Looking back over the past week and to the weeks ahead – to rate the noteworthy, the cringeworthy, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the truly amazing.
Band that no longer exists releases new single
Music and pop culture icons from the 1960s utilise cutting edge technology to cobble together new song that promises to dent the charts. Yup, that’s right. While death defying octogenarians, the Rolling Stones, are back in the news with a new album, the four lads from Liverpool, alive and dead, have set Spotify and online news alight with a song that does little to add to their pantheon of hits.
I’ve been one of those obsessive Beatles fans since the 1970s and my curiosity was piqued last week when I read that their ‘new song’ was about to be released with a surprising amount of fanfare. “Now and Then,” is more of a novelty than a fantastic song, in my opinion. Taken from a John Lennon demo in the late ’70s, and worked over the decades by the remaining Beatles, it has benefited from the technology used by Kiwi film maker and Beatles uber nerd, Peter Jackson, that he used on the recent Get Back documentary series.
It’s nice, has a semi-catchy melody, some great guitar by George Harrison but overall pales in comparison to the catalogue of a band whose music changed the world over the course of a decade. Personally, I don’t quite get how a band that hasn’texisted for over 50 years can actually release a new song but what the heck. Some may well love it, I know some don’t. I’m in the middle.
3 stars – nice to hear something I haven’t heard by John Lennon but overall feels a bit twee.
Why do we put up with in-built obsolescence?
Most days I don’t feel that old, despite being a few years past the half century mark – so long as I don’t think of things from my past that don’t feel all that long ago. I can remember as a child that whenever our TV didn’t work, instead of chucking it in the bin and getting a new one, mum would call the Tisco man, who would drive round with his bag of tools and knock the old PYE television back into shape in no time at all. We had that TV for over 15 years and it served us well – through the days of two channels to the beginning of the advent of a dizzying three. Thing is, back then, most appliances lasted a very long time and could be fixed by a retinue of skilful technicians whenever they broke down.
Now we seemingly accept that things we buy will either fall apart of break in almost no time at all. Take the mobile phone. Over the past 15 years I have owned seven of Apple’s variation of the iphone. I have lost one and six have given up the ghost after a few years. Strangely consumers think this is normal.
So when I read about one gentleman’s complaints about his failing smart phone on RNZ recently, I found myself wondering why I keep forking out stupid money for something that is living on borrowed time from the moment I open the box.
You can read the whole story here.
1 star – maybe I’m a dreamer but shouldn’t some things last a long time?
Our first responders really are the best
Last week I rewatched the film Out of the Blue, that dramatises the Aramoana murders in 1990 and I’ve been thinking a lot about it since. With the evidence been given at the moment in the Mosques shootings in Christchurch in 2019, the stories of the selflessness of the first responders at all three shootings are quite simply awe inspiring.
It is incredible that people put their own lives on the line to protect others and to apprehend nutjobs with guns under insanely challenging circumstances.
I only found out a few years ago that one of the two police officers who tracked down and arrested the mosques shootings perpetrator was someone I went to secondary school with. I haven’t seen Scott since high school and back then he was a non-assuming kid who made little fuss and just got on with things. He was a normal Kiwi kid who grew up to one day throw caution to the wind and drag a psychopath out of a car and pin him down in the street – fully aware that he was armed and that he had just murdered scores of people. I cannot imagine what went through his mind that day but I’m glad he was there to take care of business in that selfless and humble way I remember him from school.
5 stars – to all our first responders who protect us.
