THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE

Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.

Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter.     Welcome . . .

Latest posts

Edward Ware, Audun Waage, Stein Urheim: Endless Column (digital outlets)

Edward Ware, Audun Waage, Stein Urheim: Endless Column (digital outlets)

8 Aug 2025  |  <1 min read

We have passed this way previously with drummer/composer Edward Ware, an expat Kiwi living between New York and Barcelona. Two years ago we reviewed his Taking Shostakovich Out which we liked for a number of reasons as you may see. This time out Ware is with trumpeter Waage and guitarist Urheim, and once more we are quite taken with it for its measured jazz and group... > Read more

THE BEATLES' HELP!, CONSIDERED (1965): Personal, pop and populist

THE BEATLES' HELP!, CONSIDERED (1965): Personal, pop and populist

7 Aug 2025  |  4 min read

When the Beatles released their Help! album in August 1965 they owned the world: they'd conquered Britain and the Commonwealth countries, then America and then just about everywhere. There were Beatle copy bands from Manila to Mexico City, Newcastle to New Zealand. Beatlemania was real. They'd sold millions of records, played scores of concerts (Shea Stadium was... > Read more

Help!
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Soft Bait: Life Advice (Flying Nun, digital outlets)

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Soft Bait: Life Advice (Flying Nun, digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025  |  2 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with lyrics on an insert sheet and in a framable cover by the band's Joshua Hunter. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Because Elsewhere is so inundated with full-length albums (and wishes to digress into essays about... > Read more

Applause
Elephant Gym: Live in The World, Tokyo (digital outlets)

Elephant Gym: Live in The World, Tokyo (digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025  |  <1 min read

This trio from Taiwan have slowly built a reputation for their genre-defying melange of Chinese pop, post-rock, experimental sounds between jazz and rock and . . . You get the picture. Siblings KT -- sister, singer, bass and keyboards – and her brother Tell Chang on guitars and keyboards, were classically trained and met drummer Tu Chia-Chin in high school.... > Read more

Shadow
THE BRUTHERS, DISCOVERED (2025): Sixties none-hit wunders

THE BRUTHERS, DISCOVERED (2025): Sixties none-hit wunders

4 Aug 2025  |  1 min read

Someone out there in Pearl River, New York will know of the four-pice Bruthers who released one single, Bad Way To Go, in 1966 for RCA. But given that single all but disappeared (collectors like to say “ultra-rare”), those who remember the Bruthers are probably just the Delia brothers themselves or close family members. We can't tell you much more than we... > Read more

Wake Me, Shake Me
Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost (1975)

Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost (1975)

4 Aug 2025  |  2 min read  |  1

In Ted Bafaloukos' '78 film Rockers -- a lightweight comedy but excellent quasi-doco about the world of Jamaican music with a stunning cast of reggae luminaries -- there are any number of remarkable scenes: the lead character is a drummer (played by Leroy "Horsemouth" Brown) who puts a down-payment on a motorbike with the idea of selling cheap records into shops... > Read more

Slavery Days
Dusty Springfield: Longing (digital outlets)

Dusty Springfield: Longing (digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025  |  1 min read

Although she died more than a quarter century ago and her songs – not even her best pop hits of the early-mid Sixties – seldom get radio play these days, most people with an interest in music would have (or know that should have) a Greatest Hits and her 1968 Dusty in Memphis albums in their collection. She came from folk with the Springfields (her voice... > Read more

WHEN POP PLUGGED IN (2025): Synth-pop from the junkshops

WHEN POP PLUGGED IN (2025): Synth-pop from the junkshops

4 Aug 2025  |  3 min read

More often than not, music captures spirit of the age: Post-war bebop tuned in to the tough urban world and ran parallel to Jack Kerouac's freewheeling prose and the physicality of Jackson Pollock's art; the Beatles and beat-pop arrived alongside Carnaby Street fashion and the hairstyling of Vidal Sassoon; British punk surging on the phlegm and fury of a young generation... > Read more

Dinah Washington: Big Long Slidin' Thing (1954)

Dinah Washington: Big Long Slidin' Thing (1954)

4 Aug 2025  |  <1 min read  |  1

It's about a trombone player's instrument, of course. Well, of course it is . . . But the sexually voracious and seldom satisfied Washington (seven husbands, countless lovers) knows exactly what this is about and manages to milk the innuendo in her typically sassy way. Her real forte was torch songs and she crossed effortlessly between jazz, blues, pop and rhythm... > Read more

The Circling Sun: Orbits (digital outlets)

The Circling Sun: Orbits (digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025  |  1 min read

Auckland's The Circling Sun – whose 2023 Spirits debut we called “utterly entrancing” – is a collective around drummer, producer and arranger Julien Dyne and saxophonist Cameron Allen -- both having appeared at Elsewhere many times – tapped into 1960s Latin American jazz and bebop. But this new album sees them push even further... > Read more

Amina
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, AGAIN (2025): A lie to tell the truth

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, AGAIN (2025): A lie to tell the truth

3 Aug 2025  |  5 min read

Many who read Robert Kershaw's recent, scrupulously researched and compelling Dünkirchen 1940: The German View of Dunkirk would doubtless be drawn back into watching Christopher Nolan's award-winning 2017 film Dunkirk with its extraordinary sound design by Hans Zimmer. Through remarkable cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and a story-line that shifts in time and... > Read more

THE LEGACY OF CHUCK BERRY, CONSIDERED ONCE MORE: The first poet of rock'n'roll

THE LEGACY OF CHUCK BERRY, CONSIDERED ONCE MORE: The first poet of rock'n'roll

30 Jul 2025  |  1 min read

With only one notable exception – his godawful '72 hit My Ding-A-Ling – nearly all of Chuck Berry's best known songs came in a rush on the Chess label in a five year period from August '55 when he released Maybellene. Berry was one of the greatest and most important figures in the development of rock'n'roll and popular music for many reasons: he brought... > Read more

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Cameron McCurdy aka LEIGH

THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Cameron McCurdy aka LEIGH

28 Jul 2025  |  11 min read

Elsewhere recently received an email from a former music student who invited us to have a listen to their debut album. It is titled Empathy for my Future Self and we reviewed it very favourably. It was released under the name LEIGH because Cameron (now she/her) had undergone the transition and the album addressed that. But, as we noted, “While many trans... > Read more

He's Giving
Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (digital outlets)

Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (digital outlets)

28 Jul 2025  |  <1 min read  |  1

The country-rockin' Tyler Childers is one of those artists who seems to have gone past most people. He has six albums behind him and at 34 sounds like he's reached a peak on this willfully wayward album of psychedelic country, narrative country-folk and more, produced by Rick Rubin. And we should mention he's become engaged by the Krishnas so there's some spiritual... > Read more

Dirty Ought Trill
Tom Lehrer; An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer; An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

28 Jul 2025  |  1 min read

In one of the university courses I took, I spent a couple of hours on a lecture under the title -- lifted from Frank Zappa -- "Does Humour Belong in Music?" The general point is that most contemporary musicians take themselves so seriously that we can barely imagine them cracking a smile let alone writing a funny song. Talking to you Chris Martin et al. Yet... > Read more

Oedipus Rex
ROCK'N'ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN? Where classical music enters pop

ROCK'N'ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN? Where classical music enters pop

28 Jul 2025  |  3 min read

Although most pop and rock listeners might not think it so, many songwriters have drawn on classical music  . . . and not just for inspiration, but sometimes quite directly grabbing at the melodies. We're not talking about Deodata offering his electro-treatment of Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Love Sculpture's flat-tack guitar workout on Sabre Dance (by... > Read more

Goodbye Cruel World, by James Darren
The Clear Path Ensemble: Black Sand (digital outlets)

The Clear Path Ensemble: Black Sand (digital outlets)

28 Jul 2025  |  1 min read

On recent releases we've seen local jazz musicians pull from the spiritual quests of people like John and Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders (Lucien Johnson's highly recommended Wax///Wane and Ancient Relics albums) and those leaning towards the Latin American direction (Julien Dyne and Cameron Allen's on-going Circling Sun project). There have been those around... > Read more

Temple Block Sustain
STEVIE WONDER: THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, CONSIDERED (1979): Trimming and pruning required

STEVIE WONDER: THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, CONSIDERED (1979): Trimming and pruning required

28 Jul 2025  |  3 min read

Every now and again a book comes along and captures the imagination of many. Recently there has been the Oprah-approved The Secret and Eat Pray Love (“Now a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts!”). The late Sixties and Seventies seemed awash with popular books passed hand-to-hand: anything by Carlos Castaneda (drugs and enlightenment, man),... > Read more

The First Garden
Bruce Springsteen: Fugitive's Dream (1983)

Bruce Springsteen: Fugitive's Dream (1983)

28 Jul 2025  |  <1 min read

Not really pulled from our vaults because this was only recently pulled from Springsteen's. It has been released on the box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums. That sequel to the 1998 box set Tracks collects seven unreleased and complete albums (more correctly six discrete albums and one collection of sessions). It is like a slightly alternative journey through... > Read more

Fugitive's Dream, version 1
LIONEL HAMPTON WITH ILLINOIS JACQUET: Tenor taking flight in '42

LIONEL HAMPTON WITH ILLINOIS JACQUET: Tenor taking flight in '42

21 Jul 2025  |  2 min read

Most rock and pop biographies follow a very standard pattern: a little about the artists' background and home life, meeting fellow travellers, early struggles, career taking off, troubles and travails and . . .  However that story ends: drugs, death, rehab or second coming etc. Jazz biographies however, because of the very nature of the music and its creation,... > Read more

Flying Home (1942)
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