Absolute Elsewhere
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ALY COOK, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2020): Highways and red dirt roads on the way
22 Feb 2020 | 1 min read
Aly Cook is a self-starter, more acclaimed outside New Zealand than at home. And although she is very big in Australian country music circles, she grew up in the beachside suburb of Tahunanui in Nelson, the city in which she still lives. A self-managed country singer-songwriter, Cook has crowd-funded her three albums. With the release in September 2019... > Read more
TAMI NEILSON: DYNAMITE READY TO BOOM! (2020): The year the chick-a-boomed?
14 Feb 2020 | 2 min read
Tami Neilson is world famous in New Zealand. For now. Over confident and enjoyable albums, the Canadian-born singer/songwriter adapted the spirits of Peggy Lee, Wanda Jackson, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and others to create something unique. A clutch of local awards, sold out concerts, her striking style (“The real reason I sing loud, so you can hear me over my... > Read more
TAMI NEILSON, THE CAREER AND CHICKABOOM!: (2020) It's the Tami show, again
14 Feb 2020 | 5 min read | 1
At the end of 2019 I was approached by Tami Neilson to ask if I would write some PR for her to use with her forthcoming album Chickaboom! This was the album she had recorded with brother Jay and she wanted something to introduce her to international audiences, because the album was going to get a serious push. I was delighted and somehow that morphed into some PR articles . . . and... > Read more
CY WINSTANLEY OF TATTLETALE SAINTS INTERVIEWED (2020): Nashville cats . . .
10 Feb 2020 | 3 min read
Singer-songwriter Cy Winstanley – half of the expat country-folk duo Tattletale Saints with his former partner, the vocalist/bassist Vanessa McGowan – has lived in Nashville for more than five years. Well, mostly. Recently there was three months in Japan as a sideman for Glen Campbell's daughter Ashley, then in Australia and around the American South with Nashville-based... > Read more
HERMAN'S HERMITS, EXPORTING ENGLAND (2020): Into something interesting, if not good
26 Jan 2020 | 4 min read
After the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US in February 1964 -- when they were seen by approximately 73 million people out of a population of 192 million -- American teenagers had an almost insatiable appetite for British pop music. And so began the "British Invasion" in which dozens of UK acts toured and had hits in the US, among them the Rolling Stones,... > Read more
BILL FAY: CONSIDERED (2020): A calm balm for these hard times
20 Jan 2020 | 4 min read | 1
Everywhere is madness, disaster and chaos. The young feel on the precipice of the climate apocalypse as rivers dry and oceans rise, the land burns and the air chokes. If you read anything about current politics you can confidently say that yes, anyone can aspire to be the president of the United States. If this vile, bullying, lying, dangerous and psychopathic buffoon can get there,... > Read more
VIOLENT FEMMES' BRIAN RITCHIE INTERVIEWED (2020): Playing to the gallery
17 Jan 2020 | 3 min read
Ahead of his veteran band Violent Femmes' return to New Zealand, Brian Ritchie talks about his other life – working at Tasmania’s Mona art gallery. When Brian Ritchie – bassist in Milwaukee folk-punk band Violent Femmes – moved to Hobart 12 years ago, as the band he founded was in a fractious hiatus, he had... > Read more
THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND: Away with the faeries and poets
15 Jan 2020 | 4 min read
Unexpected people are into the Incredible String Band: Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin you can understand, given Led Zepp played a kind of Anglofolk/Tolkein thing alongside their hijacking of black blues and other hoary riffs. But bristling DIY post-punk Chris Knox speaking highly of this slightly fey Scottish folk group who pioneered the use of instruments from across the planet and... > Read more
The Incredible String Band: The Mad Hatter's Song (from The 5000 Spirits/Onion album)
BOB DYLAN; ON LOVE AND LOST OPPORTUNITY (2020): If you see her say more than hello
1 Jan 2020 | 2 min read
As a new decade dawns even Bob Dylan's most loyal fans must sense that they might not be hearing any new music from their man. His last album of original songs was more than nine years ago and since then he has delivered three albums of covers -- Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and the triple CD/vinyl set Triplicate. Many of these were songs associated with Frank Sinatra (not Strangers... > Read more
PAUL SIMON'S AMERICAN TUNE AND ITS MELODIC ORIGINS (2019): The distant past informing the damaged present
30 Dec 2019 | 1 min read | 1
As Bob Dylan famously said (and obviously wasn't the first to expres this sentiment)., "amateurs borrow, professionals steal". It's what you do with what you take. Case in point, Paul Simon's American Tune. In the early Seventies, Paul Simon began writing this song which would capture the mood of many Americans in that era of politcal uncertainty, the on-going and... > Read more
DEDIKATION, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): Covering their way to the top
18 Dec 2019 | <1 min read
The tail-end of the 1960s was a rare moment for Kiwi singles. In late October 1969, four of the top five places on the charts were held by New Zealand artists: Shane (with Saint Paul), Hi Revving Tongues (Rain and Tears), Dedikation (Wait For Me Mary-Anne) and Larry Morris (The Hunt) were all there behind Robin Gibb's Saved by the Bell. The following week Gibb and Morris slipped down... > Read more
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2019: THE READERS' CHOICES
16 Dec 2019 | 6 min read | 1
Following Elsewhere posting its choices for the Best of the Year albums and The Best in Reissues (of what we heard, obviously a lot went past us) we invited Elsewhere readers to tell us what they were impressed by this year. Here is what people told us . . . and where Elsewhere had reviewed the album we have highlighted it with a link to our original... > Read more
BOB DYLAN REWRITING HIMSELF (2019): Sometimes he didn't have such a tight connection
15 Dec 2019 | 3 min read
Right from the very start of his career Bobn Dylan was rewriting songs. First those by others -- or folk and blues songs whose origins were remote -- which he turned into his own. And then increasingly changing lyrics in his own songs in performance or in the studio. Elsewhere has shone the spotlight on New Danville Girl which became Brownsville Girl on the '86 album Knocked Out Loaded.... > Read more
GENE CLARK, NO OTHER, REISSUED AND EXPANDED (2019): An album quite like no other
13 Dec 2019 | 5 min read
Just a personal observation: Gene Clark – who died in '91 at age 46 – wrote and sang some of my favourite songs by the Byrds. He co-wrote Eight Miles High with Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, and wrote the Byrds' jangle classic I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (the b-side to All I Really Want to Do). But best of all for me, one of my favourite... > Read more
Silver Raven (remastered album version)
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE (2019): THE YEAR IN REISSUES
9 Dec 2019 | 8 min read
Round the Elsewhere way we used to joke that there's a reason people want to live in the past: It was cheaper back then. That's no longer true if in your listening habits you allow the past back into your life in box sets and reissues. Well -- unashamedly – we do, because round here we're always curious to hear not just what was done but – in the case of outtakes and... > Read more
HORST STUNZNER OF THE SAMOAN SURF RIDERS INTERVIEWED (2018): Fresh off the boat and into the studio
9 Dec 2019 | 7 min read | 1
To hear 84-year old Horst Stunzner tell it, the recording session in 1964 took place somewhere just off Queen St in Auckland. The group was in and out quickly, he expected there might be a single come of it and as far as he remembers little if any money changed hands. “Rudolf and Hugo might have signed something,” he recalls, “but the rest of us never saw any contract, and... > Read more
Tiligiligi (Medley)
MALCHICKS REVISITED AND REISSUED (2019): Flying high then, then flying away
4 Dec 2019 | 10 min read
Despite a fine EP Lotus, the excellent album Mercury and songs beloved at student radio (notably Drive), Auckland's Malchicks barely rate a mention in overviews of the New Zealand rock scene of the Nineties. Yet there they were, a tight four-piece which had elements of shoegaze, dream-pop, Goth gloom and melodic thrash alongside real roof-raisers. They were produced by Chris van der... > Read more
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2019: THE EDITOR'S PICKS
2 Dec 2019 | 11 min read
Yes, it is that time again when contentious lists are posted about the Best Albums of The Year. And we can only reiterate what we always say,: the “best” albums are those which you enjoyed the most. End of that discussion? The more obscure an album does not – in Elsewhere's world anyway – mean it is any better than a blockbuster by, say, Taylor Swift.... > Read more
PHIL GARLAND REMEMBERED (2019): Singer of a young colony
25 Nov 2019 | 3 min read
Had it not been for a chance encounter, Phil Garland's career might have gone in a very different direction. Garland – who died in 2017 and is considered this country's foremost archivist of colonial-era folk songs and singer-songwriter in the genre – was born in Christchurch and came of age during the rock'n'roll era of the Fifties. Despite singing in the church choir and... > Read more
ROUTE 66 REVISITED (2019): On the road again . . . and again
20 Nov 2019 | 2 min read
Route 66 has been covered by everyone from Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones to big band jazz groups and bar bands everywhere. It's a rock'n'roll standard largely because of Berry's version so . . . Here's Chuck Berry from 1961 who made this song into a rock'n'roll era hit in the late Fifties, even though its origins were earlier. and his version influenced the young Rolling... > Read more