. In 1991 Auckland band Strawpeople with guest vocalist Merenia covered the song - it became their second single, on their debut album Hemisphere.

The Swingers - One Good Reason (1981)

See also:
Music: The Swingers - It Ain't What You Dance, It's The Way That You Dance It (NZ #4, 1981)
Music: The Crocodiles - Tears (NZ #17, 1980)
Music: Screaming Meemees - Stars in My Eyes (NZ #18, 1983)

Music: Graham Brazier - Billy Bold (1981)

“Well, I lost half a day of skiing”

Everyone loves a good low-stakes put-up-yer-dukes between self-absorbed silly people, and this one is the best example since the immortal 2022 "Wagatha Christie" trial. Marina Hyde has the measure of this utterly inconsequential event:

Before we go any further I want to make a deeply serious point. Something happened that day. Something happened on that mountain in that luxury ski resort, up there in God’s cathedral – and, like anyone who has watched either the plaintiff or the defendant on the stand at any length … I literally could not care less what it was. I mean, this is as low stakes as it gets. Asked about what had been taken from her by the events on the Deer Valley slopes, [Gwyneth] Paltrow delivered the sociopathically straight-to-meme line: “Well, I lost half a day of skiing.” (Bear in mind this is a woman who claims that water has feelings.) For his part, Terry Sanderson’s lawyer put things into perspective by declaring: “After the crash, he’s no longer charming.” [...]

First, a reminder that Mr Sanderson is seeking $300,000 in damages, which – to us country mice on this side of the Atlantic – feels a little eye-catching. Of course, we only have an outsider’s grasp of the baroque flourishes of the US legal system, but it is surely our understanding that any citizen of that great nation making some kind of personal injury claim understands that this is America, and asks for at least $30m just as a point of principle? Then again, having watched him, I think I’m on the verge of understanding why Mr Sanderson values his lost charm at a mere $300,000.

- Marina Hyde, 'Did Gwyneth Paltrow ski into a retired optometrist? I couldn’t care less, but the farce is unmissable', Guardian, 28 March 2023

UEST ommunit ne ape

Northern Times community newspaper bin, Woodford, Queensland

 

All God's children need travelling shoes

Thursday music corner: Tanita Tikaram (b. West Germany, 1969) is a British singer-songwriter who came to prominence at the end of her teenage years with her 1988 debut album Ancient Heart. After growing up in West Germany where her father served in the British Army, Tikaram moved with her family to Hampshire in her early teenage years. Ancient Heart was her first and most commercially successful album, selling four million copies and performing particularly well in Europe - it topped the charts in West Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Norway, and hit the top 10 in the UK, the Netherlands and Sweden. The most recent of her nine studio albums was released in 2016 on the German Ear Music label. 

The cryptically-lyriced Twist in My Sobriety was the lead single from the album and reached number 2 in the West German and Austrian pop charts; it also hit the top 10 in France, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland; in the UK it only reached number 22. 

Tanita Tikaram - Twist in My Sobriety (1988)

See also:

Music: Tracy Chapman - For My Lover (1986)

Music: Alison Moyet - That Ole Devil Called Love (1985)

Music: Sam Brown - Stop (1989)

Music: Pete Paphides interviews Tanita Tikaram (2019)

Wellington's early architecture

[In Wellington t]he overall early European architecture and that of the Maori people is today hard to visualise because so few of the earliest buildings are still standing. Remnants of Te Aro Pa are exemplified only by ponga-trunk hut-wall fragments discovered by chance during excavations for a new multi-storey building in Taranaki Street in 2005. There are still some cottages from the 1850s, such as that at 251 Tinakori Road, Thorndon - one of the simplest possible vernacular house designs another example being Granny Cooper's house in nearby Ascot Street. The former sexton's cottage (1857) in Bolton Street off The Terrace is also a basic structure with a saddleback roof and a central gable emphasising the front door position - the porch and outbuildings are later additions, as is the corrugated iron roof, replacing the original wooden shingles. A rather more elaborate survivor, although moved from its original site, is Spinks Cottage in Dixon Street beside St John's Church. Built sometime between 1854 and 1863, it is a one-and-a-half storey, L-shaped weatherboard house with a steeply-pitched roof and front-facing gable at one end. Finials decorate the gables, and there are two dormer windows. William Spinks was a storekeeper who later became a wharfinger at the harbour. As far as we know, none of these buildings was designed by an architect, nor was the later Wallis Cottage in Nairn Street (1858) which was erected by the builder William Wallis in Victorian Georgian style. Jeremy Salmond's Old New Zealand Houses 1800-1940 uses Amos Rapoport's 1969 general term 'Pre-Industrial Vernacular' to describe the slightly more varied type of house built mainly for tradesmen in the towns between approximately 1850 and 1870. 'Pre-Industrial' is used because this was largely the time before steam-powered woodworking machinery became widely available, giving rise to the huge variety of ornamental components that could decorate the later bay villa. Salmond also coins the term 'Bay Cottage' to describe houses with one or more cross gables having L, T, U or H plans, and early photographs of Wellington show such houses scattered on The Terrace and in other areas. Multiple rows of workers' cottages continued to be very small and of simple type in this period.

- Geoff Mew & Adrian Humphris, Raupo to Deco: Wellington Styles & Architects 1840-1940, Wellington, p.27.

I could start a song a tenor and then end as bass

Thursday music corner: Sparks are the much-lauded fraternal duo Ron and Russell Mael, whose 1974 album Kimono My House took the glam-besotted UK by storm and secured them a decades-long career as prolific purveyors of arch, intellectual pop music with both a wry sensibility and an outsider's mentality to the trend-obsessed music scene. To date they have released 25 studio albums, with their next, The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, slated for release in May 2023. 

Sparks have had 11 top 40 singles in the UK, with the most recent entry being a 1997 collaboration with Faith No More to cover their own biggest hit, This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us. Sparks were the subject of an affectionate 2021 biopic by English film director Edgar Wright, The Sparks Brothers.

Amateur Hour was the second single from Kimono My House, and exhibits deadpan keyboardist Ron Mael's traditional befuddlement with romantic relationships. It reached number 7 in the UK charts, and also hit the top 20 in Germany and Ireland.

Sparks - Amateur Hour (1974) 

See also:

Music: Suzi Quatro - Devil Gate Drive (1974)

Music: Sweet - Hell Raiser (1973) 

Music: Ken Boothe - Everything I Own (1974)

100 years ago today: the "boosting" of Wellington

One hundred years ago today 'Dispirited' writes to the Evening Post with a gripe that modern capital-dwellers would be well familiar with: 

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, — I desire to compliment you upon the very sensible comment you made upon the expressed views and intentions of the Wellington Chamber of. Commerce regarding the "boosting" of Wellington. I do not think anyone can complain at the quantity of news that appears in the papers of the Dominion regarding this city. Wellington, being the capital city, and occupying a central position in the two islands, not only has the Administration situated here and Parliament and the Government, but is the natural place where all the most important conferences are held. Does that not mean that half the news in all the papers of the Dominion is dated from Wellington, keeping the name constantly before the public of the Dominion? Does it not also mean that Parliament, conferences, etc., bring annually to Wellington many hundreds of people from other parts of the Dominion? How can the papers be blamed for any lack of news or notice of Wellington? 

The trouble lies with the citizens of this city, and not with the papers. What is being done to render this city attractive or to place it in the van of New Zealand cities? Very, very little. The people who come here to conferences, and those who pass through, would be the best advertising media if the city were worth talking about when they got back to their home towns. It has few civic enterprises, and few features to raise enthusiasm about, and yet there is no place in the Dominion with more natural beauty. Where in Auckland could you obtain such a beautiful sight as the harbour presented last evening from the Kelburn hills, glimmering in the soft moonlight? Take away the Government institutions from Wellington, and what public buildings has she left? What encouragement does she give to visitors to enjoy themselves here—not even seats in all public places on which to rest. 

If the city will get a move on and take an interest in itself, it will get the publicity. You can't talk or write to any purpose unless you have something to talk or write about. If Wellington will follow the lead of other cities, and subscribe and spend a little money on its advancement, it will have little cause for complaint. It can only blame itself for the position in which the last census found it.— I am, etc., 

DISPIRITED. 

3rd March.

- Letter to the editor, Evening Post, 5 March 1923, p.2

I get the feeling that I am responding to a call

Thursday music corner: Liverpool band The La's formed in 1983, with original band member Mike Badger later indicating that the band name referenced the Scouse phrase for 'lads'. 

After several lineup changes joined the Go! Disc label in 1987 and started the several years of recording that led to their first album, accompanied by a volatile series of band-member changes and disagreements with record producers over the sound of the album. Amidst this upheaval, the band's second single, the now-legendary There She Goes, was first released in 1988 and failed to make an impression. 

Eventually the band leader and songwriter, Lee Mavers, became thoroughly dissatisfied with the recording process, despite ending up with top-flight Simple Minds and U2 producer Steve Lillywhite working on their much-delayed debut. The La's gave up on the Lillywhite recording sessions, at which point the producer created his preferred version of the recordings, which Go! Disc released as the self-titled The La's. The album and the re-issued There She Goes went on to global success, despite the band's disgruntlement with the process by which they were created. 

The La's was the band's only studio album release. It has been accompanied by no fewer than 10 non-studio album releases, the most recent being 2021's The La's Live (1986-1987). Feelin', an insanely tuneful Beatlesque track from the debut album, stands out with an excitingly punchy brevity at a mere 104 seconds in duration.

The La's bassist John Power left The La's in 1991 to form his own group, Cast, which achieved success as a power-pop combo during the Britpop boom of the mid-1990s. There She Goes was also covered by the US Christian band Sixpence None The Richer in 1999, charting higher in the UK than the original La's recording. 

The La's - Feelin' (1990) 

See also:

Music: The La's - Doledrum (1990)

Music: Cast - Back Of My Mind (1995)

Music: Stone Roses - Waterfall (1989)