Dapper cat

Dickensian Bookshop, Featherston, 30 March 2024

 

They don't believe that it is sinning when you are winning

Thursday music corner: Lawrence Arabia, the stage name of Christchurch-born, Auckland-based performer James Milne, has released five albums of erudite, well-crafted pop in the mold of Harry Nilsson since 2006. His 2009 single Apple Pie Bed from his second album, Chant Darling, won Milne and co-writer Luke Buda the APRA Silver Scroll for single of the year, sandwiched between OpShop's One Day (2008) and The Naked & Famous' international hit Young Blood (2010). 

A Lake is the opening track from Milne's 2016 album Absolute Truth. Brain Gym, another track from the album, was played by the legendary Iggy Pop on his BBC 6Music radio show.   

Lawrence Arabia - A Lake (2016)

See also:

Music: Lawrence Arabia & the Erotic Threads - Apple Pie Bed (live, 2007)

Music: Lawrence Arabia - Brain Gym (2016)

Music: Lawrence Arabia - The Developed World (2022)

Hamilton Gardens

 

Will I be handsome? Will I be rich?

Thursday music corner: The High Keys were a US R&B band named after lead singer Troy Keyes (b. North Carolina, 1940), who had a US hit in 1963 with their perky ATCO single release of their cover of Doris Day's 1956 hit, Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be). They released a major label version of the song the following year, on Atlantic. The song also charted in Canada and was released in the UK.  

The High Keys - Que Sera, Sera (1963)

See also:

Music: The High Keys - Living A Lie (1966)

Music: Troy Keyes - Love Explosions (1968)

Music: The Pixies - Que Sera Sera (2021, minor key version)

Now he's out in space, fixing all the problems

Thursday music corner: Welsh-born musician and songwriter Karl Wallinger, who died at his home in the East Sussex city of Hastings on Sunday aged 66, was the founder and driving force behind the group World Party. After joining Mike Scott's Waterboys as a keyboardist for the band's second and third albums, Wallinger went solo as World Party in 1986, adding other members as required. 

World Party released five studio albums from 1987 to 2000, three of which reached the UK top 40 albums chart; the most successful was Bang!, which reached number 2 in the UK album charts in 1993; it also went top 10 in Norway. World Party achieved four UK top 40 singles, and the 1987 single Ship of Fools reached number four in the Australian pop charts. She's The One, an album track from World Party's 1997 album Egyptology, was later a UK chart-topping single for Robbie Williams in 1999. Wallinger benefited from the royalties; according to the New York Times: 

“So we didn’t have to sell the kids to chemical experiments or anything,” he told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2012. “I think I’m a bit of a lucky person.” 

Is It Like Today? was the first single from World Party's third album, Bang! It reached number 19 in the UK charts, and number 24 in Canada. It also reached number five on the US alternative charts.

World Party - Is It Like Today? (1993)      

See also:

Music: The Waterboys - Don't Bang The Drum (1985, Scott/Wallinger co-write)

Music: World Party - Put The Message In The Box (1990)

Music: World Party - She's The One (live, 1997)

Lines To Be Read At the Casting of Scott FitzGerald's balls into the Sea

Cuba is a hell of an interesting place now and has been for last five years. Probably before too you say. But only know what I've seen. Anyway am writing a story about this next revolution. Come on down any time and I'll take you over there in the boat and you'll get a good story out of it anyway. If you really feel blue enough, get yourself heavily insured and I'll see you can get killed [...] I'll write you a fine obituary that Malcolm Cowley will cut the best part out of for the new republic and we can take your liver out and give it to the Princeton Museum, your heart to the Plaza Hotel, one lung lung to Max Perkins and the other to George Horace Lorimer. If we can still find your balls I will take them via the Ile de France to Paris and down to Antibes and have them cast into the sea off Eden Roc and we will get Mac Leish to write a Mystic Poem to be read at that Catholic School (Newman?) you went to. Would you like me to write the mystic poem now. Let's see. 

Lines To Be Read At the Casting of Scott FitzGerald's balls into the Sea from Eden Roc (Antibes Alpes Maritimes)

Whence from these gray Heights unjockstrapped wholly stewed he

Flung

Himself?

No.

Some waiter?

Yes.

Push tenderly oh green shoots of grass

Tickle not our Fitz's nostrils

Pass

The gray moving unbenfinneyed sea deaths deeper than

our debt to Eliot

Fling flang them flung his own his two finally his one

Spherical, colloid, interstitial,

uprising lost to sight

in fright

natural

not artificial

no ripple make as sinking sanking sonking sunk

Aw hell you'll have to get Mac Leish to write the mystic poem. I'll just give a few personal reminiscences of his Paris Period. Get that insurance now, pal. If they won't give you health or life insurance get accident insurance.

So long Scott --

Let me hear from you. Merry Christmas! Pauline sends her love.

Yours always affectionately 

Ernest

- Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 21 December 1935, quoted in Carlos Baker (ed.), Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961, London, 1981, p.428-9.

See also:

Books: A NZer makes powerful enemies at the BBC, 28 February 2023

Books: The importance of movies to Gopher Prairie, 6 October 2022

Books: The Paris correspondent starts his day, 30 April 2016

Jim Dandy in a submarine, got a message from a mermaid queen

Thursday music corner: LaVern Baker (b. Chicago, 1929, d. Queens, 1997) was a powerfully-voice R&B performer in the 1950s and 1960s who enjoyed considerable chart success. After signing with Atlantic Records as a solo artist in 1953, Baker enjoyed 20 top 40 R&B chart singles in the US from 1955 to 1966. Seven of these were also top 40 hits on the mainstream US pop charts. From 1969 until 1991 she lived in the Philippines as entertainment director at the Subic Bay US Marine Corps Staff club for non-commissioned officers.

Written by Lincoln Chase, Jim Dandy was recorded by Baker in December 1955 and released the following year. It was her only R&B chart number one, with 1955's Play It Fair and 1958's Cry A Tear reaching number two. It also cemented a move away from the kid-friendly titles of her earlier singles like 1955's Tweedlee Dee and Bop-Ting-a-Ling. Jim Dandy was the opening track of her second album, LaVern Baker (1957), and it also appeared on the soundtrack to John Waters' 1972 notorious cult classic, Pink Flamingos. Rolling Stone, in its top 500 songs list, rated Jim Dandy the 352nd greatest song of all time. 

LaVern Baker - Jim Dandy (1956)

See also:

Music: LaVern Baker & Jimmy Ricks - You're The Boss (1961)

Music: LaVern Baker - See See Rider (1962)

Music: Ann-Margret - Jim Dandy (1962)

Crusader Kings 2: Some medieval doggerel

Some medieval doggerel, or,
The Ballad of the Concubine Addiena, to whit:
G*d d*mn the Patriarchy
A tale from 9th-century Ireland, from Crusader Kings 2

Tis a tale of the wanton in the far isle of Eire
A young girl had been raised who had the longest black hair
In the palace she lived, with the Queen and the King
But the name of her sire, no courtier could sing

A bastard was she, yet cared for and fed
With the grace of the Queen, though not in her bed
The Queen lent a wet-nurse and paid for another
(But surely kept quiet about being the mother)

The girl's name was Addiena, uncommon to most
And as she grew she was more often to boast
Of her silken black hair that she wove forth in tresses
And the beauty of the linens in her fine English dresses

Now later, much later, when quite fully grown
Addiena and the Queen disagreed 'bout the throne
For the Queen's husband had become quite neglected
And Addiena, the rogue, had become quite disaffected

So Add, in her wisdom, seduced the poor King
(King Coscrach, the dotard, suspected not a thing)
And bore him a child, with no expressed shame
Arnemetia she called it, her own mother's name

A fitting tribute, she reckoned, to her bastard existence
A new life on Earth and a social resistance
The King, he ashamed, did wed off the maid
And the Queen, she angered, his doom she emprayed

So be this a lesson for every Queen to know best
If ye bring forth a babe from beyond royal nest
Set a household ban on all Concubina
And don't let your husband meet the fair Addiena

See also:

Games: Crusader Kings 2 - Stayin' alive, 25 October 2018 

Games: Crusader Kings 2 - House of Dunkeld, 5 May 2013

Games: Crusader Kings 2 - The new kings of Ireland, 7 July 2012

Will Rogers in New Zealand

Legendary American performer and aphorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) became famous through the Ziegfeld Follies and went on to become an enormously popular movie star and opinion columnist, and one of Hollywood's highest paid actors. In his youth he toured the world several times showing off his spectacular cowboy rope skills, and his travels even took him through New Zealand as part of the Wirth Brother's Circus tour in 1904. Known as the Cherokee Kid, Rogers got the following write-up in the Auckland Star:

The Cherokee Kid is a gentleman with a large American accent and a splendid skill with lassoos [sic.]. He demonstrated what could be done with the whirling loop by bringing up a horse and its rider from [an] impossible position, once throwing together two lasoos [sic.] encircling man and horse separately. He also showed the spectators how to throw half-hitches on to objects at a distance, and did other clever work with the ropes. It was a very interesting performance.

- Auckland Star, 20 January 1904

The circus tour must have lasted at least six weeks in the summer of 1903/04 because Rogers was still receiving press attention in March, like these reports from Wellington:

A novel feature was the lasso work of the Cherokee Kid, a cowboy in Mexican circus-costume, who whirls his swift rope round his head and lassos horse and rider in the twinkling of an eye. This rope work is pretty to watch, and altogether a desirable addition to the programme.

- Evening Post, 8 March 1904

The Cherokee Kid is a slim chap, who toddles into the ring with a couple of lassoes, and does anything in the roping line with them, talking all the time. He gets near, fore, or off fore-leg of a galloping horse, or loops the rider — or both — with a lassoo [sic.] thrown with either hand. Also, he afterwards throws a half-hitch over each of a dismounted man's limbs. He is the most expert rope-thrower seen here to date. Moreover, his rough riding, on a grey mustang wearing a Mexican saddle, is very fine.

- Free Lance, 12 March 1904

Rogers returned to the States later in 1904 to perform at the St Louis World Fair, which opened on 30 April 1904.

See also:

History: Stagecoach travel in the Old West, 19 March 2015

America: America's lax firearms laws, 16 December 2012

Music: He's a solid gold cat but a really mellow hip fat, 17 August 2023