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
John Lennon: Cold Turkey demo (1969)
22 May 2022 | <1 min read
These days it's not uncommon for artists to air their drug problems in music, interviews and – as Johnny Depp has shown us -- in open court. But when John Lennon's Cold Turkey – about heroin withdrawal – was released it was something honest and rare. Here was one of the most famous musicians on the planet acknowledging his dependency (he sniffed... > Read more
THE 2022 MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD (2022): Fee Fi Foo won
16 May 2022 | 2 min read
The second annual Music Photography Awards - Whakaahua Puoro Toa was run by the Auckland Festival of Photography, and was one of several events in the lead up to 2022's Auckland Festival of Photography (June 2-12). Winners were announced on Saturday 14 May as part of celebrating New Zealand Music Month at Auckland's Silo Park, including outdoor exhibitions of... > Read more
GUEST MUSICIAN DEAN HAPETA (AKA D-WORD, TE KUPU) walks us through the new album by UHP (Upper Hutt Posse)
16 May 2022 | 2 min read
Hau is the eighth studio album by UHP (Upper Hutt Posse) who are now utilising the three-letter initialism as their official name. Hau, which translates as breath/air/vital essence, is a double album incorporating seven dub versions and six instrumentals of the thirteen songs. The album was recorded and mixed at Matakahi Studios by me, the group's long-time... > Read more
Hau
TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #13 (2022): Home here and there
16 May 2022 | 2 min read | 4
A peculiar thing happened a few weeks ago, the day before we left Edinburgh. When we stopped at a service station to fill up the rental I glanced across the road and on the other side was the Maybury Casino. I knew behind it was West Craig Crescent and the house I grew up in. I’d come halfway around the world and, after more than 60 years, arrived back... > Read more
The Rolling Stones: Exile on Main St (1972, reissued 2010)
16 May 2022 | 4 min read | 1
Few albums in rock have been so surrounded in dark mythology as this sprawling double album which was the last great gasp of the Rolling Stones. Certainly subsequent albums -- Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock'n'Roll and Black and Blue particularly -- had their great moments but (aside from Jagger's embrace of New York dance and Richards' forays into reggae) they were... > Read more
Plundered My Soul (1971/2010)
Chelsea Jade: Soft Spot (digital outlets)
16 May 2022 | 2 min read
The hand of fame is fickle: it rests on some artists' heads and they become household names, others it gives a firm shove toward our attention, some get a mere shoulder tap. But most – some as talented as the chosen ones – are passed over, forever working away beyond the spotlight. Lorde was among the elect but so far her friend Chelsea Jade has... > Read more
Big Spill
Marc Chesterman and Various Artists: Florian Habicht's Woodenhead/Woodenhead Reimagined (bandcamp)
16 May 2022 | 1 min read
And in keeping with Elsewhere's policy of bringing you elsewhere music, we present this soundtrack to filmmaker Habicht's 20-year old, rather bent fairytale with spoken word narrative, Chesterman's music, Habich's lyrics and guest players including the late Killer Ray, Steve Abel, Warwick Broadhead and Margo Potter. Let it be said that this of course works better if you... > Read more
Hospice for Destitute Lovers, from Woodenhead Reimagined, by Mimi Gilbert
MILES DAVIS. ON THE CORNER, REVISITED (2022): Jazz-funk at 50
16 May 2022 | 3 min read
The cliche has become so embedded that hardly anyone questions it: “indie label good, major label bad”. As with most generalisations it doesn’t stand much scrutiny: small indie labels may be more comfortable for musicians because they know the boss, but they can also be woefully amateurish, financially incompetent and unable to get the music to the... > Read more
One And One
Elsewhere Art . . . The Beatles' Whiter Album
15 May 2022 | <1 min read
As regular followers of Elsewhere's shamlessly stupid Absurd Elsewhere pages will know, sometimes for my own amusement I just make stuff up, like newly discovered albums, lost Beatle releases, academic articles full of pompus nonsense and so on. This image was one I prepared to accompany an article about an anniversary reissue of the Beatles' White Album but as a remix... > Read more
10 SHAMEFUL RECORDS I'M EMBARRASSED TO OWN: A trip from the tip
15 May 2022 | 8 min read
Elsewhere has been down a similar path with a series of 10 Shameful Record Covers I'm Proud to Own (see here, here, here and here). And there was also 10 Good Albums in Bad Covers . . . and two columns on 10 Odd Unplayed Albums in the Collection (here and here). But here are 10 albums which it just seems embarrassing to have in the same house as those Essential... > Read more
MAHALIA JACKSON: NEWPORT 1958, CONSIDERED (1958): Twelve steps to heaven
15 May 2022 | 2 min read
If no one has referred to the great Mahalia Jackson as the Godmother of Gospel then someone certainly should. She's certainly been called the Queen of Gospel. But why stop at just one accolade? Jackson (b. 1911, d. 1972) had all the presence and power of a royal galleon and a voice which soared to the heavens. She took spiritual music from the church to... > Read more
Lee Clayton: Industry (live, 1989)
15 May 2022 | 1 min read | 1
Rocking country singer Lee Clayton out of Alabama and Tennessee almost made the big time at the end of the Seventies with two exceptional albums, Border Affair and Naked Child. In some ways he was ahead of his time and if they had arrrived around the same time as James McMurtry, Chris Whitley and a few others a decade later he might have been seen as a part of a... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Frank Zappa
15 May 2022 | <1 min read
I have done a few collages of Frank Zappa (one of Frank as the Mona Lisa) because his distinctive appearance lent itself to a kind of cut-up and refracted image . . . which I felt also reflected his very diverse music. As with the albums where you listen to one and think you've figured him out then another one is so different it changes your persective, I hoped this kind... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
THE RETURN OF UHP (2022): Look out, here comes the posse
9 May 2022 | 3 min read
That local reggae at the start of the Eighties and our first hip-hop statements at the end of that decade came from Herbs and Upper Hutt Posse respectively should not have been a surprise. In its original form as it appeared in the Seventies, reggae was rebel music, the voices of those outside mainstream culture (few were more... > Read more
Preeach
TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #12 (2022): Looking at the wider world
9 May 2022 | 2 min read
The old British music hall song She Was Poor But She Was Honestcame with a singalong chorus: “It’s the same the whole world over, it’s the poor what gets the blame. It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, isn’t it a blooming shame?” More than a century on that refrain is still true. Media coverage of the widening chasm between... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Te Kaahu: Te Kaahu O Rangi (digital outlets)
9 May 2022 | 1 min read
Amidst the landslide of local albums released in the current New Zealand Music Month, a few immediately stand out, among them this collection entirely in te reo by Te Kaahu which is helmed by Theia (Waikato-Tainui, Ngaati Tiipaa). Among the outstanding songs here are the restful Pacific roll of the lovely Rangirara which echoes both popular Hawaiian sounds of the Fifties... > Read more
Rangirara
Kurt Vile: (watch my moves): (Verve/digital outlets)
9 May 2022 | 1 min read
For much of this album a reference point is less Kurt Vile's hazy guitar psychedelia but the fact that one of his heroes – with whom he performed – was the late John Prine. And that he name-checkss Neil Young in Goin' On A Plane Today (“Listenin' to Heart of Gold, gonna open up for Neil Young. Man, life can sure be fun”), covers Springsteen's... > Read more
The Kinks, Something Else (1967)
9 May 2022 | 2 min read
Anyone looking for that low door in the wall which allows entry into the distinctive garden of English pop-rock is, almost invariably drawn to the Kinks whose songwriter Ray Davies had a mainline into the Anglo-heartland for almost decade from the mid 60s. Davies' songwriting could sometimes be satirical or cynical, but more often than not he felt for his characters --... > Read more
The Kinks: Situation Vacant
Sin City: Welcome to Sin City (digital outlets)
9 May 2022 | <1 min read | 1
If Orville Peck takes his country music seriously, locals Sin City casually weld classic American stadium rock, finger-snap Mink DeVille (Hold On Little Girl), Jersey Shore rock'n'soul (Turn Out the Light) and more on this debut with telling song titles: Hanging From the Branches Above (a dust-blown hanged-man narrative); Belly of the Beast (rockabilly); Pissin' in the Wind... > Read more
GOT TO HURRY RECORDS (2022): Sixties/Seventies stockist in central Stockholm
9 May 2022 | 5 min read
When Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love came to Bo Nerbe's tiny record story Got To Hurry in the old town of Gamla Stan in central Stockholm, he enthusiastically bought all three albums by the local band Stomachmouth, an Eighties garage-punk outfit. “I had released them on my Got To Hurry label and Kurt Cobain bought all three. And half a year later or so there was an... > Read more