Absolute Elsewhere
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MAREKO INTERVIEWED (2003): The hard road from Samoa to South Auckland
4 Sep 2011 | 9 min read
Mareko is seated at one end of a stacked table in Dawnraid's South Auckland office. Piled high on the other end are boxes of T-shirts emblazoned with his name and that of his debut album, White Sunday. During a wide-ranging conversation, Mareko - aka Mark Sagapolutele - laughs about how much mileage he's been getting in the media lately. And his album isn't even out yet. He's had... > Read more
City Line
THE DIRTBOMBS INTERVIEWED (2004): Detroit's punk soul brothers
1 Sep 2011 | 3 min read
The Dirtbombs come from a city with a powerful rock'n'roll history: Detroit. The Motor City sprang Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, and latterly the White Stripes, Kid Rock and the Von Bondies. The Dirtbombs' frontman Mick Collins formerly helmed the semi-legendary Gories but the unique two-bass, two-drums quintet Dirtbombs have been seriously rocking for... > Read more
I'll Wait
RATTLE RECORDS AT 20: Decades of delivering
1 Sep 2011 | 4 min read
Even producer Steve Garden, one of the prime movers behind Auckland's Rattle label, finds it hard to believe it has been 20 years since their first releases. Now with a catalogue of over 30 albums -- which includes those on their Rattle Jazz imprint -- Rattle is a significant player in New Zealand's musical landscape. It has recently launched the ia subsidiary label (Independent... > Read more
Part 8
CHICAGO SOUL, BLUES AND FUNK IN THE SIXTIES: Moving the Chess pieces
29 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
In 2002 after a Rolling Stones concert in Chicago I asked my friend, who lived in the city, to take me down to 2120 South Michigan Avenue, the old home of Chess Records. Aside from wanting to see this legendary place where Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Etta James, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon once held court, I also half thought that Mick'n'Keith'n'Charlie might drop by. After... > Read more
Another Sugar Daddy
THE MOODY BLUES INTERVIEWED (2011): Voices in the sky
22 Aug 2011 | 12 min read
In the late Sixties, when the boundaries of pop and rock were being extended into jazz and quasi-classical areas, the Moody Blues were one of the most musically innovative and productive groups of the period. Their albums between Days of Future Passed in 67 and Seventh Sojourn in 72 – an extraordinary seven albums in five years following their hit single Nights in White Satin... > Read more
Legend of a Mind
PETER GABRIEL, THE SOLO FLIGHT IN THE SEVENTIES: Not one of us
15 Aug 2011 | 7 min read
In late '77 Peter Gabriel -- two years after quitting Genesis at their creative peak with the ambitious concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway -- told NME "I felt that [Genesis] were just at a point of breaking through to the Big Time. "I just felt that if I'd stayed I would have got trapped into roles that I was beginning not to enjoy -- both within the band and within... > Read more
Family Snapshot
ILL SEMANTICS INTERVIEWED (2002): The meaning behind the theory
2 Aug 2011 | 5 min read
You know how it's supposed to be in hip-hop - the artists are kinda surly and mean, there's usually something about the struggle of "my people", some unspecified and unfiltered rage. That's how it's supposed to be: guys in beanies with a bad attitude, sistas glaring at you from behind impenetrable wraparounds. But it isn't like that on this sunny morning in the boardroom of... > Read more
Ill's Coming
COLD CHISEL INTERVIEWED (2011): Forever now, and again
1 Aug 2011 | 12 min read | 1
When the Australian rock band Cold Chisel arranged a press conference in Sydney in July 2011, they had something to announce and much to celebrate. But the gathering of media, management and musicians was also conducted with a degree of solemnity. The excitement was tempered because someone was absent from the microphones alongside singer Jimmy Barnes, keyboard player/songwriter and... > Read more
Home and Broken Hearted
COLD CHISEL ALBUMS, REMASTERED AND RE-PRESENTED (2011): The last wave, again . . .
1 Aug 2011 | 10 min read
The reason for Cold Chisel's July 2011 Sydney press conference was to announce the biggest archival reissue in Australian music history. All their albums (including live releases) remastered and packaged up with rare and unseen DVD footage (some bought from eBay says Barnes), and 56 extra tracks available only on digital download. Here's a run-down of the Cold Chisel remastered and... > Read more
The Last Wave of Summer
HOLLIE SMITH INTERVIEWED (2011): Are friends electronica?
1 Aug 2011 | 6 min read
In Berlin it's 8.15am so a yawning Hollie Smith is forgivably vague about where her friends Electric Wire Hustle played last night. And she is also on holiday, despite having a new album Band of Brothers Vol 1 – with Mara TK of EWH – released back home. “I did talk last year of moving over here for a lot longer,” she says “but things kept changing so... > Read more
Promised Land Hotel (Pt 1 and Pt 2)
CHANTS R&B 1966: New Zealand's rocking witchdoctors
25 Jul 2011 | 2 min read | 2
Chants R&B, who styled themselves "soul agents for r'n'b," were a raucous four-piece from Christchurch, New Zealand who would seem to have been in cultural isolation from r'n'b rock of the mid Sixties by them being at the bottom of the bottom island at the bottom of the world. But Christchurch had an American airforce base and so -- as with Max Merritt and Ray Columbus before... > Read more
I Want Her
R.E.M. LIFES RICH PAGEANT REISSUED (2011): The turning point
25 Jul 2011 | 3 min read
When R.E.M. re-signed to Warners for a reported US$80 million in 1996, it was hard to know whether to stifle the gasp or the guffaw. Although that figure bandied about was doubtless inflated and involved complex deals regarding recording, promotion and royalties, it wasn't the number that was so significant. It was what Warners thought they might be getting. After all, the band were... > Read more
Fall On Me (Athens demo)
THE GREATEST LOST ALBUM IN ROCK? (2011): The remarkable story of The Voyage of the Corvus Corrone
18 Jul 2011 | 4 min read | 5
In late 1976 keyboard player Rick Wakeman of the progressive rock band Yes – riding a string of solo successes with his prog-rock concept albums The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Citizen Kane – gave a revealing interview to the British magazine New Music Maker in which he described his forthcoming project, a concept album based on Sir James... > Read more
The Edges of the Map
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB (2011): The Dylan tribute albums
18 Jul 2011 | 3 min read
Bob Dylan's 70th birthday in June 2011 hardly went unobserved in the world – you couldn't turn around without bumping into profiles, reconsiderations, essays and the like – and nor was it coincidence that many artists lined up for tribute albums. Some got in early – like Ben Sidran whose Dylan Different arrived before Bob's 69th birthday – and others had... > Read more
Tomorrow is a Long Time
PITCH BLACK INTERVIEWED (2004): Lights, camera, action
16 Jul 2011 | 4 min read
Fortunately, Paddy Free and Mike Hodgson, who are Pitch Black, get the joke behind the question: why is it so many electronica artists like themselves live in the bush or by the ocean, and are inspired by all that nature out there? Whatever happened to nightclubbing and staying up until dawn? Free, who lives at Piha and calls Karekare his spiritual home, says these days he couldn't... > Read more
SUEDE REISSUED AND RECONSIDERED (2011): England made me
4 Jul 2011 | 4 min read | 3
At the going down of the sun we will remember them, those great Britpop bands who were The Next Big Thing – like Longpigs, the Seahorses, Mansun, the Supernaturals . . . All household names, right? Yes, it was – and still is -- easy to be cynical about Nineties Britpop, especially from this distance when Oasis and Blur were being set off against each other, and British... > Read more
The Asphalt World
TEX PERKINS INTERVIEWED (2011): Cash money and black is back
2 Jul 2011 | 4 min read
The hotel's drawn blinds shut out the mid-morning Auckland sun, pills are scattered on a table, the remains of takeaway food are on another and there's a pervasive air of “the morning-after”. “Yeah, very Johnny Cash,” says Tex Perkins, the room's slightly disheveled occupant, in a husky and weary voice. The Australian singer-songwriter – in such... > Read more
What Do You Want Now?
ACID DAZE PART THREE: A Day in My Mind's Mind Vol 3; 28 Kiwi Psychedelic Trips 1967-72
25 Jun 2011 | 2 min read
As with the second volume in this excellent on-going and budget-priced series, I wrote the liner notes to this album and -- with the invaluable research and help of Grant Gillanders who once again chose the tracks and must be on the shortlist of an honour's list for services to Kiwi music -- I also wrote the profiles on the bands who feature.Again rather than me itemise the trippy music and... > Read more
The Smoke: Never Trust A Woman
ACID DAZE PART TWO: A Day in My Mind's Mind Vol 2; Fantasies, Polka Dots and Flowers
25 Jun 2011 | 2 min read
Rather than essay this second collection of Kiwi psychedelic songs from '67-'72 -- subtitled "Fantasies, Polka Dots and Flowers" -- why don't I just reproduce below the liner notes I wrote for it?.................. The exciting thing about this on-going series of psychedelic music from New Zealand in the late 60s and early 70s is not just that it brings back some great songs and... > Read more
The Music Convention: Bellyboard Beat
PAUL McCARTNEY 1970 AND 1980 (2011): Lowkey at each end of his first post-Beatles decade
20 Jun 2011 | 5 min read
In a few months Sir James Paul McCartney, age 68, will premier his new work, a major orchestral piece for the New York City Ballet entitled Oceans Kingdom, written in conjunction with American composer John Wilson. This ambitious career move in the classical world follows his Liverpool Oratorio, Standing Stone and Working Classical with the London Symphony Orchestra in the Eighties,... > Read more