Absolute Elsewhere
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JIMMY BUFFETT INTERVIEWED (2011): Sail on sailor
27 Jan 2011 | 11 min read
Easy-going Jimmy Buffett always gives the impression he's in walkshorts and a Hawaiian shirt, and is just metres away from the ocean filling in time until cocktail hour with his Coral Reefer Band. Buffett – often in shorts and bare feet -- has performed in all kinds of places, most often within hearing distance of an ocean (his Live in Anguilla CD/DVD of two years ago shows him... > Read more
Jimmy Buffett: Beautiful Swimmers (from the album Buffet Hotel, 2009)
THE HOLLIES. TONY HICKS INTERVIEWED (2010): The road is long . . .
23 Jan 2011 | 5 min read
A couple of years Noel Gallagher of Oasis saw Tony Hicks of the Hollies in a local supermarket and felt compelled to yell, "Love yer band, man. You've got the songs". And the Hollies certainly did. Pop-rock classics among them. So when in March 2010, the Hollies out of Manchester, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – it seemed long overdue. For a decade from... > Read more
The Hollies: Look Through Any Window
SMOKEY ROBINSON: The man and the Miracle worker
11 Jan 2011 | 4 min read
It was one of those fortunate circumstances that Motown Records founder Berry Gordy from Detroit met his label’s star (and later his producer and boardroom exec) Smokey Robinson -- who had been around the Detroit scene in high school groups for years -- when both of them happened to be in New York. The ambitious Gordy, who’d written a couple of songs and got into small-time... > Read more
Smokey Robinson and the Mirales: I'll Try Something New
JOE COCKER INTERVIEWED (2010): The school and sound of hard knocks
10 Jan 2011 | 6 min read
It's a trick question, but see how you go: Who's the odd one out in this list; Hannah Montana, Britney Spears, Joe Cocker or Justin Bieber? The answer is, of course . . . the Bieber boy. He's the only one who hasn't had a song written for him by former American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi. But the real question is, what is 66-year soul singer Cocker doing with having not just one,... > Read more
Joe Cocker: Unforgiven
JAMES BROWN INTERVIEWED (2004): I'll go crazy?
4 Jan 2011 | 9 min read
We go through a very polite Mr Bobbitt, James Brown's business manager. He warns "everything with him is 'Mister' and do not speak about his personal business or his family affairs". It isn't the last we hear from Mr Bobbitt. Initially there is some confusion when Mr Brown doesn't understand a question and later electronic interference briefly drowns us out. But we... > Read more
Get on the Good Foot
THE JAM and TOM PETTY in '79: Two bands separated by a common language
12 Dec 2010 | 3 min read
At the fag-end of the Seventies, the sound of the Sex Pistols explosion in Britain had faded and in the place of furious punk anger came the more intellectual and cooler sound of post-punk: bands like Magazine, Wire and Joy Division. Across the Atlantic the Ramones' flat-tack energy was faltering and the names to note were Talking Heads, Blondie and Television. Britain and the USA... > Read more
The Jam: Pop Art Poem
AL GREEN INTERVIEWED (2004): Soul from pulpit to the street
12 Dec 2010 | 7 min read
In Memphis, a few kilometres south of Graceland is a small church in Hale Rd, a sidestreet off Highway 51 also known as Elvis Presley Boulevard. Not many music lovers make it this far; they are waylaid by the fridge magnets, postcards and facsimile of Elvis' drivers licence further back up the highway, or are taking the tour around the room in town that is Sun Studios where Presley,... > Read more
Al Green: I Can't Stop
THE BEACH BOYS: GOOD VIBRATIONS IN A BOX (2010): The hits, the misses and the myths
7 Dec 2010 | 5 min read
As with any great and long-running band, the Beach Boys were capable of the sublime, the superfluous and the downright stupid. Were. The use of the past tense is quite deliberate. Nobody – except perhaps organisers of those weird American commemoration days where the remnants of the band made their tedious appearances for decades -- could ever think of them in the present... > Read more
The Beach Boys: Heroes and Villains (alternate version)
BRUCE COCKBURN PROFILED (2010): Poet with a rocket launcher
5 Dec 2010 | 4 min read | 2
Most people looking at the life of Bruce Cockburn come away saying the same thing: “You mean he made music as well?" Canadian singer-songwriter Cockburn has his biography punctuated by stories about being in Mozambique while snipers were out, getting drunk in Kathmandu, travels through nervous Central and South American regimes . . . Cockburn gets around - he came to New... > Read more
Bruce Cockburn: Lovers in a Dangerous Time (from Stealing Fire)
DAMON ALBARN: FROM BRITPOP TO A CARTOON CHARACTER (2010)
5 Dec 2010 | 3 min read
When I met Damon Albarn in London many years ago things were looking good for his band Blur: they'd previously scored a minor hit with There's No Other Way (heavily borrowed from Syd-era Pink Floyd which he cheerfully admitted), it had taken them to America, and their debut album Leisure went to number two on the UK charts. Their second album Modern Life is Rubbish had just arrived... > Read more
Gorillaz: Tomorrow Comes Today
BRYAN FERRY INTERVIEWED (2004): Something he just threw on?
28 Nov 2010 | 8 min read
Let's be honest, this is how we think Bryan Ferry spends his days: he rises just before noon after having tea, toast, marmalade and the daily papers delivered to his bedroom. His manservant lays out his crisply pressed white suit in his dressing room. He'll flick the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair to see what his famous friends have been up to, then later in the day he'll go to a... > Read more
Bryan Ferry: Simple Twist of Fate (from Dylanesque, 2007)
SPINAL TAP, NIGEL TUFNEL INTERVIEWED (1992): The wind cries Spinal
22 Nov 2010 | 17 min read
Rock history is littered with legendary bands, some more legendary than others. Some of these legends will live for ever, others even longer. But there is one rock hand which stands above all others, the most legendary of all legends. It is, in a word, Spinal Tap. The story of Spinal Tap is now part of rock’s rich tapestry, an integral weave in the carpet of popular music: how... > Read more
Spinal Tap: Break Like The Wind
BILLIE COMES TO TOWN (1999): The working life of pop princess
22 Nov 2010 | 5 min read
You don't see it often and when you do it’s only briefly -- but it drains through Billie’s face for an instant. “Yeah, I’m really tired. I’ve been up since 5.30 so now I’m like, urghh.” She forces a smile, then momentarily disappears back into her own world. It’s Wednesday afternoon and the 16 year-old British teen-pop sensation... > Read more
Billie: Because We Want To
TIFFANY INTERVIEWED (1988): I Think She's Alone Now
21 Nov 2010 | 9 min read
It's a pretty ordinary kind of success story by American showbiz standards, nothing to get too excited about. It's your standard tale of a girl of average talent from the suburbs north of Los Angeles who, by astute management and a radio craving for the Next Big Thing, gets to sell four million copies of her debut album, earn the contempt of "serious" rock listeners and wind up... > Read more
Tiffany: I Think We're Alone Now
POWER POP: God's gift to guitars
14 Nov 2010 | 7 min read
The perfect pop gig, no doubt about it. A tidy 40 minutes of three minute songs accompanied by lots of bouncing up and down -- then off. And back for a four-song encore. By my reckoning, that's the playing time of two sides of vinyl and an encore of EP dimensions. Perfect. And this was pop -- power pop more correctly – and Sweden’s Wannadies, rocking the roof off... > Read more
The Wannadies: Might Be Stars
GEORGE BENSON INTERVIEWED (2010): King for the night
14 Nov 2010 | 3 min read
Just the thought of it amuses George Benson and he lets go a low chuckle: he'd recently found a tape of himself at age seven playing ukulele. “This was before I started playing guitar, and I was singing Mona Lisa. You know, I think you'll hear that because we'll play a bit of that before our concert. It'll knock your socks off. “You think, 'That cannot be George... > Read more
TICKET, HALF-REMEMBERED (2010): Hair today and gone until tomorrow
14 Nov 2010 | 3 min read
Two things I remember clearly about Ticket: their hair was long and their songs were even longer. And back in the early 70s those were two very good things indeed. In truth I don't remember much else – definitely not the names of the long gone Auckland clubs I saw them at – but they were at that Elton John show at Western Springs in late '71 because I dragged some... > Read more
Ticket: Music Man
THE BEATLES; LIVE IN 95: All back to the Beeb
1 Nov 2010 | 6 min read
It was a curious thing, but in '95 the Beatles released a new single, Baby It’s You, which came on seven-inch vinyl with extra tracks (an EP no less!) and there was an accompanying video. The Beatles in ’95'? What could they teach us 30 years after the event? Quite a lot, actually. While it was easy to be cynical about the huge Christmas-time success of the... > Read more
The Beatles: Keep Your Hands Off My Baby
NOEL GALLAGHER OF OASIS INTERVIEWED (1998): Just being here, now
1 Nov 2010 | 7 min read
The trademark cockiness and dismissive directness is still there, but at times this also sounds like a very different Noel Gallagher, a man more circumspect and, although still expletive-heavy, sounding less prone to shooting from the lip. A little over two years ago we met before an Oasis gig in Leicester and he was garrulous, quick-witted, supremely confident and media-savvy. World... > Read more
Oasis: My Big Mouth (from Be Here Now)
PAT BOONE INTERVIEWED (1995): Still the same Mr Nice Guy
31 Oct 2010 | 5 min read
If conventional wisdom and the rock'n'roll history books are to be believed, Pat Boone was one of the villains - simply because he was so nice. He was the square when his contemporaries were the sneering, hip-swinging Elvis, the outrageous Little Richard and the adult, knowing Chuck Berry. Boone – who turned down a film role early in his career because he would have had to... > Read more