Interviews, overviews, critical essays and extended music reviews

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT (2025): The rise and return of Nothing At All!

11 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

In those ancient days before the internet made self-promotion easy and lazy, artists had to create their own audience through live shows. Anticipating the emergence of garageband rock'n'roll bands like the Datsuns, Hellacopters, Von Bondies, Detroit Cobras, Guitar Wolf and others, the Nothing At All! trio out of Auckland's North Shore took their punk-fuelled rock'n'roll to audience through... > Read more

GET UP, STAND UP AGAIN (2025): The resurrection of All Fall Down

10 Mar 2025 | 2 min read

It was long ago and, from where we sit, far away: Christchurch in the Eighties to be specific. There were a lot of bands around at the time and with just the EP My Brand New Wallpaper Coat released on Flying Nun in 1987 it seems almost inevitable that All Fall Down should be one of those here-today-and-gone bands from that era. But All Fall Down were – as we now know through the... > Read more

Star Sign (live)

THE LAST HURRAH (2025): Martin Phillipps' last Chills album

10 Mar 2025 | 3 min read

David Bowie knew his end was coming and so his final album blackstar – released on his 69th birthday and just two days before he died – contained references to his impending departure. Leonard Cohen's posthumous Thanks for the Dance in 2019, released three years after his death, may come with a title like a farewell note but the songs were part of his on-going writing.... > Read more

Juicy Creaming Soda

THE LONG TWILIGHT IN LIVERPOOL (2025): After the legends left

3 Mar 2025 | 2 min read

Many years ago an interesting but hardly essential compilation What About Us? pulled together material by Liverpool bands (the Chants, Koobas, Johnny Sandon etc) and also-rans like Tommy Quickly in the years of Beatle-led Merseybeat. It was a bit of fun but few of the songs leaped to attention as lost classics from the era. A more recent collection compiled Bob Stanley of St... > Read more

Imagination, by Clayton Squares

SEQUEL SONGS: And you'll never guess what happened next . . .

17 Feb 2025 | 2 min read

In the late Fifties and early Sixties the idea of answer songs (Dodie Stevens' Yes I'm Lonesome Tonight for example) was pretty common, as were sequel songs. The most obvious sequel song was Peggy Sue Got Married by Buddy Holly and most in the genre were cash-ins, replication songs (Wanda Jackson's follow-up to Let's Have a Party was the photocopied Man We Had a Party) and pretty gimmicky.... > Read more

Man We Had a Party, by Wanda Jackson

CLASSIC GIRL GROUPS (2013): All the young elles

10 Feb 2025 | 3 min read

Even in a very long list of great groups there will be omissions. And today, despite constant reissue programmes, repackaging and a trawling of the backwaters of pop music's past, there can still be amnesia when it comes to some of the most important groups of an era. The Shirelles, for example, have gone woefully overlooked given how many hits they sprang, how they defined a sound and a... > Read more

Uptown, by the Crystals

CMON CMON, PROFILED (2025): Something beginning with C

27 Jan 2025 | 2 min read

The release of the new single Turn Off The Lights by the Belgian trio Cmon Cmon reminded us of what a fine power pop band they are. But before we introduce them – we're guessing they would be new to you – we'll quickly address power pop, one of our favourite escapist genres. Essentially the style takes the elements of guitar-based pop – strong melodies, verse-chorus... > Read more

The Summers We Missed

THE RETURN OF RINGO (2025): The country calls again to a Starr

26 Jan 2025 | 2 min read

For at least a decade before it became a popular opinion, Elsewhere championed the McCartney's Ram album (and the album by Paul's brother Mike which was like a slightly lesser companion album). We also went into bat for Ringo's country album Beaucoups of Blues of 1970, his first serious solo album after Sentimental Journey, an album of standards which mum liked and he'd grown up on. On... > Read more

Rosetta (with Billy Strings and Larkin Poe)

JIM PEPPER, REMEMBERED (2025): A man comin' . . . an' too soon goin'

20 Jan 2025 | 3 min read | 2

It is a rare jazz musician who can score a rock-radio hit -- but saxophonist Jim Pepper was a very rare jazz musician indeed. Of Kaw and Creek descent, Pepper was born in Oregon in 1941 and described himself as an "urban Indian". He spent much of his early life between family homes in Oregon and Oklahoma and although he grew up listening to big band jazz and bebop he was also... > Read more

Ya Na Ho

THE GANTS, RESURRECTED (2024): The British Beat from Mississippi

31 Dec 2024 | 2 min read

In the years immediately following the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, literally scores of American bands adopted the Mersey Beat style (or what they thought it was) and many went further than just copying the Beatles' hairstyle but took on British-sounding names: the Buckinghams, Beau Brummels, Beefeaters, . . . Quite what effect the Kingsmen out of... > Read more

I Wonder

THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2024: THE EDITOR'S PICKS

9 Dec 2024 | 10 min read | 4

It is that time again when we reflect on the year that has sped by, and of course we single out albums that made it all so much better. As always these are not “the best” of the year because we couldn't hear everything and anyway, “the best” are those that you enjoyed the most. But here we remind you of those albums which stood out from... > Read more

THE EASYBEATS REMEMBERED (2015): I got hit songs on my mind . . .

2 Dec 2024 | 6 min read | 1

The edges of the vision are blurry but at the centre of the frame things are clear. I am a teenager, my friend Barry and I and perhaps a couple of others are stumbling down a dark road near what is now the Whangaparaoa shopping centre. We had just been at a movie – may have been kicked out – and are drunk on Blackberry Nip or McWilliam's Sweet Sherry. As we pass by the old... > Read more

She's So Fine

THE AMERICANISATION OF THE BEATLES (2024): The Capitol albums again

25 Nov 2024 | 3 min read

Although the scream-age fans fell at the Beatles' feet after The Ed Sullivan Show appearance in February 1964, they had a very strange and different understanding of their music. The US albums were mismatches of the original British album tracks and singles, songs dropped from one UK album would appear later, sometimes much later. These albums were the work of Capitol Record's Dave... > Read more

Ticket to Ride (movie mix)

SHAWN PHILLIPS, REDISCOVERED AGAIN (2024): Music business' best kept secret

18 Nov 2024 | 3 min read

Recently when writing about Tucker Zimmerman we observed that no matter how much archive digging you do, there will always be someone you'd never heard of – like Tucker – who suddenly appears to your delight. Shawn Phillips, born in Texas, isn't like that to us – we've had his Faces album since it was released in 1972 -- but he's probably unfamiliar to many people, despite... > Read more

As All is Played

DAVID BOWIE; THE EARLY YEARS CONSIDERED: He was an interesting bunch of people

11 Nov 2024 | 5 min read

For a while, quite a while in fact, David Bowie could do no wrong – and when something seemed like a career move (“I never did anything out of the blue”) it worked to his advantage. Even when he was The Man Who Fell To Earth after Lou Reed decked him in a London restaurant, it was the day before his new single was released – Boys Keep Swinging. You just... > Read more

THE POETS, DISCOVERED (2024): Scots wha-hey hey hey

8 Nov 2024 | 2 min read

Almost 25 years ago the obscure label Dynovox released a compilation of material by the Sixties band The Poets under the attention-getting title “Scotland's No 1 Group”. Since the Sixties there would be any number of bands from north of the Border would might more fairly claim that title, but the Poets were real contenders in their time. Marmalade might have given them a... > Read more

Now We're Thru

THEY ARE ALL THE WALRUS: The story of the Exotic Beatles series

4 Nov 2024 | 3 min read

Some people -- like Allan Rouse and Steve Rooke at Abbey Road studios who remastered the complete catalogue -- listen to an awful lot of Beatles' music. Others -- like Jim Phelan -- listen to a lot of awful Beatles' music. Phelan from London is the man behind the hilarious Exotic Beatles collections -- now up to Volume Four -- on which he compiles often terrifyingly bad, frequently... > Read more

I Want to Hold Your Hand

THE TURTLES REVISITED (2024): Sometimes it ain't them babe

28 Oct 2024 | 6 min read | 1

It hasn't been uncommon for musicians or bands to hide behind another name. The Beatles briefly flirted with the idea for an album before they ran out of energy for it (“We're Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . . .”) and in the early Seventies the late Leon Russell recorded a very credible country album as Hank Wilson. And, although it was obviously Russell, Hank was... > Read more

Grim Reaper of Love

ADDITIONAL PROVOCATIONS OF RATTLES (2024): The wide river of new Rattle releases.

18 Oct 2024 | 2 min read

As we have noted in previous Provocation/Provocations of Rattles columns, the Auckland label releases albums at such a rate it is often impossible to keep up. This year has been a quiet one however, just one or two releases in the first six months, but suddenly a small slew have been released by Rattle, the local label we consider to be one of the most interesting, innovative and... > Read more

THE GROOVE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD: It's where we are at

25 Sep 2024 | 3 min read | 2

New Zealand music has some interesting side roads and tracks off the main highway. But running right down the highway, securely in the middle of the road, is a wide path which many artists prefer. It's smooth driving and a popular route, it can also be mundane and the sights repetitive and dulled through familiarity. The vehicle is riding on an uplifting rail of reggae, soulful... > Read more

Wide angle reviews, interviews and opinion
on music, travel and the arts by writer Graham Reid

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