Absolute Elsewhere

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JOHNNY DEVLIN, INTERVIEWED (2007): Just let me hear that old time rock'n'roll

31 Jan 2015  |  3 min read

Johnny Devlin was New Zealand's original rock'n'roll star. Johnny Cooper aka The Maori Cowboy might have recorded the country's first rock'n'roll song – a somewhat limp cover of Rock Around the Clock – but Cooper was a country singer and the new music of rock'n'roll was . . . Well, just too new. Cooper didn't quite get it, but Devlin – who fell in love with Elvis'... > Read more

AUCKLAND'S LANEWAY FESTIVAL CONSIDERED (2015): Out of a clear blue sky . . .

27 Jan 2015  |  8 min read  |  3

Auckland has had a patchy track record with outdoor festivals. At the lower end of the scale you could go back to the embarrassment of the day put on for the young Princess Anne and Prince Charles in the Sixties (Bunny Walters' zipper coming down), the Robin Gibb concert in '70 where someone threw a tomato at him, the disastrous Neon Picnic and the second Sweetwaters . . .... > Read more

SHAKEY GRAVES INTERVIEWED (2015): Taking it to the top

26 Jan 2015  |  8 min read

In a little over three years, Alejandro Rose-Garcia – better known as Shakey Graves – has carved out the almost perfect and throughly contemporary career arc. Setting aside his occasional acting jobs where his boyish good looks got him small parts on the big screen, and a four-week role as the life-guard/love interest in the television series Friday Night Lights, the... > Read more

Dearly Departed (w Esme Patterson)

ELVIS COSTELLO + WENDY JAMES (2015): That year's model

26 Jan 2015  |  3 min read

Transvision Vamp were one of those British bands who got through the door in the post-punk/New Wave era, but didn't quite know what to do on the other side. After some mostly unsuccessful singles they hit paydirt with their '88 album Pop Art and then Velveteen nine months later took them to top of the UK charts. Although neither album appeared on the US charts (in fact only Australians and... > Read more

Puppet Girl

THERE'S GOOD ROCKIN' TONIGHT (2014): The music that reshaped the world

19 Jan 2015  |  4 min read

Because Fifties rock'n'roll music is rarely heard these days -- and on the rare occasions it is, the music is utterly decontextualised – it's hard to imagine what a revolution it was for people at the time. Here was a popular music which was aimed directly at teenagers (the first musical movement to do so) and addressed their concerns in terms of parties, dating, rebelliousness... > Read more

Red River Rock

THE AUCKLAND LANEWAY FESTIVAL (2015): In high anticipation for . . .

7 Jan 2015  |  6 min read  |  1

This year's St Jerome's Laneway Festival at Auckland's Silo Park (Monday January 26, Auckland's anniversary weekend) looks to have the most consistently strong line-up of any so far. Especially if you look back at the albums and artists many critics and civilians chose as their “best of 2014”. A considerable number of the Laneway acts – international and... > Read more

IAN ANDERSON INTERVIEWED (2014): The view from the top

16 Dec 2014  |  13 min read  |  2

It was over 20 years ago that I spoke to Ian Anderson, the founder of Jethro Tull and the sole constant in that remarkably durable prog-rock band, and I have never forgotten the experience. That man could talk and talk and talk . . . Without a word of lie I can say this, as he went on and on about how fans demanded all the reissues and whatever, I got up... > Read more

Doggerland

STONEY AND THE JAGGED EDGE, UNEARTHED (2014): The Sixties sound of psychedelic garageband Detroit

9 Dec 2014  |  2 min read

Just when you think the library of the past has been fully illuminated, someone comes along and points to a low door in the wall which opens into a secret, dark room. And in there your torch picks out . . . Stoney and the Jagged Edge. Not to be confused with other bands called Jagged Edge, this group from Detroit in late Sixties had a strong local following, opened for the Doors... > Read more

The Dues Song

SYLVIE SIMMONS INTERVIEWED (2014): Leonard Cohen, music journalism, a debut album at 60 and the ukulele

8 Dec 2014  |  19 min read  |  2

When Sylvie Simmons speaks it is in a quiet, bemused and droll English accent, full of whimsical asides. You'd be forgiven if you thought she was a slightly mischievous author of children's books. But Simmons is one of the great music writers of our time who grew up “Beatle-damaged” in London of the Sixties, moved to America in the late Seventies where she wrote on metal... > Read more

My Lips Still Taste of You

WILCO AT 20, CONSIDERED (2014): Roger Wilco Over . . . and onward

8 Dec 2014  |  2 min read

The story of Wilco is full of ironies, wrong turns and barely credible shifts of direction and personnel. The band that formed out of Uncle Tupelo which was in the vanguard of alt.country in the early 90s made intricate and experimental indie.pop-rock on Summerteeth 99, then slewed further left with their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002 . . . which their record company refused to... > Read more

NICK CAVE ENCOUNTERED (2014): The man, the myth and the movie

7 Dec 2014  |  9 min read  |  1

The backstage room at Auckland's SkyTower Theatre where Nick Cave waits is tiny, but doubtless he's seen much worse. He's arrived with no fanfare, greets my wife Megan and me warmly in the nearby green room . . . and in 15 minutes will walk out onto the nearby stage and field questions about the sort-of-documentary film 20,000 Days on Earth which is just coming to an end before a... > Read more

NATHAN HAINES INTERVIEWED (2014): A son for the return home

17 Nov 2014  |  10 min read  |  1

Nathan Haines sits on the deck at the back of The Long Room on Auckland's Ponsonby Rd and seems very relaxed over a beer. These are good days for multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Haines. He's back in New Zealand from London for a few months over summer, he has an excellent new album 5 A Day to talk about, he's getting plenty of work in London where he lives with his DJ wife... > Read more

PAUL McCARTNEY, THE TRIBUTE ALBUM: Pop's greatest craftsman gets Big Name thumbs aloft

17 Nov 2014  |  8 min read

It's probably possible to count the number of songs Paul McCartney has written -- you can bet his publishing people and royalty-collecting accountants have -- but here's a guess: do the maths on all the solo albums and Beatle-era stuff, plus soundtrack work right back to The Family Way in '67 when he was still in the Beatles, songs he gifted to others, stuff like The Fireman which many don't... > Read more

Things We Said Today

PAUL McCARTNEY WINGING IT IN THE SEVENTIES (2014): Venus and Mars, At The Speed Of Sound revisited

17 Nov 2014  |  5 min read

If you're going to celebrate the end of a recording session why not have the party aboard the Queen Mary which is permanently docked at Long Beach, California?And why not invite a couple of hundred pals like Bob Dylan, the Jackson Five, various Led Zeppers, a couple of Monkees, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, the Faces, an Everly Brother (Phil), George Harrison, Dean Martin, Cher . . .... > Read more

Junior's Farm

PAUL McCARTNEY SOLO CAREER; PART 1, 1970-80: Success in the Seventies

15 Nov 2014  |  10 min read  |  1

Paul McCartney once commented that his solo career since the Beatles -- now stretching to more than four decades -- was largely undiscovered territory. That’s true. But can anyone name anything from his ‘79 album Back to the Egg? And more to the point, why would they want to? But this is also the man -- once known as Mr Thumbs Aloft -- who hardly ever explored or... > Read more

Waterfalls

PAUL McCARTNEY SOLO CAREER PART 2, 1980-90: Adrift in the Eighties

15 Nov 2014  |  7 min read

Paul McCartney closed the Seventies much as he had started it: with the low-key self-titled album McCartney II which deliberately tried to downplay expectation and evoke the charm of his debut solo album McCartney in 1970. Quite where he might have gone after that was an open book, but the decade had been one of diminishing musical returns after the excellent Ram in 1972, the runaway... > Read more

Lucille (from Choba b CCCP)

PAUL McCARTNEY SOLO CAREER PART 3, 1990-2000: Classical, pop and what else ya got?

15 Nov 2014  |  12 min read

As Paul McCartney closed his Eighties on a real high -- a massively successful world tour which won critical accolades and pulled in huge gate-takings -- it would seem he was back in top, rocking form. Not bad for someone who was perilously close to 50. By 1990 he had been two decades out of the Beatles and had behind him more than a dozen solo albums (or with Wings) to draw on in concert.... > Read more

Blue Jean Bop (from Run Devil Run)

PAUL McCARTNEY SOLO CAREER PART 4, 2000 - NOW: Here, there and everywhere

15 Nov 2014  |  20 min read

For a man pronounced dead by radio DJs back in the late Sixties, Paul McCartney (or his doppelganger) has has a long and productive life. And musically diverse, as the Nineties proved: classical, pop-rock, balls-out rock'n'roll, acoustic sets, experimental electronica . . . Not a bad track record late in a long career. And in the new millennium he showed no signs of slowing down, either on... > Read more

Plastic Beetle (Liverpool Sound Collage)

PHIL MANZANERA ON PINK FLOYD'S FAREWELL ALBUM (2014): Last ride on the Endless River

10 Nov 2014  |  14 min read

Phil Manzanera laughs when talks about the two years-plus making of the new Pink Floyd album The Endless River. About 30 months in which mostly not a lot happened with Floyd's remaining members guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason. The album arrives with that accumulated cachet of Floyd's long career from those Syd Barrett days, through Dark... > Read more

DAVE GROHL CONSIDERED (2014): Good, better . . . best

10 Nov 2014  |  4 min read

This is true: I was in the studio when Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana band Foo Fighters recorded for the first time. And it wasn't in Seattle as you might expect. Roll the tape back and me being in a BBC studio in London with them makes sense. The self-titled Foo Fighters album of '94 wasn't a band outing, it was Grohl doing just about all the parts himself and sending the songs off to a... > Read more