THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and for many years Graham Reid has been going there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review columns and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more. This site is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It is an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Cheap Trick: In Another World (BMG/digital outlets)
6 May 2021 | 1 min read
On the basis of their thrilling show at the Auckland Town Hall about 40 years ago – with a wave of his hand Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen brought the crowd to its feet in defiance of the local mandarins who wanted to keep the volume low and the audience seated – this band will always get a fair hearing round my way. And they did even when the line-up... > Read more
The Coral: Coral Island (Run On/digital outlets)
3 May 2021 | 2 min read
At this geographical distance from the UK it has always been the fact that we are familiar with those at the top of the British pop iceberg (Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Elastica etc) but not so much of those below the surface (Shed Seven, Ocean Colour Scene, Teenage Fanclub etc). While every album by the main players would get publicity and reviews, those others... > Read more
Nik Bärtsch: Entendre (ECM/digital outlets)
3 May 2021 | 1 min read | 1
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch has passed our way previously with his electric group Ronin whose Llyria album was in our best of Elsewhere list in 2010. And three years later we wrote equally approvingly (although conceding they were a difficult proposition) about the Ronin live album. As we mentioned previously, coming to an album on ECM has often meant... > Read more
DAN FOGELBERG. PHOENIX, CONSIDERED (1979): Truer than any tree that every grew. Really?
3 May 2021 | 3 min read
Even after a long lifetime of following music – often down blind alleys or into unnerving places – it always surprises me how many albums, artists and genres went past me. I got the whole Kraftwerk, Can, Neu! and Popul Vuh thing with diversions into Cluster and so on – but Sparks and Yellow Magic Orchestra went right on by. I have more albums by... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Miles Davis III
3 May 2021 | <1 min read
Given his interest in what we once called "the fight game", it was inevitable that Miles Davis would be drawn to the outsized character of boxer Jack Johnson who caroused, openly went out (and home) with white women, enjoyed life living it large . . . and took out contenders and pretenders along the way. The collage positions images of Davis and Johnson around... > Read more
THE ART OF THE RECORD (2021): Pictures at an exhibition
2 May 2021 | 1 min read | 1
As we well know, album covers can be works of art in themselves, sometimes a hint at an album's content, sometimes a self-aggradising image of the artist, sometimes whimsical art, and quite often not having a lot to do with the artist or music at all. To celebrate the 21styear since the start of New Zealand Music Week which quickly morphed into New Zealand Music Month... > Read more
RINGO ON RECORD IN THE SEVENTIES (2021): The rise and fall of a Starr
2 May 2021 | 9 min read
Even before their protracted divorce, the various Beatles had been releasing albums under their own names. The first was Paul McCartney who, with considerable help from George Martin, wrote the soundtrack to the 1966 film The Family Way. George Harrison did the uneven but sometimes interesting soundtrack to the '68 Joe Massot film Wonderwall... > Read more
TRASHY OLD MOVIES, TRASHY YOUNG PEOPLE (2021): Sex and drugs and out of control
2 May 2021 | 2 min read | 1
Every now and again we need to remind ourselves just how appalling young people are. They smoke and drink, they take drugs and skip off from school or work. They are irresponsible, steal cars, drive too fast and they swear all the time. They terrorise the streets, their peers, whole communities and small towns. They run in packs like rats and talk... > Read more
Sheep, Dog & Wolf: Two-Minds (bandcamp)
1 May 2021 | 1 min read
As we heard on Merk's recent album Infinite Youth, the landscape between adolescence and adulthood can be strange and difficult terrain. In that uncertain limbo, childhood is in retreat -- sometimes romanticised for its innocence and joy -- and an unknown life beyond teenage dreams is ahead as indistinguishable shapes cloaked in shadow. The debut... > Read more
The Black Crowes: Before the Frost . . . Until the Freeze (2009)
26 Apr 2021 | 2 min read
After calling it quits in 2002, frontman Chris Robinson going solo, then their resurrection with Warpaint in 2008r (which brought in guitarist Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All Stars), the Black Crowes hadn't sounded so on top of their game in a long time. And they followed Warpaint with a double punch Warpaint Live (the album played live and an extra disc of... > Read more
The Black Crowes: The Last Place That Love Lives
MINNIE RIPERTON: PERFECT ANGEL, CONSIDERED (1974): La la la la da da bee doo . . .
26 Apr 2021 | 2 min read
When Minnie Riperton died in 1979 many were shocked, and not just that she should be taken so young at 31. Nor was it that she looked so full of cheeky life on the cover of her hit album Perfect Angel which contained the extraordinary single Lovin' You. It was that she died of breast cancer which was probably the first time many of her young soul/r'n'b followers had... > Read more
Arooj Aftab: Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam/digital outlets)
26 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
Pakistan-born Arooj Aftab is emblematic of the world we live in: She is a graduate of Berklee in Brooklyn (jazz but with a penchant for ambient and minimalist musicians like Terry Riley). On this, her third album, she brings her considerable compositional and arranging skills (and pure voice) to elegant music grounded in her traditions which comes off to Western ears as... > Read more
Gerry Beckley: Keeping the Light On (Tasman/Southbound/digital outlets)
25 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
Gerry Beckley you ask? And well you might, but he was one of the members of the soft-rock band America and before you dismiss them, George Martin saw enough in them to produce half a dozen of their albums. Okay, maybe he just needed a break after the Beatles, but the band was enormously successful and although Beckley wasn't the main songwriter (that role belonged to... > Read more
Calling You
Rod Stewart: Don't Come Around Here (2001)
25 Apr 2021 | 2 min read | 1
In his candid autobiography, Rod Stewart -- whom I unashamedly like and admire for his original songs, covers and sense of humour -- dismisses, or is highly critical, of some of his albums. In 2000 after a skirmish with cancer, he returned with the album Human, which included Charlie Parker Loves Me and this song with Helicopter Girl. But as he writes,... > Read more
McCloud, California: You are what you eat
25 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
This is just an opinion: but nowadays it seems more difficult to find a really bad meal than a good one. That is unless you are in McCloud, a small town at the base of photogenic Mount Shasta in northern California. McCloud isn't on too many tourists' agendas---it is well off the highways and seems to be at the end of long dead-end road---and that is probably just as... > Read more
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Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points, LSO: Promises (Luaka Bop/digital outlets)
24 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
At 80, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders has had a remarkable career in and out of jazz: As a young man he was in rhythm'n'blues bands, then played free jazz with Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman, joined up with John Coltrane in the mid Sixties (two years before Coltrane's death) , recorded with Coltrane's widow Alice on her spiritual albums, worked... > Read more
JOHN LENNON, PLASTIC ONO BAND, REMIXED AND EXPANDED (2021): The dream may be over, but it begins again
24 Apr 2021 | 7 min read
Although Paul McCartney announced the dissolution of the Beatles in a self-written sheet accompanying his eponymous solo album in April 1970 (“Q. Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles? A. No”), it was John Lennon who, that December on the release of his Plastic Ono Band album,unequivocally closed the account on the group which had... > Read more
Isolation (demo)
Blair Parkes: new building (bandcamp)
24 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
We've previously been admiring of the polymath that is musician/artist/video maker Blair Parkes out of coastal New Brighton near Christchurch who has considerable pedigree in a number of bands. Two years ago with Little Rapids he delivered what we called “a truly wonderful album of glistening dream-pop”. This time out – as on much of the 2018's... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . noemienours
23 Apr 2021 | 8 min read
The mysteriously-named noemienours from Sweden is in fact the very interesting Noemie M Nours (aka Noemie Dal) who has a PhD and is a freelance translator fluent in French, German, English, Swedish and Dutch. She came to Elsewhere's attention when she sent a short and polite email asking if we'd be interested in writing about her fourth album Tardigrade Bounding .... > Read more
Slow Walker
Elsewhere Art . . . Richard X Bennett
22 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
This image may be confusing for many, given New York pianist/composer Richard X Bennett hasn't crossed into too many Elsewhere and otherwise lives . . . . despite my best efforts. Bennett came our way back in 2013 with the album New York City Swara on which he played Indian raga pieces on piano. Which is odd, difficult and – when you think about... > Read more