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
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 microtones... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Chet Baker
21 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
Chet Baker was -- like Dean Martin -- a man whose gifts came so easily he took them for granted and was casually dismissive of them. Dean would walk into a recording studio or onto a film set, do what was required with the minimum of effort and then head for the golf course or, later in life, to the same restaurant. The gift was just there to to be rolled out when... > Read more
ANDREW BROUGH, REMEMBERED (2021): The sparkle that shone too briefly
19 Apr 2021 | 3 min read
The first time I met Andrew Brough to talk to at any length was in mid 1988 when Straitjackets Fits were in The Lab Studios with producer Terry Moore and recording their debut album Hail. We'd passed a few quick greetings in the past, notably when I smuggled my 16-year old son into the Gluepot so he could see a band I believed would conquer the world. Yes, I thought... > Read more
Save My Life, by Bike
ERROL SCORCHER AND THE REVOLUTIONARIES: RASTAFIRE, CONSIDERED (1978): A long life after his death
19 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
Jamaican DJ Errol Scorcher (born Errol Archer in the parish of St Catherine in 1956) wasn't much known outside of the hardcore reggae audience in the world beyond his homeland. However back in JA he enjoyed a number of hits and was a staple on the sound systems. But although his song Peace Truce celebrated the stand down between political rivals which lead to the... > Read more
Various Artists: McCartney III Imagined (Capitol/digital outlets)
19 Apr 2021 | 2 min read
When, last December, Sir Paul released his McCartney III recorded during lockdown, there was considerable enthusiasm and praise. He talked a good game about it (as he usually does) and its experimental nature and so on, and to be fair it was pretty damn good – although those who considered it quite out-there obviously hadn't heard his much more daring projects as The... > Read more
The Saints: See You in Paradise (1986)
19 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
Bob Geldof once said that “rock music of the Seventies was changed by three bands: the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints”. The Saints out of Brisbane were certainly the vanguard of a style which would be recognized as punk with songs like (I'm) Stranded, Wild About You and the Ramones-like speed-thrash of Demolition Girl in '76. But there was more... > Read more
Joy Harjo: I Pray for My Enemies (Sunyaya/digital outlets)
18 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
We are forgiven for not knowing much if anything about Joy Harjo who is the current Poet Laureate in the US and the first Native American to hold that title. Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation) has won more accolades than we could count and at almost 70 has built a huge body of written work and half a dozen albums where she reads her powerful work with various traditional and... > Read more
Fear
Elsewhere Art . . . Louis Armstrong
18 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
Absolutely obvious I know. But what else are you going to for the great Louis Armstrong other than cast him as some holy man radiating light out of New Orleans? This was created to accompany an article on various Dixieland compilations, a genre of jazz I have always had some aversion to because of the cliches of men in bowler hats sitting on the back of a flat bed in... > Read more
Dianne Swann: The War on Peace of Mind ( /digital outlets)
18 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
Because we have recently published an extensive interview with Dianne Swann about this album (and much else besides), let's just cut to the chase. Here are eight, discrete originals which embrace global politics (the brittle, arresting opener Gone Are the Days about climate change and Mother Earth “fighting back”), sensual and sexual longing... > Read more
Please Leave a Message
Various Artists: The New Blue, Pixie Williams Reimagined (digital outlets)
17 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
Later 21-year old producer Stan Dallas would recall, “We actually didn't say it, but I think everybody realised we were making history”. That was when in, October 1948, the Ruru Karaitiana Quintette with 19-year old singer Pixie Williams recorded the achingly beautiful lament Blue Smoke. Released the following year when families still mourned... > Read more
noemienours: Tardigrade Bounding (bandcamp)
17 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
In keeping with Elsewhere's self-imposed ethos of taking you “elsewhere”, we draw attention to this album out of Sweden which is about as "elsewhere" as we have heard in a very long time. Noemie M Nours (aka Noemie Dal) apparently played at Auckland's Audio Foundation in mid 2019 (with Pumice) but other than this following description on... > Read more
Cryptobiosis
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The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Merk
16 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
Some albums are enjoyable, some are accomplished and some are important. It's the rare one – such as Infinite Youth by Auckland's Merk (Mark Perkins) – which is all three. A beautifully realised collection of songs around the loose theme of facing the threshold of adulthood while wanting to cling to the innocence and heartbreaks of childhood and teenage years... > Read more
Shai Maestro: Human (ECM/digital outlets)
16 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
With a name which befits his accomplishment yet playing which avoids flamboyance, Israeli pianist Shai Maestro found his natural home on the ECM label three years ago with The Dream Thief. Here again he is with fellow Israeli Ofri Nehemya (drums) and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder, and now American trumpeter Philip Dizack. With a clear acknowledgement of the American... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . the Modern Jazz Quartet
14 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
This art was just absurd . . . as absurd in a way as the fact the buttoned-down, besuited and ineffably cool Modern Jazz Quartet would briefly appear on the Beatles' Apple label for two albums in the late Sixties. The American group seemed incongruous on a label launched the wake of Sgt Pepper and which was scooping up oddballs or releasing Lennon and Harrison's vanity... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Francisca Griffin
13 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
Francisca Griffin has not only been a longtime Elsewhere subscriber (reason enough for us to be interested?) but has had a very long association with Dunedin music, right back to her days in the rather wonderful Look Blue Go Purple, an all-women band in the Flying Nun boy's club. Back then she was Kathy Griffin then Kathy Bull after her marriage to the Chills' Martyn... > Read more
OMC'S HOW BIZARRE, ON VINYL (2021): Wanna know the rest, buy the album
12 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
In his excellent 2015 memoir-cum-biography-cum social history How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the Song That Stormed the World, Fuemana-champion Simon Grigg, with clear eyes, wrote candidly of the problems with Pauly Fuemana who had died in January 2010. Pauly was difficult and volatile, but when it came to music things were even more problematic: he could neither read nor... > Read more
DORY PREVIN, REFLECTIONS IN A MUD PUDDLE, CONSIDERED (1971): Death, pain, disasters and really nice songs
12 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
Any number of women artist from the Sixties and Seventies – Vashti Bunyan, PP Arnold, Doris Troy and others – have undergone a career revival or rediscovery in recent years. But Dory Previn – who died in 2012 aged 86 – still seems to be overlooked. Could it be because she wrote lyrics which even by today's hip-hop and r'n'b standards would be... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Merk: Infinite Youth (Humblebrag/digital outlets)
12 Apr 2021 | 2 min read
Listening to the recent vinyl reissue of Voom's terrific album “Hello, Are You There?' it was easy to be struck by how many albums, like his, on the Lil' Chief indie label are mercifully free of irony and often aim for an innocent but not naïve reading. Certainly a few have had a frisson of detachment, but for the most part in delivery and text there is a... > Read more
Brian Eno and Snatch: RAF (1978)
12 Apr 2021 | <1 min read
The idea of “found sound” was hardly new when Brian Eno, Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin (aka Snatch) and Eno's then-familiar crew of Phil Collins (drums), bassist Percy Jones and guitarist Paul Rudolph release this as the B-side to his song King's Lead Hat (an anagram of Talking Heads) from his Before and After Science album (a longtime Essential Elsewhere album).... > Read more