Absolute Elsewhere
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SKEPTICS REMEMBERED (2013): All Sum Null
4 Dec 2013 | 3 min read | 1
On the 25th anniversary of the Flying Nun label back in 2006, Real Groove published a special edition as a salute to the label. Among the many fine articles -- some archival, others reminiscences -- was an emotional and descriptive piece by Chris Matthews (Children's Hour, Headless Chickens) about Skeptics, and particularly about their singer David D'Ath who died of leukemia in September... > Read more
Threads (1990)
WHEN ROCK STARTED ROLLING (2013): Black rhythm and blues goes white
2 Dec 2013 | 3 min read
In the early Sixties the sound of black rhythm and blues -- played by young white musicians -- could be heard pounding out of the fleshpots of Hamburg, a pub in Richmond, bars in Belfast, clubs in central London, the dancehalls of Liverpool and Newcastle, and makeshift rehearsal spaces all over Britain. This was music made by the post-rock'n'roll generation, those who had been 15 or 16 in... > Read more
I'm a King Bee (1957)
SHONA LAING PROFILED (2013): The legacy of a Legacy Artist
21 Nov 2013 | 4 min read | 1
Popular music – and pop music in particular – usually comes from, and speaks to, young people. This year with the success of Lorde, not 17 when her debut album Pure Heroine was released, we seem very focused on the age of performers. However we need only look back to the success of Gin Wigmore who won the International Songwriting Competition in 2004 when she was still... > Read more
Mercy of Love
BOB THIELE PROFILED (2013): At the helm of the Flying Dutchman
18 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
On paper certain things don't seem to match up in Bob Thiele's professional life, especially in the late Sixties. As a producer at Impulse he had steered the careers of many notable jazz artists (Mingus, Ayler, Shepp, Rollins etc), chief among them John Coltrane whom he had encouraged to follow a singular path which lead to the spiritually imbued A Love Supreme and beyond. After... > Read more
Lanoola Goes Limp
TOMMY by THE WHO (2013): Tommy can you hear me, again?
15 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
Back in the early Eighties – years before the Beatles' Anthology and Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series offered us alternative histories through previously unheard versions of songs alongside revelatory interpretations – Pete Townshend of the Who began releasing a series of double albums under the generic title Scoop. On these he offered up his home demos of famous and... > Read more
Dream One (unused Townshend demo)
THE BEATLES AT THE BBC (2013): A tendency to play music
11 Nov 2013 | 4 min read | 1
While often jokingly referred to as "the Greatest Story Ever Sold" (a reference to the 1956 Biblical epic film The Greatest Story Ever Told about the life of Christ), there is a part of the Beatles narrative of truth, myth and legend which has gone largely under-explored. In their much analysed and discussed career, those many sessions they spent recording for the BBC haven't... > Read more
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
ELVIS AT STAX STUDIO (2013): Robert Gordon on the inside
7 Nov 2013 | 5 min read
Memphis-born and based writer Robert Gordon knows the musical pulse of his city. He has documented it in books like It Came From Memphis and has written essays about Elvis Presley after being given access to private material in the Presley estate. He has made documentary films, wrote the definitive biography of Muddy Waters (Can't Be Satisfied) and, among other things, produced an Al... > Read more
Mr Songman (outtake)
MERZBOW INTERVIEWED (2013): Is it loud enough yet?
4 Nov 2013 | 3 min read | 1
The name Merzbow is synonymous with noise. In fact Merzbow – aka 56-year old Masami Akita – might be Japan's pre-eminent noise artist. Since the late Seventies he has – under a few other pseudonyms as well – been crafting out huge slabs and walls of sonic density which hit head, chest and internal organs simultaneously. He is not for the faint-hearted but he is... > Read more
Phillo-Jazz Electronica
PAUL McCARTNEY, NEW AGAIN (2013): His ever-present past
27 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 1
Since he got a new wife and a better dye-job, Paul McCartney has seemed happier, reinvigorated and enjoying being back in the frontline as a headliner (the Queen's Jubilee bash, the opening of the London Olympics) after some leaner years. Speaking of which, McCartney today looks as slim as Cliff Richard – perhaps British war-baby deprivations prevented that generation ballooning... > Read more
Early Days
VAN MORRISON CONSIDERED (2013): The long and winding road
25 Oct 2013 | 5 min read | 4
The respected American cultural critic Greil Marcus has given us some insightful books, among them Mystery Train; Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music and Like A Rolling Stone which uses that Bob Dylan song for an analysis of the musician in his time and at a crossroads, and of the song itself. But Marcus – perhaps most widely known for his opening line of his Rolling Stone... > Read more
Into the Mystic (take 11)
PEARL JAM CONSIDERED (2013): Coming on like a lightning bolt
10 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 1
If you don't rate Pearl Jam and have a particular dislike of Eddie Vedder for whatever reason, stop reading now. Because some years ago in Seattle I met them in their rundown rehearsal room and had a long chat with Eddie. They were very friendly and self-effacing people, and Eddie even insisted we get a Polaroid taken of he and I together. I kept it on my desk but the thing faded over... > Read more
Sirens
HANK MARVIN INTERVIEWED (2013): Living in and out of the Shadows
9 Oct 2013 | 14 min read | 2
The first British guitar hero – Hank Marvin of the Shadows – is in the studio again in his adopted home of Perth, West Australia. When we call for a chat in advance of a New Zealand tour (dates below) he's contributing to an album by his old Shadows bandmate Brian Bennett, a tribute to the composer John Barry. Others also involved are Peter Frampton and Mark Knopfler he says,... > Read more
Swingtime in Springtime
PETER GABRIEL CONSIDERED (2013): Having others blow his horn
7 Oct 2013 | 2 min read
Things always seemed unusual – and unusually fraught sometimes – in Peter Gabriel's world. In Genesis he attempted to expand the parameters of popular music through increasingly ambitious albums, notably The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in '74, a double which not only came with a metaphorical storyline but a lyric sheet and a separate parallel narrative inside the gatefold... > Read more
Solsbury Hill
GRAEME GASH OF WAVES INTERVIEWED (2013): On the crest of new Waves
4 Oct 2013 | 8 min read | 2
Back in February 2012, I pulled the sole album by New Zealand's Waves from off my shelf and posted the track Arrow as a From the Vaults entry. At the time I said this innovative self-titled album from 1975 by a close harmony, acoustic quartet (with some plugged-in guests) was long overdue for a reissue and noted because their quietly considered sound stood at odds with the prevailing... > Read more
Schooners
OVER THE RHINE INTERVIEWED (2013): At home in a place called Nowhere
30 Sep 2013 | 8 min read
The phonecall catches Linford Detweiler of the American band Over the Rhine in the lobby of a hotel in Iowa City, kids are screaming in the background and when he ambles outside to try and find the tour bus the air is pierced by sirens. “Wow,” he laughs, “maybe Iowa City is pretty interesting after all.” With his other half in Over the Rhine, Karin... > Read more
Highland County
WILLIS EARL BEAL INTERVIEWED (2013): The reluctant Nobody who knows
27 Sep 2013 | 12 min read | 1
In that broad spectrum of characters, craziness and genius in popular culture – from Mormon rockers to gun-carrying hip-hoppers – Willis Earl Beal is unique. And it's not for his backstory which involves medical discharge from the military, itinerancy and a period of homelessness, recording dozens of songs cheaply and giving them away before being discovered by Found... > Read more
ROKY ERICKSON AGAIN (2013): After getting off the elevator
23 Sep 2013 | 4 min read | 2
The pleasure of seeing Roky Erickson when he came to New Zealand is 2012 was that he was Roky Erickson, and he was in New Zealand. Just a few years before, given Erickson's damaged mental state, few would have counted on that happening. As a friend said a week out from the show, "I'll buy a ticket when I know he's on the plane". Having just interviewed Erickson I said,... > Read more
I Have Always Been Here Before
ELVIS COSTELLO INTERVIEWED (2013): And he's differently the same
20 Sep 2013 | 14 min read | 1
Although Elvis Costello will tell me “I haven't accrued a massive fortune but am well off and have a degree of freedom of movement”, you suspect he quite likes upsetting whatever preconceptions people bring to his albums. So when it was revealed his new one Wise Up Ghost would find him working with the American instrumental hip-hop group the Roots, he guessed what people... > Read more
Stick Out Your Tongue
TAMA WAIPARA INTERVIEWED (2013): Hope you like my new direction
16 Sep 2013 | 8 min read
About 10 minutes into a wide-ranging conversation with Tama Waipara – genial, self-effacing without false humility, and a ferociously gifted musician – we finally get around to talking specifically about his new album Fill Up the Silence. I compliment him on making “an album” (reviewed here) and define my terms: a series of distinctive and separate songs that... > Read more
Pasifika
BOB DYLAN: ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT, THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 10 (2013): More back pages
2 Sep 2013 | 4 min read | 1
For most people, Bob Dylan arrived as fast as lightning and with the power of a hurricane. Fifty years ago last week – fewer than 18 months after his largely ignored debut album – Bob Dylan was at Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington. King delivered his famous “I have a dream speech” and Dylan sang When the Ship Comes In (with Joan Baez) and a solo... > Read more