Absolute Elsewhere

Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.

DAVE DOBBYN CONSIDERED (2016): Magic what he do . . .

21 Mar 2016  |  3 min read  |  2

When producer Sir George Martin died in March, much was made — quite rightly — of his long association with the Beatles. What wasn't made more clear to a couple of generations of people for whom the Beatles are a band from the distant past, was how unusual and almost unique that relationship was. Martin was there for just about every Beatle record over seven enormously... > Read more

Harmony House

PERE UBU REISSUED, PART TWO (2016): Deconstructing pop and language

14 Mar 2016  |  5 min read

When Elsewhere spoke with Pere Ubu's mainman David Thomas recently it was ostensibly to discuss the two box sets of the band's early recordings which have been reissued on vinyl (and download) through Britain's Fire Records. But as you may see from that lengthy conversation, many other topics were traversed and there was perhaps less about the reissues than expected because Thomas... > Read more

Petrified (from Song of the Bailing Man)

SIR GEORGE MARTIN INTERVIEWED (1998): The retiring knight of the round vinyl

10 Mar 2016  |  7 min read

Of all the knights of pop -- Sir Cliff, Sir Paul, Sir Elton -- it is Sir George Martin, famously known as the Beatles’ producer, who seems the most deserving of the accolade. It was November '95 when I met him in London at the launch of the Beatles’ Anthology albums. He was self-effacing, courteous and well-spoken. (At age 16 he'd heard his voice on tape and thereafter... > Read more

EILEN JEWELL INTERVIEWED (2016): Bringing it all back home

7 Mar 2016  |  10 min read

There's no category for Eilen Jewell's music: Some will call it country and some alt.country, but there is also a clear European jazz quality in many songs, she acknowledges Billie Holliday and Bob Dylan as early influences, does a sultry cover of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' 1960 hit Shakin' All Over and can break your heart with a straight-ahead ballad. Oh, and in 2010 she did a fine... > Read more

My Hometown

DAVID THOMAS OF PERE UBU INTERVIEWED (2016): Walking with noise and ghosts

26 Feb 2016  |  19 min read

David Thomas is his customary garrulous, funny but incisive and sometimes his visibly irritated self . . . at least he would be if we could see him on this Skype call to his home in England. Somewhere behind the screenshot of his much younger self there is muttering and mumbling as someone, who I take to be his partner, laughing and telling him to push connections. “He's... > Read more

All The Dogs Are Barking (alt mix)

VIOLENT FEMMES REVISITED (2016): Gone baby gone . . . but back?

24 Feb 2016  |  3 min read  |  1

Having witnessed the adoration New Zealanders were prepared to pour on the Violent Femmes, Elsewhere would frequently joke that they -- like Cheap Trick -- could turn up in Auckland tomorrow and fill the Town Hall with sweaty, party-ready fans from across at least two generations. They made the kind of singalong, acoustic-rock music we liked . . . and we proved it by being the first country... > Read more

Country Death Song

PERE UBU REISSUED, PART ONE (2016): On a thin wire dancing above the abyss

15 Feb 2016  |  6 min read

In his 1974 philosophical narrative Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the American author Robert M. Pirsig writes of being at the home of some friends where there is a constantly dripping tap. “If you try to fix a faucet and your fixing doesn’t work then it’s just your lot to live with a dripping faucet,” he writes. “This made me wonder... > Read more

Thriller!

LANCE FERGUSON INTERVIEWED (2016): Bringing back an exotic personal and popular past

8 Feb 2016  |  9 min read  |  1

Lance Ferguson is among New Zealand's most successful, hardest working but perhaps the least known of our musical exports. The grandson of Tongan-born, New Zealand lap steel legend Bill Wolfgramm (who enjoyed a friendly rivalry with the more successful Bill Sevesi from the Forties onward, and who died in 2003), Lance Ferguson left New Zealand 20 years ago. In Melbourne he founded... > Read more

The Kava Diary

SHOEGAZE CONSIDERED (2016): Trippin' back in time and feelin' fine

5 Feb 2016  |  4 min read

It was a British music writer, of course, who first coined the term “shoegaze”. Writing a mid-'91 review in Sounds of the band Moose, Andy Hurt encapsulated the look – if, unhelpfully, not the sound – of many bands which, heads bowed, explored a kind of widescreen pop irradiated by wide swathes of guitar noise, sometimes droning vocals and dreamy psychedelia.... > Read more

Godlike, by the Dylans

THE AUCKLAND LANEWAY FESTIVAL (2016): Shall we talk about the weather . . .

2 Feb 2016  |  5 min read

At some level, the weather for an Auckland Laneway Festival is as much discussed as the music. Since the festival moved from the inadequate make-do sites behind Britomart and then Aotea Square to the flatland of Silo Park – little shade, the main stages on an asphalt carpark – the heat has often been the memory many take away. So it was almost like good news that this... > Read more

Cheap Beer (by Fidlar)

THIS HEAT REISSUED (2016): An uncommon collusion

28 Jan 2016  |  4 min read

It has long been accepted that much of the music which came out of the British punk explosion in the mid-late Seventies was the least of. Alongside songs and albums which were often inchoate noise and anger broadcasting a narrow political or social agenda were the more important aspects of punk: the DIY ethic which gave the marginalised and disenfranchised a game-plan to get their... > Read more

Makeshift Swahili

LINK WRAY REISSUED (2016): Ragged but right country

25 Jan 2016  |  5 min read  |  2

Mention the name “Link Wray” these days and most people will draw a blank. A few might confidently say, “Rumble” – the gang-fight title of his raw, distorted guitar instrument from '58 – but after that things might get murky. Link Wray – born Fred Lincoln Wray -- died in late 2005 age 76, and is frequently confused with other guitar twangers of... > Read more

La De Da

GILLIAN WELCH INTERVIEWED (2016): Taking sad songs to make it better

18 Jan 2016  |  8 min read

It has been almost five years since Gillian Welch's Grammy-nominated album The Harrow and the Harvest, and over a decade since she and longtime partner Dave Rawlings appeared in New Zealand. They will correct the latter oversight when they play the Civic in Auckland on January 28, but in conversation Welch says there's no new album forthcoming under her own name. No matter,... > Read more

Candy

DAVID BOWIE REMEMBERED (2016): The man, now in the rearview mirror

17 Jan 2016  |  3 min read

David Bowie frequently changed his musical colours, but to call him a chameleon — as many have done since his unexpected death just days after the release of his stunning new album blackstar — is wrong. A chameleon blends into the colours of the background, Bowie took the colours and used them to stand out. In the early Seventies he leapt past Marc Bolan of T. Rex to... > Read more

PHIL COLLINS REVISITED (2016): Don't take him at face value

15 Jan 2016  |  2 min read

When looking for a short-cut into buying Phil Collins many might say, “Just don't”. And maybe it's true, because there's not a lot to recommend his MOR soul covers or the annoying Sussudio. But there are depths in his catalogue, especially when he was going through fairly regular separations. So – accepting the Eighties production values – let's reconsider... > Read more

DAVID BOWIE REINVENTED, AGAIN (2016): Out of the blue and into the blackstar

11 Jan 2016  |  4 min read  |  3

Although we shouldn't presume the “I” in any song belongs to the singer, it was widely taken that David Bowie was referring to himself in 1980 when he sang, “I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I've never done anything out of the blue”. The song was Ashes to Ashes, his self-referential hit off the Scary Monsters album (“We know Major... > Read more

Lazarus

FLEETWOOD MAC, TUSK AGAIN (2016): Walk a tightrope line

11 Jan 2016  |  4 min read

When we take the long view on various artists' careers we can see the pattern. After the enormously successful album many artists consolidate to hold their ground – Michael Jackson's Dangerous after Bad, most things by Foo Fighters – or they can be courageous and put a stake in the ground and just say, “No”. As Bruce Springsteen did with Nebraska after The... > Read more

Tusk outtake

SEQUEL SONGS (2016): And you'll never guess what happened next . . .

11 Jan 2016  |  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

ELTON JOHN REVISITED (2016): Once was a well-known gun

4 Jan 2016  |  2 min read

Elton John's new album Wonderful Crazy Night is his 33rd studio release . . . so speculating just for a moment that there are people out there who might say, "Yeah, heard of him but . . ." Let's help them out just a little by offering a few starting points into his vast and diverse catalogue. A kind of "how to buy Elton" as it were . . . or at least how to listen to... > Read more

THE BEATLES BEYOND 1 AND 1+: All you need is these

28 Dec 2015  |  3 min read

It's a safe bet a number of people knew what they wanted so bought their own Christmas present this past year. And that a whole bunch of others — maybe people getting it from parents or grandparents — got the same welcome gift: A copy of the Beatles' 1 CD and DVD collection. Very lucky people got the expanded 1+ edition which came with two DVDs of film clips.... > Read more