Absolute Elsewhere
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BOBBY KEYS INTERVIEWED (2014): Sax'n'drugs and rock'n'roll
3 Nov 2014 | 8 min read
Saxophonist Bobby Keys says he doesn't drink these days: “I'm extremely sober. I mean, I'll have a beer every so often, but it's been years since I've been drunk. I don't drink anymore because it makes it too hard to get up the next day,” he laughs. At 70, Keys might well be more moderate in his intake, but he was such a heroic user of drugs and alcohol in his... > Read more
Brown Sugar (live 2013)
LED ZEPPELIN REVISITED, PART TWO (2014): Another turn of the Page
1 Nov 2014 | 3 min read | 1
In a recent interview – although more a passing comment it seemed – Jimmy Page indicated he was keen to get some new music together. That would be smart because 70 year old Page could be having the last rites read before Robert Plant would want to get Led Zeppelin together again. As Elsewhere has noted previously, Plant is nowhere near as attached to the legacy of Led... > Read more
No Quarter (rough mix, no vocals)
JAMES BURTON INTERVIEWED (2014): Six stringer for the stars
29 Oct 2014 | 10 min read
A conversation with legendary guitarist James Burton could almost sound like name-dropping: he's worked with not one but two Elvises, Ray Charles, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Harrison, the Monkees . . . It's all true but – at 75 – he's self-effacing. He's seen fame of the Elvis Presley kind but enjoys a different kind of buzz . . .... > Read more
Cannonball Rag (1958)
NEIL DIAMOND CONSIDERED (2014): Back down the melody road
27 Oct 2014 | 4 min read | 1
Speak this low: Neil Diamond used to be cool. Not tacky cool like Engelbert Humperdinck, but actual rock star cool. Quite when he lost the cool is hard to say, but you'd have to factor in the godawful mawkish duet in '78 with Barbra Streisand on You Don't Bring Me Flowers. It wasn't entirely all down hill after that, but before then he'd been so cool that The Band invited him to... > Read more
The Art of Love
GEORGE HARRISON REVISITED, PART ONE (2014): The dark horse bolting out of the gate
24 Oct 2014 | 13 min read
Perhaps he was no more contradictory than any of us, but because of his larger life George Harrison sometimes seemed to be a man of diametrically opposed parts. He was a spiritual family man who could go on cocaine benders and wasn't above using his status as a former Beatle to pick up women. He was a meditative man but among his chief pleasures was Formula 1. He was considered... > Read more
This Guitar Can't Keep From Crying (alt version)
GEORGE HARRISON REVISITED, PART TWO (2014): The dark horse at a canter to the end
24 Oct 2014 | 8 min read | 4
The 2004 Oscars were unusual in how lacking in sentiment they were. Usually you'd expect a veteran favourite like Clint Eastwood to be recognised, or some time-server to get best supporting something. But no, what Lord of the Rings didn't win went to choices seemingly unmotivated by heart-tugging or vote-rigging. The Grammys that year were another matter. Best pop instrumental... > Read more
Marwa Blues
DON WAS INTERVIEWED (2014): This note's for you
20 Oct 2014 | 12 min read | 1
By coincidence, the day I got an e-mail to say famous producer Don Was -- head of the Blue Note jazz label these past two and half years -- was available for an interview I had just seen him on a great documentary about Charles Lloyd the wonderfully spiritual saxophonist who has been delivering superb albums on Manfred Eicher's ECM label for about 25 years.... > Read more
Mode for Joe
RYAN BINGHAM INTERVIEWED (2014): The road and the endless highways
10 Oct 2014 | 12 min read
There are plenty of easy descriptions for the bruised, whisky'n'cigarettes vocals of Ryan Bingham but one of the best was that he sounded like Steve Earle's father. That was written about Bingham's first album Mescalito seven years ago when he was just 25, and he admits that voice has been blown out even more since then. Today Bingham has four albums behind him – his most recent... > Read more
All Choked Up Again
ROBERT PLANT CONSIDERED (2014): The sensational space and song shifter
7 Oct 2014 | 4 min read
Exactly 20 years ago Robert Plant finally found a clear path out of the shadow of Led Zeppelin, and ironically it involved embracing the music of his former band. Two years after the end of the mighty Zepp following the death of drummer John Bonham, Plant launched a solo career in '82 with the album Pictures at Eleven. It was a polite break with heavy-Zepp but as with most of the... > Read more
Up on the Hollow Hill
MOANA MANIAPOTO INTERVIEWED (2014): The warrior woman of song
5 Oct 2014 | 11 min read
Moana Maniapoto has been around and seen around. Her life encompasses not just the music she has been known for in the past 25 years -- with her first band the Moa Hunters and more recently the Tribe -- but the political agenda that is right there on the surface. She travels extensively for both and in the course of a long conversation about her new album Rima she traverse performing... > Read more
Rangatahi
BARBRA STREISAND CONSIDERED (2014): The born star and the way we were
1 Oct 2014 | 6 min read
One of the funniest and most bitchy pieces of music writing I've ever read was by David Rakoff about a Barbra Streisand farewell concert in 2000. La Streisand (as she is sometimes known) had, as Rakoff noted, “come out of retirement to retire” . . . and who better to consider this than a New York Jew who admits he'd never been “a Barbra queen”. But he was... > Read more
Come Rain or Shine
RYAN ADAMS CONSIDERED (2014): If you liked that here's many more
29 Sep 2014 | 3 min read | 1
When Ryan Adams was forced to take a break from recording in 2009 after being diagnosed with an inner ear disorder even his most dedicated fans probably heaved a sigh of relief: the guy was just releasing so much music it was impossible to keep up. And that's what his record company thought too when four years previous he announced he'd recorded enough songs for a dozen albums. And... > Read more
Kim
TERENCE REIS INTERVIEWED (2014): Going strait to the heart of Mark Knopfler
28 Sep 2014 | 5 min read | 2
Although they rarely enjoyed the acclaim of critics for their half dozen studio albums, you can guess that hardly worried Dire Straits frontman and songwriter Mark Knopfler. In their career they sold in excess of 120 million albums, won four Grammy and three Brit awards (among other trophies) and, through the canny positioning of their likable manager Ed Bicknell, they became the first... > Read more
BERNIE GRIFFEN INTERVIEWED (2014): Tales of a survivor
25 Sep 2014 | 10 min read | 1
Bernie Griffen lets out a wheezing laugh when I ask him if he's in decent health these days. He's 63, has lived hard and by his own admission not spared himself sometimes through drugs, self-doubt and damaging choices. “Well I've got emphysema,” he says. “I had an accident and my lungs got burned, but I also keep on smoking and don't do myself any favours. I'm... > Read more
Burial Ground
HARRY MANX INTERVIEWED (2014): Has slide, has travelled
22 Sep 2014 | 7 min read | 3
Born on the Isle of Man, grew up in Canada, busked around Europe, lived in Japan for a decade, at 34 traveled to India to learn how to play the complex 20-string Mohan Veena under master musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a blues-cum-world music traveller, talked to us from Tasmania . . . This is the shorthand on 59-year old multi-instrumentalist Harry Manx whose music scopes from blues to... > Read more
A Love Supreme
RACHEL DAWICK INTERVIEWED (2014): History alive in songs and theatre magic
16 Sep 2014 | 9 min read | 1
Last week, the day before our conversation, disaster befell singer-songwriter Rachel Dawick. Invited to the New Zealand Woman's Weekly for an interview about her ambitious theatrical production The Boundary Riders; Musical Tales of New Zealand Pioneer Women, she was then asked if they could get some photos of her with her guitar. When she opened up the case she discovered her... > Read more
Jennie Anderson
BLACK TO THE FUTURE: The Beatles on vinyl in mono
9 Sep 2014 | 2 min read | 2
Recently I played the Beatles' Helter Skelter from “the White Album” to a class of my university music students. But something odd happened. And no, they didn't all want to foment race war like Charles Manson after he heard it. At the end instead of fading out then returning in a blast of noise and Ringo shouting “I got blisters on my... > Read more
It's All Too Much (mono)
HENRY WAGONS INTERVIEWED (2014): The write stuff
25 Aug 2014 | 10 min read
Even in a country with a long lineage of great songwriters, Henry Wagons stands out. As the writer and frontman for his band Wagons, Henry from Melbourne – born Henry Krips and the grandson of the Australian conductor of the same name credited with bring Mahler to Australian audiences – is a physically energetic entertainer who unashamedly loves his job and sees it as a public... > Read more
Hold On Caroline
JODI VAUGHAN AND JODY DIREEN INTERVIEWED (2014): Having different country music in common
1 Aug 2014 | 5 min read
Although separated by four decades the two Jodies – Jodi Vaughan and Jody Direen – have at least one thing in common, they are in that broad landscape that is New Zealand country music. Of course those decades – Vaughan born in Australia in 1950 and moving to New Zealand in her mid 20s, Direen from Wanaka and only now in her in her mid 20s – would suggest they... > Read more
Lay a Little Lovin' On Me
ROBERT SCOTT RETURNS (2014): This quiet life
21 Jul 2014 | 3 min read
Noel Gallagher once enviously said of Ian McLagan that he'd been enough of a jammy bastard to be in two great bands; the Small Faces and the Faces. We might say the same of Robert Scott of the Clean and the Bats, two of the seminal Flying Nun bands . . . and who, in addition to short stints in Magick Heads and a few other side-projects, has latterly sprung a third parallel life with... > Read more