Absolute Elsewhere
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THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN SONGBOOK (2011): Songs from the great southern land
15 Dec 2011 | 4 min read | 1
As many Elsewhere readers will know, for my sins (and yes, driven by ego perhaps), I recently agreed to compile a list of albums which I thought would be useful building blocks in any serious music collection. From our initial discussions which started with the idea of 20 albums, over a beer that quickly expanded to 50 then at some point -- after more beers probably -- it became 101. ... > Read more
Friday on my Mind
THE ROLLING STONES, SOME GIRLS REISSUED (2011): Some girls give me diamonds
14 Dec 2011 | 5 min read | 4
There are a couple of unusual features about the sporadic reissue of the Rolling Stones' back-catalogue. Although all their albums have been sprung on CD a few times in the past, the current phase of expanded reissues seem to follow no chronology but a pattern running on an interesting internal logic. In recent years there have been the expanded live set Get Yer Yas Yas Out (with DVD) and... > Read more
When You're Gone (previously unreleased
PETER GABRIEL, THE SOLO FLIGHT 1985-2011: Into another world
12 Dec 2011 | 7 min read
By the mid Eighties when his years in Genesis should have been well behind him and his solo career was four albums down, Peter Gabriel was rather more battered than he had a right to expect. He's done good work -- some of it more worthy than wonderful -- but for his self-titled album of '82 (aka Security), he had been labelled by the NME reviewer as an "art-house bore". And... > Read more
Only Us
FAME STUDIOS: Where the good bizness got done
8 Dec 2011 | 3 min read | 1
In their 2003 book Temples of Sound -- a look into the history of great American recording studios such as Chess in Chicago, Sun in Memphis and Motown in Detroit -- the authors Jim Cogan and William Clark acknowledge there were others they could have included. And conspicious by its absence is FAME Studios. Admittedly FAME moved around -- from above a drug store to two stand-alone sites... > Read more
I Hope They Get Their Eyes Full
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVISITED: Doug "Cosmo" Clifford interviewed (2011)
7 Dec 2011 | 7 min read | 2
When a marriage breaks up or a couple separates there can be messy stuff, not the least of which can be fighting over property. It can be the same with bands when they split up – but the property is sometimes less tangible. Songs may belong to the writer, but anyone can sing them, so often the battle is over the band's name if some members want to continue you using it. Pink... > Read more
CAN'S CLASSIC TAGO MAGO; 40 YEARS ON (2011): Pre-post-rock with a sonic sweep
5 Dec 2011 | 2 min read | 1
If you applied cold logic, on paper most band line-ups wouldn't make much sense. With hindsight you can see the internal faultlines which would pull apart so many of them. None of that matters of course, as long as at some point they make great music. And Can out of Germany certainly did that, although on paper the line-up for their extraordinary Tago Mago album of 1971 -- a highwater... > Read more
Mushroom (live 1972)
BRIAN WILSON, THE LOST MASTERPIECE AT LAST (2011): And finally we can all SMiLE
14 Nov 2011 | 3 min read | 1
In the current issue of Uncut magazine, the editors have compiled a list of the 50 greatest bootlegs. Among the usual suspects are never-released Bob Dylan and the Band, the Clash, the Velvet Underground, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart, Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush (her demo sessions) and so on. Topping the list was the Beach Boys' SMiLE which the authors duly noted would... > Read more
Good Vibrations session
THE BEACH BOYS' SMiLE (2011): Reconstructing the jigsaw puzzle
14 Nov 2011 | 9 min read | 1
In a sense, the group's name was the problem: The Beach Boys. It was ideal when they were singing short-hair clean-cut Californian surf and hotrod songs in the innocent early Sixties. But as the decade turned, the Beatles arrived, passing marijuana replaced waxing down the board, and the Beach Boys music became more complex . . . but the band's name sounded juvenile and not a little... > Read more
Good Vibrations session
FLYING NUN AT 30 (2011): Getting older and bolder
4 Nov 2011 | 3 min read
If you are 20, jeez even if you are 30, the great days of Flying Nun -- that thrilling period between the Clean's rallying cry-cum-single Tally Ho in '81 and, say, Martin Phillipps announcing the end of the Chills on-stage in America in '92 to the surprise of his bandmates – is not something you experienced. Not for you the excitement of seeing the young Straitjacket Fits,... > Read more
Drawing to a Hole
TOM WAITS INTERVIEWED (2011): Cutting through tough scrub
31 Oct 2011 | 10 min read | 1
As many who've tried will attest, you don't so much interview Tom Waits as ask a question . . . then hope for the best. His reply might be an oddball witticism which is funny but evasive, a yawning and uncomfortable silence, a strange but insightful analogy which makes better sense later or a mumbled “I dunno, you know”. Of course sometimes he is sharp and penetratingly... > Read more
New Year's Eve
GURRUMUL PROFILED (2011): Songs of the sacred world
27 Oct 2011 | 11 min read | 1
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu – known to his people as Gudjuk and in the wider world as simply Gurrumul – is an overnight sensation which has been about two decades in the making. The blind, self-taught, singer-songwriter from an Aboriginal community on the small and remote Elcho -- an island off the north coast of Australia near Darwin (population 2300) -- has toured Europe... > Read more
Gurrumul: Djarimirri
U2, ACHTUNG BABY TURNS 20 (2011): The handbrake turn
25 Oct 2011 | 3 min read | 1
In Dublin, at the end of the final U2 concert on the Lovetown tour in 1989 -- broadcast to 200 million in a live radio link up -- Bono said they would now “go away and dream it all up again”. From a scrappy post-punk band at the start of the decade they had delivered half a dozen albums which connected them with a global audience, and had written stadium anthems which are... > Read more
Zoo Station
JIMI HENDRIX IN 2011: Return to Winterland 1968
17 Oct 2011 | 5 min read | 1
From the moment Jimi Hendrix arrived in London in the early hours of September 24 1966 to his death in the same city just a few days short of four years later, he seemed to be constantly moving, playing and recording. He played his first jam in London the night he arrived, and a fortnight later -- after jamming with the Brian Auger Trinity, the VIPs at the famous Scotch of St James and... > Read more
Foxey Lady
BOB DYLAN: HIS THEME TIME RADIO HOUR (2011): What's the frequency, Bobby?
11 Oct 2011 | 3 min read
In the excellent DVD doco The Never Ending Narrative, a legion of rock writing worthies line up to discuss Bob Dylan's remarkable late-career reinvention. Nigel Williamson is both amused and slightly annoyed that not only did Dylan start making some of the best music of his career, but he also took on Williamson's area and proved to be one of the best writers about music (his autobiography... > Read more
Beatnik's Wish
DEAN WAREHAM INTERVIEWED (2011): His past is ever present
5 Oct 2011 | 7 min read | 1
Dean Wareham's many past lives are all existing parallel in his musical life these days. As founder of the much acclaimed Galaxie 500 in 1987 around Boston, he quit the band in '91 to form the Velvet Underground-influenced Luna which lasted until the middle of the following decade. More recently with his wife Britta Phillips (also in Luna in the latter days) he had played and recorded... > Read more
Ceremony
DAVE LISIK INTERVIEWED (2011): Ancient, contemporary and to the future
3 Oct 2011 | 5 min read
Even a cursory glance at the website for Canadian-born, American-educated and Wellington-resident composer/musician Dave Lisik is impressive for his work ethic. Aside from noting him being a teacher, trumpeter and theorist, his website lists eight albums under his own name since 2007 and another five where he was producer/director of various ensembles (from US percussion groups to a... > Read more
The Watchers
STEVE WILSON OF PORCUPINE TREE INTERVIEWED (2011): Setting controls to the heart of his prog
29 Sep 2011 | 12 min read
Steven Wilson doesn't sound remotely angry, just weary, when he says a major British newspaper declined to review his new album Grace For Drowning. They said he was too under-the-radar and no one knew who he was.“Well, that's frustrating,” he sighs, “because most of the music they write about is completely unknown and unheard. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet I've... > Read more
Index
PINK FLOYD, PART ONE 1967-72: Before the dark side
25 Sep 2011 | 8 min read | 1
When Johnny Rotten wrote “I hate” on a Pink Floyd t-shirt, he probably didn't have much room left to get into specifics. After all, even by 1976 when the Sex Pistols emerged there had been a lot of different Pink Floyds for him to hate. Nine album's worth in fact. There had been the brief period in '67 when Syd Barrett wrote the eccentric singles See Emily Play and... > Read more
Interstellar Overdrive
PINK FLOYD, PART TWO 1972 - 83: After Dark to the unkindest Cut
25 Sep 2011 | 9 min read
Despite the textual analysis possible on Wish You Were Here in 1975 and the gargantuan theatrics of The Wall (a largely unlistenable album and often as dull as its cover), it is always The Dark Side of the Moon where the Pink Floyd story pivots. That album -- 50 million sold, in the Billboard top 200 for more than 14 years after its release in March '73 -- captured the uneasiness of the... > Read more
Sheep (extract)
PINK FLOYD, PART THREE (1987-94): Cut straight to the toll of the Bell
25 Sep 2011 | 6 min read
When Roger Waters quit Pink Floyd in April '87 -- the band he had co-founded with Syd Barrett, Nick Mason and Rick Wright more than 20 years previous, and for whom he had largely written their last few albums including The Wall -- he probably quite justifiably expected the band's name would be folded away. He might have presumed the individual members, all wealthy aside from acid-damaged... > Read more