Absolute Elsewhere

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KEN STRINGFELLOW OF THE POSIES, INTERVIEWED (2001): Back after calling it quits

9 Feb 2001  |  4 min read

There's an irony here. In September 98 Seattle-based Posies, one of the hardest working dark-hearted power-pop bands, called it quits. Through the 90s - from their debut album Failure to their last album Success - they'd raised the banner of catchy rock'n'roll based around cheerful Beatles/Big Star chord changes and introverted lyrics.The sole constants in the band - guitarists and... > Read more

HOUSE OF DOWNTOWN, INTERVIEWED (2001): DJ electronica from the State House

8 Feb 2001  |  7 min read

Their excitement and relief is obvious. Christiaan Ercolano is animated and bouncing on the couch. Across from him Emerson Todd alternates between focused intensity and lopsided smiles.As House of Downtown, Ercolano and Todd have reasons to be cheerful. Their debut album Release, which bridges the gap between house and r'n'b (the latter courtesy of Sydney-based gospel-funk singer Tulele... > Read more

RICHARD THOMPSON INTERVIEWED (2001): Short and bitter-sweet

9 Jan 2001  |  4 min read

Singer/guitarist Richard Thompson almost single-handedly invented British folk-rock with Fairport Convention. He has a reputation as the King of Misery, and is admired by the likes of Neil Finn, Bob Mould, REM and others.He also has a legendary following of obsessive fans, a vast back-catalogue of modestly-selling albums and almost universal acclaim from critics. He can... > Read more

JOSE FELICIANO INTERVIEWED (2001): Lighting the quieter fire

1 Jan 2001  |  4 min read

If rock'n'roll hadn't been invented, Jose Feliciano would probably still have had a career, although maybe not one quite as spectacular as that he enjoyed for a shining, if short, period in the late Sixties. Feliciano's breakthrough hit in '68 was a moody, acoustic Latin treatment of the Doors' Light My Fire complete with jazzy vocal improvisations, but the Puerto Rican-born... > Read more

DJ GROOVERIDER, INTERVIEWED (2000): The doyen of dance

30 Jun 2000  |  3 min read

The man whose name is synonymous with drum 'n' bass, London-bred DJ Grooverider, brings his innovative and exciting brand of breakbeats to Auckland tonight.An inspiration to a generation of drum 'n' bass DJs - as well as being the man who gave Goldie a break when he played some of his tracks at a club - Grooverider can boast 12 years at the turntables.He's played everywhere from warehouse... > Read more

USHER, INTERVIEWED (2000): The rise of the house of Usher

1 Jun 2000  |  6 min read

He's young, gifted and, somewhat surprisingly, back.When 14-year-old r'n'b singer Usher crashed into the US charts with his single Think of You back in '94, the world seemed at his feet: he was signed to L. A. Reid's Bad Boy label and hanging with Reid, the late Biggie Smalls and Sean "Puffy" Combs.Songwriters like Al B. Sure and Jodeci's DeVante Swing (at Puffy's suggestion) lined up... > Read more

BETH HART INTERVIEWED (2000): Stories to sell and tell

18 Feb 2000  |  3 min read

On what felt like one of Auckland's most humid days of the year, Los Angeles-based singer Beth Hart was coiled on a couch in the lobby of the Sheraton, swathed in an enormous black woollen coat. Gaunt and sporting a massive shoulder tat, the anorexically thin serial smoker cut a striking figure. But up close it was her eyes -- penetrating, impossibly clear, unwavering and betraying... > Read more

LA Story

St GERMAIN, INTERVIEWED (2000): The global tourist seeing very little

8 Feb 2000  |  4 min read

Ludovic Navarre shakes his head, mystified when I mention the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. This French DJ, musician and producer who currently goes under the nom de disque St Germain has just come from Japan and I have second- guessed he might have raided record shops in fashionably hip Shinjuku as he has during his two-day stop in Auckland.But no. Just saw the hotel in Japan, one interview... > Read more

PAUL McLANEY, INTERVIEWED (2001): Permanence . . . but always moving

8 Feb 2000  |  5 min read

To see Paul McLaney perform is to be in the presence of a commanding voice. To hear his quiet conversation is to eavesdrop on music history as he effortlessly namechecks Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, British folk-jazz players Nick Drake and John Martyn, and the 70s Indo-jazz fusion outfit Shakti.Within a free-ranging half-hour he also quotes Noel Gallagher and knowledgeably mentions PJ... > Read more

ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, INTERVIEWED (2000): Talkin' 'bout a revolution?

7 Jan 2000  |  4 min read

Today the sound of the coming anarchist revolution gets an airing at the Big Day Out, courtesy of Germany's Atari Teenage Riot.These self-avowed anarchists whose industrial strength implosion of punk, thrash, samples and air-punching sloganeering makes for an explosive noise, are on the barricades - or at least standing on the stage monitors - haranguing capitalism and its evil works.The... > Read more

OZZY OSBOURNE INTERVIEWED (1997): Free range expletive man

3 Jan 2000  |  3 min read

Bat-biting, dove-decapitating, parent-baiting, C-of-E, heavy metal man . . . and a thoroughly nice bloke with a personal best of four unpublishable obscenities in a mere 10 seconds. Then again, he was talking about the royal family and, although he concedes he’s “not a royalty person,” saying that Princess Diana “Wasn't a Royal person. She was like a regular... > Read more

RANDY CRAWFORD, INTERVIEWED (1999): And the hits just kept not coming

8 Sep 1999  |  3 min read

On the line from her management office in Los Angeles this week, pop-soul chanteuse Randy Crawford laughs about the earthquake which recently shook the city and popped a train off its tracks in the nearby Mohave Desert."Just another day in LA," she chuckles, saying that yeah, she woke in the night and thought uh-huh ...However, quite what her days and nights usually hold is more... > Read more

GUITAR WOLF, INTERVIEWED (1999): Japan's Joan Jett generator

2 Sep 1999  |  4 min read

It's not so much a language barrier as a kind of vocabulary sieve which comes between a well-intentioned English-language interviewer and Japan's semi-legendary Guitar Wolf.The words go back and forth down an international phone line but only a few either way are mutually decipherable. Words like "rock'n'roll," "Joan Jett," "yeah, rock, yeah" and "punk... > Read more

DAVID BOWIE INTERVIEWED (1999): Man of the new millennium

2 Jun 1999  |  6 min read

There's something irritatingly enjoyable about an audience with David Bowie. It's in the jocular familiarity he readily adopts with a stranger, the easy self-deprecating humour, the unforced elegance with which he pronounces "homm-aaage" where you or I might say homage ... Here's a man who can even make his enormous wealth - estimated around $US1.5 billion ($2.8 billion)... > Read more

STUART BRAITHWAITE OF MOGWAI, INTERVIEWED (1999): Highly predictable unpredictability

6 May 1999  |  3 min read

For a man whose most famous published statement is, "We hate everyone," Stuart Braithwaite of the Glaswegian band Mogwai is a remarkably friendly guy.On the phone from Melbourne earlier this week, he chatted easily about the touring life, the band's wish that audiences would just shut up and listen to the music, and how much he likes the mood of Nick Drake's classic folk album Pink... > Read more

ANI DiFRANCO, INTERVIEWED (1999): The righteous babe

27 Apr 1999  |  5 min read

Some people - even when separated by the distance of a phone line spanning an ocean and across a continent - you just like immediately.Maybe it's because she laughs often at herself, but Ani DiFranco is someone you warm to quickly.First up she asks if it's a decent hour in New Zealand for me to be talking to her and seems genuinely relieved when I reassure her. And you, Ani?"Oh yeah, fine.... > Read more

DEE-JAY PUNK-ROC, INTERVIEWED (1999): Pay atteeeeeen-shun!

7 Jan 1999  |  3 min read

Being disciplined and focused, that's what it's all about, says British-based, Brooklyn-raised Dee-Jay Punk-Roc.It's a refrain you hear often enough from the hip-hop community but 27-year-old Charles Gettis is talking about the United States Army, in which he spent five years."Yeah, it cleans you up, puts you in the right direction and it's about purpose and discipline," he says of... > Read more

BOB DYLAN: LIVE 1966; THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 4 (1998): Cheers and jeers

1 Nov 1998  |  1 min read  |  1

Appropriately on the Columbia Legacy label, this double disc (Volume 4 in the on-going Bootleg Series) contains the whole of the famous "Royal Albert Hall" concert -- actually at the Manchester Free Trade Hall -- where a voice from the darkness yelled, "Judas." This is the stuff of legend, and the accusation from some aggrieved folkie that Dylan was betraying his... > Read more

BRUCE RUSSELL OF THE DEAD C, INTERVIEWED (1998): Rock on a budget

6 Sep 1998  |  3 min read

There have been few reasons to record anything off music television lately, but an opportunity comes tomorrow night in, of all places, the relentlessly sponsored Ground Zero.Somewhere between product placements, the Dead C will play live - and for those who haven't followed the footnotes of New Zealand rock, that's a rarity. Rare to the point of being a first.After 12 years the three-piece out... > Read more

PAULA COLE, INTERVIEWED (1999): Arm-en to that

8 Feb 1998  |  3 min read

You'd have to concede one thing about Paula Cole. She's candid.In a 20-minute phone interview, the former Peter Gabriel backup singer - best known for her solo hits Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? and I Don't Want to Wait, the theme for telly's Dawson's Creek - admits her new album hasn't done the business she hoped for.And she's felt increasingly uncomfortable with her high profile since... > Read more