Sunday 29 May 2011

Cat Stevens - The First Cut Is The Deepest (1981)

Cat Stevens,The First Cut Is The Deepest,UK,Deleted,LP RECORD,521833

Cat Stevens earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in consecutive years for "The First Cut is the Deepest", which has been a hit single for four different artists. "The First Cut Is the Deepest" is a 1967 song written by Cat Stevens, originally released by P.P. Arnold in the spring of 1967. Stevens' own version of the song is technically a cover, and originally appeared on his album New Masters in December 1967.

The song has been widely covered and has become a hit single for four different artists: P.P Arnold (1967), Keith Hampshire (1973), Rod Stewart (1977) and Sheryl Crow (2003).

File:Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens).jpg

The song concerns someone apprehensive about entering a new romantic relationship because he is still suffering from being hurt by his first love: However, the song continues:

The first cut is the deepest, Baby I know —
The first cut is the deepest
'Cause when it comes to being lucky, she's cursed
When it comes to lovin' me, she's worst
But when it comes to being loved, she's first
That's how I know
The first cut is the deepest.
I still want you by my side
Just to help me dry the tears that I've cried
'Cause I'm sure gonna give you a try
And if you want I'll try to love again

Television Weekly News - April 18th 1931

Television Weekly News 1931-04-18
Television Weekly News began life in America back in 1931 and could probably have been America's version of Radio Times. This particular cover is actually the first cover from April 1931 and features as its cover, Greta Garbo.

The F.A. Cup on the Radio Times (1961)

Radio Times Cup Final Edition 1956
I do love a good Radio Times cover from the past. This particular cover celebrates the 1961 F.A. Cup Final between Tottenham Hotspur & Leicester City.

Cloppa Castle: Episode Three - The Bruda Banger

The Bruda Banger
Queen Ethelbruda is in her chariot but it is being pulled by two of the castle soldiers. As they get to the castle they are worn out and so the Queen demands they be replaced. Elbow goes to speak to the King as he is concerned that his men will be unfit to defend the castle against the Hasbeenes. Mudlin remembers a four legged animal that used to pull chariots but he does not know where to find one. He suggests that the Queen go and see Cue-ee-dee and get him to make a special machine to pull the chariot. Cue-ee-dee sets about the planning and construction of such a device. He works on into the night and all the noise keeps the castle residents awake. The noise is so bad that it keeps up the Hasbeenes as well. The leader Beosweyne is not very happy but goes off to investigate and the next morning he plans an attack on the castle. That very same morning, however, Cue-ee-dee as completed his task and presents his new chariot to the Queen. She is overjoyed and takes it out for a spin. The castle doors open just as the Hasbeenes charge with their battering ram. Well you can guess the outcome of this story.
The Queen has exhausted the men by having them pull her chariot Elbow pleads the case to the King
What's all this noise complains Beosweyne The next morning everyone is eager to see what has been the cause of so much noise in the night
Poor Beosweyne ends up on his head yet again Beosweyne looks on as the Queen dashes around in her new chariot

The Picture goer - Bing Crosby

Check out these excellent front covers of crooner Bing Crosby on the Picture goer magazine from the mid 1940s to the early 1950s.
This edition dates back to 1944

Dear old Bing on a 1948 cover.

This cover dates back to 1950

With Bob Hope from 1952

Soldier Boy - Elvis Presley (1960)

Elvis Presley,Soldier Boy - Clear vinyl,UK,Deleted,LP RECORD,539149

March 20, 1960 - At noon Elvis, his entourage, Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana (But not Bill Black, who never plays with Elvis again) take a charted bus to Nashville for a session at RCA's Studio B, whose recoding facilities have been upgraded with a three track machine. The are joined by all the musicians from the June 1958 session, the Jordanaires, Colonel Parker and RCA's new chief studio engineer, Bill Porter.

Elvis records six songs (In true stereo for the first time) including 'Stuck On You' 'Soldier Boy' and 'Fame And Fortune' which will be pressed and shipped within two days as an urgently need new single.

Elvis Presley Pictures

Soldier boy why feel blue
Don't you believe that she will be true
It's written in the blue
That she was meant for only you

Soldier boy tell me why do you cry
When you return she'll rush to your side
It's written in the book
That she was meant for only you

So prove your love is true
She'll be there to say "I do"
And if you go o'er sea or land
She'll make you understand

While you're gone oh try to believe
Her love for you is really for real
It's written in the book
That she was meant for only you

So prove your love is true
She'll be there to say "I do"
And if you go o'er sea or land
She'll make you understand

While you're gone oh try to believe
Her love for you is really for real
It's written in the book
That she was meant for only you.


Sons and Daughters - Episode Two

1982 Opening Titles
In Sydney, a young man and woman leave a restaurant in a sports car. As they are driving along, they start kissing, totally oblivious to the fact that a lorry is heading straight towards them! At the last moment, the woman notices the lorry, and her companion swerves and avoids an accident.

In Melbourne, John and Bill are at work, loading some delicate china onto a lorry, using a pulley system. At the exact moment the near-miss takes place in Sydney, John 'sees it' in his mind and lets go of the pulley, causing the china to smash to the ground. Both he and Bill are given the sack. Bill goes home and talks to Susan about what happened. He decides to return to the warehouse to plead for his job back, but Selmar says he's hired two new workers. In a fit of rage, Bill picks up a crowbar that's lying nearby, and strikes Selmar with it.

John also decides to ask for his job, but when he gets to the warehouse, he finds Selmar lying on the ground and thinks he's dead. He picks up the crowbar, then hears the police arriving and runs away. He is spotted, though.

John goes home and tells David what happened. The police turn-up, asking to speak to John, and they tell David what they think happened. David has a showdown with John in his bedroom, and appears not to believe John is telling the truth. When David leaves the bedroom, John leaps out the window. He sneaks onto the back of a lorry and makes his way to Sydney. While he's on a boat, he thinks back to when he was a little child, being taught by Fiona to remember her address. He makes his way to the address - 22, Manly Terrace - and finds Fiona still lives there. He tells her what has happened and she believes him.

Elsewhere in Sydney, the girl from the car accident turns out to be Angela Hamilton, the daughter of Patricia, and her husband, Gordon. Patricia is organising a birthday party for Angela, but Angela is not happy. She thinks something is 'wrong', but doesn't know what exactly.

Gordon and Patricia give Angela a horse for her birthday. The horse is in the grounds of their garden, and so is someone else - Wayne Hamilton - who has flown home for Angela's birthday. Patricia is less than pleased to see him.

Closing Credits style used towards the end of the 1985 season

A Kid for two Farthings - 1955

Adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his own novel, A Kid for Two Farthings was Carol Reed's first colour production, and his last wholly British film until Oliver! some thirteen years later. It's also a very rare example of a genuine Anglo-Jewish film, partly filmed on location in Petticoat Lane in London's East End, at the heart of what was still a thriving Jewish community (whose decline would be recorded a few years later in Robert Vas' 1962 documentary (The Vanishing Street), happily coexisting cheek by jowl with more traditional East End elements.

Much of the film's fascination today comes from this background detail, the street market (the location was renamed 'Fashion Street' for the film) being packed with memorable characters: the affectionate Mrs Abramowitz (Irene Handl), blowsy fashionista Lady Ruby (Brenda de Banzie) crooked jewellery salesman Ice Berg (Sid James), finicky tailor 'Madam Rita' (Sidney Tafler) and decrepit shopkeeper Mr Kandinsky (David Kossoff).

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It's in the latter's shop that young Joe (Jonathan Ashmore) sees his imagination most heavily stimulated, taking Mr Kandinsky's fables all too literally when he buys a young goat in the mistaken belief that it's a magical unicorn whose powers will transform the lives of Joe and his mother Joanna (Celia Johnson) and grant Mr Kandinsky his longed-for steam-powered trouser-press. That this ultimately fails to happen underscores one of the film's key themes: the loss of innocence that Reed had earlier explored so memorably in The Fallen Idol (1948)
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Joe's adventures are counterbalanced by the equally childlike romance of Sonia (Diana Dors) and her body-building boyfriend Sam (Joe Robinson), the latter's misguided involvement with crooked wrestling promoter Blackie Isaacs (Lou Jacobi) adding a further injection of local colour. Like Joe, Sam has a specific material goal in mind, the funding of an engagement ring for Sonia, and while his ambition is somewhat more practical at base, it's also prone to fanciful idealism: the fact that Sam and Sonia have been engaged for four years hints at earlier schemes that have failed to come off.
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A Kid for Two Farthings is not one of Reed's more successful films: Joe's fantasies are ultimately more cloying than cute, and neither Ashmore nor Johnson make especially convincing working-class East Enders. But Dors and Robinson are an appealingly convincing couple, and the background detail ensures that the film will last, if only as a whimsical curiosity.

THE

MONTHLY FILM BULLETIN

Published by

THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

Volume 22, No.257, June 1955, page 83-4

KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS, A (1955)

In and around the Petticoat Lane establishment of Kandinsky, a philosophical old Jewish tailor with a fanciful imagination, there moves a colourful assortment of characters. There are Joanna, who boards and works with Kandinsky, and her little boy Joe, a collector of a series of pets, who wonders at the stories Kandinsky tells him about the magic powers of the unicorn; there is Sam, Kandinsky's assistant, a "muscle man" whose ambition is to become "Mr. World", and who is loved by the pretty shop girl Sonia; there is Python Macklin, a fearful and ugly wrestler who goads Sam into a fight; and so on. The life of Petticoat Lane, with its odd mixture of strange and lovable characters, goes on quite peacefully until Joe buys a young kid from a vagrant. The new pet, which Joe, because of its single horn, assumes to be a unicorn, soon begins to exercise its magic powers. Sam fights and beats the dreaded Python and is able to buy Sonia a ring; Kandinsky gets a steam presser for his tailoring establishment; there is even a hint that Joe's father, who has been abroad, may return. When the Kid dies - Joe is unlucky with his pets - Joe quickly gets a new animal, and life in Petticoat Lane goes on as before.

In A Kid for Two Farthings Carol Reed has brought to the screen Wolf Mankowitz's little fable of East End life. Its success in creating a natural and convincing atmosphere of the locality - which is essential to the story - is unfortunately marred by two miscalculations: the colour is harsh and artificial, making the locations too often look like rather indifferent sets; and neither Celia Johnson (Joanna) nor Jonathan Ashmore (the little boy) ever begin to persuade us that they belong to this particular world. (The script explains in an aside that they have only recently moved into the neighbourhood, but this hardly justifies the importation of two such Kensington voices into this milieu.) Carol Reed's direction seems somewhat ill-at-ease with a set of characters who are presented as almost uniformly pleasant and lovable; and the handling, although showing touches of bravura in staging, fails to establish a rhythm which could provide a momentum for this whimsical and, in the context of its realistic surroundings, ambitious story. Isolated sequences-a very exciting wrestling match, a macabre night pursuit of Sonia by the dreaded Python, some casual incidental shots of Petticoat Lane-come over with effect, but the sequences never really fuse into a whole. This is perhaps partly due to a disparity in the acting styles employed. David Kossoff's Kandinsky is a performance making no concessions to the demands of the film screen; Jonathan Ashmore, the little boy, fatally lacks the streak of toughness which the part demands, and this performance shows too obviously the signs of having been pieced together in the cutting room; generally, there is a lack of balance between "natural" and "character" acting. Among the smaller parts, Vera Day makes a striking impression.


The Monthly Film Bulletin was published by the British Film Institute between 1934 and 1991. Initially aimed at distributors and exhibitors as well as filmgoers, it carried reviews and details of all UK film releases. In 1991, the Bulletin was absorbed by Sight and Sound magazine.

Bob Dylan - Self Portrait (All the tired Horses)

It's one of rock criticism's most famous lines: "What is this s---?" So began Greil Marcus' review of Bob Dylan's 1970 album Self Portrait. The same could be asked of the record's opening track, which consists of two lines — "All the tired horses in the sun/ How'm I supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm" — repeated over and over again by a group of female singers for just about three minutes. The singing is hypnotic enough to lure sailors to their deaths, and the instrumentation is pleasant enough. But Dylan's no-where to be seen, obviously. So forget this song.

Bob Dylan,Self Portrait,Japan,Deleted,DOUBLE LP,531440

Record One:
1. All The Tired Horses
2. Alberta #1
3. I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know
4. Days Of '49
5. Early Mornin' Rain
6. In Search Of Little Sadie
7. Let It Be Me
8. Little Sadie
9. Woogie Boogie
10. Belle Isle
11. Living The Blues
12. Like A Rolling Stone

Record Two:
1. Copper Kettle
2. Gotta Travel On (Done Laid Around)
3. Blue Moon
4. The Boxer
5. Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
6. Take Me As I Am
7. Take A Message To Mary
8. It Hurts Me Too
9. Minstrel Boy
10. She Belongs To Me
11. Wigwam
12. Alberta #2