Absolute Elsewhere
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VAN, DON AND JAKE; DON, LORI, PHOEBE . . . AND TUPAC? (2023): The long and winding songline
25 Oct 2023 | 5 min read
Artists take inspiration from so many sources we might as well just say, "anywhere". But one of the most unexpected -- and it was to him -- comes from Jake Bugg who released his 2012 self-titled debut album at 18 and immediately won praise from the likes of Noel Gallagher. He was a kid from a council estate and had grown up hard but sensitive (as we shall see).... > Read more
CHUCK BERRY, THE LEGACY CONSIDERED (2023): The poet who gave us rock'n'roll music
22 Oct 2023 | 7 min read
There's a very easy case to be made that Chuck Berry – who died in 2017 at 90 – was Elvis Presley's equal in the emerging of rock'n'roll in the Fifties. And that he actually surpassed the King when it came to consolidating and embedding this exciting music in popular culture. As with Presley, Berry forged an amalgam of white country... > Read more
Big Boys
SISTERS UNDERGROUND, INTERVIEWED (1994): Takin' from the street
15 Oct 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
BARRY MARKWICK, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2023): The man who jazzed on the Bealtes
12 Oct 2023 | 1 min read
In Christchurch in 1965, years before jazz musicians came around to the Beatles’ music, a young pianist Barry Markwick – with bassist Gerald Newson and drummer Harry Voice – recorded an album of Lennon-McCartney tunes, perhaps the first full album of jazz interpretations of Beatle songs anywhere in the world. At 22, Markwick wasn’t much of a Beatles fan.... > Read more
All My Loving
THE BEAU BRUMMELS' COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1964-1970 (2023): Beat-pop out of LA, destination Nashville
9 Oct 2023 | 4 min read
Like their peers the Beat-era Buckinghams from Chicago, the Beau Brummels out of San Francisco formed in the wake of the British Invasion and adopted the look, style and a name which ensured that they would be mistaken for another great UK pop-rock band. Needless to say they would insist that much of this wasn't deliberate – yeah, like naming yourself after an English Regency dandy... > Read more
NEIL YOUNG. YET AGAIN? (2023): It's yesterday once more.
8 Oct 2023 | 2 min read | 1
Elsewhere has been clear about what we think of the never-ending releases by Neil Young, new albums and those pulled from his archive. This slew of releases – at a guess almost a dozen studio albums and even more live sessions in the past decade – has, in the words of PR, tainted his brand and confused the market. There have been box sets and collections which have included... > Read more
THREE THE HARD WAY, INTERVIEWED (1994): Hip-hop to the top
8 Oct 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
WIRE, 1977-80, CONSIDERED (2023): The short, sharp pop of art-punk
7 Oct 2023 | 2 min read | 4
The best thing about the punk years wasn’t punk of course. That stuff exhausted itself pretty fast. No, punk’s importance was the doors that it opened to let in the likes of the Gang of Four, This Heat, Pere Ubu and musical architects such as Wire -- whose early claim to fame was getting 21 tracks onto two sides of vinyl. Field Day for the Sundays on their ‘77 debut Pink... > Read more
Outdoor Miner (from Chairs Missing)
STING, IN CONCERT (1994): The fine art of appropriation
6 Oct 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
DAVID McCOMB OF THE TRIFFIDS, INTERVIEWED (1994): Here . . . and gone too soon
4 Oct 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
RICHARD FARIÑA REMEMBERED (2023): The man who wouldn't be king
1 Oct 2023 | 12 min read
See him there in that photo from the early Sixties, the young singer standing alongside the beautiful Baez sisters Joan and Mimi. There he is again, a key figure hanging out in the downtown New York folk scene around the Village, his original songs pulling an audience his way, their lyrics political, allegorical, metaphorical and sometimes as gentle as a butterfly alighting on a leaf.... > Read more
Michael, Andrew and James
MITSKI PROFILED (2023) Risking it on the fault-line
1 Oct 2023 | 2 min read
Recently Elsewhere wrote about artists – locals particularly – who, despite having a strong mandate from their hard-won audience, seem to be risk-averse. You get the impression the songs have been run past and shaped by a focus group which warns the artists not to do anything different and stick to the formula of pop bangers or songs which have their Selfie Generation... > Read more
THE LAUFEY PERPLEX (2023): To jazz or not to jazz
30 Sep 2023 | 1 min read
Okay pub quiz time, but be warned this could be a track question: Who was last year's most streamed jazz artist on Spotify?Now you might reasonably go for the ever-popular Miles Davis or even the great Pharoah Sanders who underwent a rediscovery with that 2021 album Promises with Floating Points and the LSO. But actually the most streamed jazz artist on Spotify – with 425 million... > Read more
THE BIG DAY OUT (1994): The acts and a survivor's guide
23 Sep 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
NINA SIMONE, THE POLITICS AND THE PASSION (2023): From Porgy to protest
18 Sep 2023 | 4 min read
In 1964 before a predominantly white, liberal and monied audience at New York's Carnegie Hall, Nina Simone announced her song Mississippi Goddamn. It had been written quickly some weeks previous and she'd played it to a small audience in a Greenwich Village club, but here it became wide currency. She referred to it as a show tune, “but the show hasn't been written for it... > Read more
KRISTIN HERSH, INTERVIEWED (1994): One day at a time
17 Sep 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
BJORK, INTERVIEWED (1994): There's more to life than this
11 Sep 2023 | <1 min read
When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more
SORRY, YOUR BEST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH (2023): When it becomes the singer not the song
11 Sep 2023 | 3 min read | 1
Some years ago I was sent a CD for review. It came from a young woman and had been recorded in the South Island. It was spare acoustic folk and pretty grim. Every song opened with either “I” or “you” and over however many songs – far too many to my ears – she seemed to be either tearful or angry about the relationship. I pointed this out in a review... > Read more
Dissolve Like Salt, by Violet Hirst
THE WIDE BRIDGE NEVER THE TIGHTROPE (2023): The plague of risk-averse pop
10 Sep 2023 | 4 min read
A week or so ago over lunch, a couple of us were talking about the state of local music. “There's just a lack of risk,” he said with obvious exasperation. And that's something I'd been thinking about for a while. We could blame Spotify and young pop artists' pursuit of scoring a breakout on one of the curated playlists. To achieve that you aren't going to do anything... > Read more
THE NOMAD, RESPECTED AND A RETROSPECTIVE (2023): The electronica pioneer celebrated 25 years on
3 Sep 2023 | 1 min read
The Nomad – Daimon Schwalger – earned his pseudonym: he took his vision for drum'n'bass and inventive electronica from Dunedin to Europe but also remained grounded here through numerous collaborations (with members of Fat Freddy's and Black Seeds as well as Luciano, King Kapisi, Pearl Runga and Tiki Taane among them). Since the late Nineties there were also much admired albums... > Read more