28 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)

21 March 2024

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)

14 March 2024

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)

07 March 2024

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:

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)