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Keith's Christmas Tequila Cookies
21 Dec 2024 | 1 min read | 1
Keith offers this marvellous recipe which I can unequivocally recommend. His injunction that you should use only the best tequila is very important however -- as you will see if you read on. If, for some strange reason, this doesn't work out you might want to have someone make the whisky-infused Wicked Chicken just in case. INGREDIENTS 1 cup dark brown sugar 1 cup (two... > Read more
DEEPGROOVES; A RECORD LABEL DEEP IN THE PACIFIC OF BASS AND THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE IT A VOICE by PETER MCLENNAN
20 Dec 2024 | 4 min read
In the decade since Simon Grigg's exceptional How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the Song That Stormed the World there have been many insightful books which address music, popular culture and the social climate of a period. Among them Nick Bollinger's memoir Gonville (2017) and Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022); Norman Meehan's Jenny... > Read more
Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes
20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read
In one of those blink-and-miss it cameos, British soul singer Kiwanukahad momentary cameo in the Danny Boyle-Richard Curtis 2019 film Yesterday. Not that he needed the publicity, it arrived the same year his self-titled third album picked up the Mercury Prize. London-born to Ugandan immigrants, he had worked in studio sessions, released a couple of EPs, then came out the gates fast and... > Read more
Follow Your Dreams
Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues (2009)
20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read | 1
No one would ask why Bob Dylan does something -- shilling for Victoria's Secret comes to mind -- or can be surprised by whatever it is. That said, the Yuletide album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 did catch everyone by surprise. Dylan croaking through Here Comes Santa Claus, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and other seasonal delights?... > Read more
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2024: THE EDITOR'S PICKS
9 Dec 2024 | 10 min read | 4
It is that time again when we reflect on the year that has sped by, and of course we single out albums that made it all so much better. As always these are not “the best” of the year because we couldn't hear everything and anyway, “the best” are those that you enjoyed the most. But here we remind you of those albums which stood out from... > Read more
Wendyhouse: Puddlekopf (digital outlets)
9 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
More than 25 years ago I heard an album by the slightly challenging but enjoyable avant-garde/literary-cum-music group Wendyhouse out of Wellington which used samples, spoken word and noise. I sent off my $15 and joined their fan club and received some little handmade magazines and such. It was kinda fun. But I lost touch with them until Bryce Galloway (who may be Mr Pudding) got in... > Read more
Meltflakes Pop
THE BOOK OF ABBA by JAN GRANDVALL
9 Dec 2024 | 2 min read
With a title which looks like something from the Old Testament, this insightful book by a Swedish writer who was there from the start offers an almost biblically exacting account not just of its subject but so much more. Like the strange history of Swedish popular music (not all of it “pop” as in the case of dansbands), the flinty politics of Swedish music when journalists,... > Read more
Various Artists: Reaction: The Label 1979-1989 (Frenzy Music)
9 Dec 2024 | 2 min read
Alongside the on-going celebration of Flying Nun (through new albums and vinyl reissues), Rob Mayes making more and more albums on his Failsafe label available and Peter McLennan's excellent book on the Deepgrooves label (although the music remains frustratingly unavailable), there are whole areas of New Zealand music being brought back to attention, notably through the independent labels which... > Read more
Forever Tuesday Morning, by the Mockers
The Coward Brothers: The Coward Brothers (digital outlets)
9 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
There a lot of great stories in rock: the rise of the Rutles from obscurity under the watchful eye of their manager Leggy Mountbatten; the British band that moved through any number of names (the Originals, the New Originals and so on) until they found fame as Spinal Tap . . . Then there was the bluegrass band Hayseed Dixie who were inspired by AC/DC albums found in a stranger's car when he... > Read more
Always
THE SPIRIT OF ROMA (2024): Classical guitar by Simon Thacker, cello by Justyna Jablonska and more
6 Dec 2024 | 2 min read
Elsewhere has run literally hundreds of interviews with musicians and over the decades a few stand out: rarely the ones where someone is promoting an album or a tour, but rather those who have an interesting background and stories to tell. Among that rare company was Simon Thacker, a Scottish-born “guitarist without portfolio” as we called him. When we spoke in 2015 he told... > Read more
Ibrahim
THE EASYBEATS REMEMBERED (2015): I got hit songs on my mind . . .
2 Dec 2024 | 6 min read | 1
The edges of the vision are blurry but at the centre of the frame things are clear. I am a teenager, my friend Barry and I and perhaps a couple of others are stumbling down a dark road near what is now the Whangaparaoa shopping centre. We had just been at a movie – may have been kicked out – and are drunk on Blackberry Nip or McWilliam's Sweet Sherry. As we pass by the old... > Read more
She's So Fine
CONTRIBUTOR LEX MILLER on coming to terms with Saved and Christianity
2 Dec 2024 | 5 min read
Sometime in the early 1980s I walked into a record shop on Queen St., Auckland and saw a bargain bin full of the fairly recent Bob Dylan release, Saved. The cover had a hand reaching down from the sky to touch the hands of the “saved”, although in later editions that cover was replaced by one with more palatable artwork. The shock of Dylan’s latest transition, to... > Read more
Saving Grace
Beth Hart: You Still Got Me (digital outlets)
2 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
When the big voiced blues-rock belter Beth Hart came to this country in 2000 on a promotional tour, we pushed her LA Song to the top of our charts, her first number one anywhere. To be honest I don't remember the song that much but I certainly remember her. As I said in my interview at the time, “On what felt like one of Auckland's most humid days of the year, Los Angeles-based... > Read more
Wonderful World
Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More (digital outlets)
2 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
Many years ago the British music writer Pete Frame would produce meticulously researched Rock Family Trees tracing the various comings and goings in scenes and bands, creating vast branches for groups like Fleetwood Mac. If he ever did the influential Pixies branches would include the career of bassist Kim Deal who later founded the Breeders (with Tanya Donnelly of Throwing Muses), then... > Read more
Crystal Breath
Ernest Tubb: It's For God And Country and You, Mom (1965)
2 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
War always produces songs from all sides of the trenches and Vietnam was no different: a slew of patriotic and tally-ho songs in the early days then more cynical, anti-war sentiments coming through as the body count rises. Here Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours deliver one from those early days of US military involvement when some saw the issue very simply: there was a line drawn to... > Read more
Norman McLaren: Rythmetic; The Compositions of Norman McLaren (digital outlets)
29 Nov 2024 | <1 min read
A few weeks ago we wrote about the late Scottish-born Canadian animator and film maker Norman McLaren and our distant relationship with him. We took the opportunity to do because of the Synchromy single/animated footage which appeared. It was one of those innovative pieces where McLaren drew the sounds on card and filmed them as . . . Better you just check it out here. What we... > Read more
Dots
A NOT RECOMMENDED RECORD: The Beatles: Live in Stockholm 1964
28 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
From time to time we have a Recommended Record, an album which you deserve to have on vinyl because it plays better that way, has an especially interesting cover (gatefold sleeve, lyrics, credits etc) and it just feels right on record. This album of the Beatles live in Stockholm comes in an excellent cover but . . . We knew what we were getting in to because we read the back cover (see... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Father John Misty: Mahāśmaśāna (digital outlets)
25 Nov 2024 | 2 min read | 1
The first three singles released in advance of this new album by Josh Tillman (Father John Misty) were so majestic they seemed to herald something special on his sixth album Mahāśmaśāna, which apparently means “the great cremation ground” in Sanskrit. There was the heroic, seven minute Screamland (with Low's Alan Sparhawk on guitar) which offered “and you could say... > Read more
She Cleans Up
THE AMERICANISATION OF THE BEATLES (2024): The Capitol albums again
25 Nov 2024 | 3 min read
Although the scream-age fans fell at the Beatles' feet after The Ed Sullivan Show appearance in February 1964, they had a very strange and different understanding of their music. The US albums were mismatches of the original British album tracks and singles, songs dropped from one UK album would appear later, sometimes much later. These albums were the work of Capitol Record's Dave... > Read more
Ticket to Ride (movie mix)
TERRY RILEY: SHRI CAMEL, CONSIDERED (1978): Listening is easy with eyes closed
25 Nov 2024 | 2 min read
For most people, even if they haven't heard a note by him, their reference point for the career of Terry Riley is often distilled into just two words: In C. That was the title of his breakthrough, Sixties minimalist album (recorded for the first time in '68), a composition which allows for infinite flexibility. It has been performed by musicians from China and Mali, by Indian musicians... > Read more