Essential Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
18 Jan 2013 | 3 min read | 1
There are some albums (such as Sgt Peppers) which so crystallise their period that you cannot imagine that era without them. Then there are others (The Velvet Underground's debut) which appear to stand so diametrically opposed to the prevailings movement of their time that it is usually only in retrospect their impact and importance can be truly appreciated. Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation of... > Read more
Sonic Youth: Silver Rocket
Small Faces: Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (1968)
26 Nov 2012 | 2 min read | 1
With Small Faces' brief catalogue of albums now remastered and reissued, their growth towards Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake -- famously in a round cover like a tobacco tin and with panels that opened out -- can now be traced to this, their finest moment. Singer/writer/guitarist Stevie Marriott was one the great British r'n'b singers and the band of singers/writers Ronnie Lane and keyboard... > Read more
Afterglow (US stereo mix)
Little Richard: Here's Little Richard (1957)
20 Aug 2012 | 4 min read | 1
Among John Lennon's distinctive and funny drawings is a cartoon panel from '79 of him out walking with his son Sean. They encounter a character on the street who tells him "I've been getting in to jazz, man!". Lennon's witheringly funny reply is, "I've been trying to avoid it all my life". In his musical taste at least, Lennon was remarkably consistent. When he said... > Read more
Ready Teddy
Albert King: Born Under a Bad Sign (1967)
23 Jul 2012 | 3 min read
By the time Albert King started recording the music which would appear as his seminal Born Under a Bad Sign album, he'd been around and seen around for so long he'd reached a point – at age 43 – where he knew who he was and what his sound had to be. King's story until these sessions also mirrored the progress of the blues from its acoustic rural origins in the South to the... > Read more
The Hunter
Pere Ubu, The Modern Dance (1978)
14 Jul 2012 | 3 min read | 1
It has become fashionable lately to speak of “post-rock” and cite bands such as Tortoise, Sigur Ros and Explosions in the Sky as being groups which use the tools of rock, but create music that isn’t identifiably within the rock genre. Of course nothing comes from nothing and there may just be precedents for post-rock -- such as Pere Ubu out of Cleveland who, in the mid... > Read more
Chinese Radiation
Downliners Sect: The Sect (1964)
24 Jun 2012 | 3 min read
Some people live interesting lives . . . but when it comes time to check out their timing is appalling: the author Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, The Doors of Perception) died the same day John F Kennedy was shot (you can guess who got the greater coverage) and Dean Martin checked out on Christmas Day which isn’t the best time to get a nice obituary. Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy also... > Read more
Downliners Sect: Be a Sect Maniac
Jon Hassell: Dream Theory in Malaya (1981)
30 May 2012 | 2 min read
When I imported this album in 1981 it was on the basis of faith: faith that the Melody Maker writer who had hailed it was on the money, that Brian Eno who appeared as a collaborator and on whose EG Music imprint it appeared was right, that it would be as good as their previous collaboration, and that it would arrive intact. My faith was vindicated on all counts and the album has proved a... > Read more
Jon Hassell
T.Rex: Electric Warrior (1971)
7 May 2012 | 2 min read | 3
By the time of the Tanx album in 1973, things were starting to go sour for T.Rex's frontman Marc Bolan. He hadn't cared when his old champion John Peel had dismissed his glam pop for its shallowness, or that Bowie and others were starting to snap at his heels. He was in fact oblivious to it all, he was far too busy being the star he always wanted to be. So he perhaps never noticed that the... > Read more
T.Rex: Planet Queen
This Heat: This Heat (1979)
29 Apr 2012 | 4 min read
Understandably, many hail the Sixties as the greatest ever decade for popular music: the undeniable brilliance of the Beatles and what they spawned on both sides of the Atlantic, not to mention globally; the whole shift from pop to rock, and from singles to albums, which freed minds and arses that followed; the innovations of Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd; Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa; the... > Read more
This Heat: The Fall of Saigon
Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost (1975)
25 Feb 2012 | 2 min read | 1
In Ted Bafaloukos' '78 film Rockers -- a lightweight comedy but excellent quasi-doco about the world of Jamaican music with a stunning cast of reggae luminaries -- there are any number of remarkable scenes: the lead character is a drummer (played by Leroy "Horsemouth" Brown) who puts a down-payment on a motorbike with the idea of selling cheap records into shops all over the island.... > Read more
Burning Spear: Slavery Days
Nick Lowe: Dig My Mood (1998)
16 Jan 2012 | 3 min read
It is coming up close to two decades since Nick Lowe -- once a laddish and witty figure in British rock in the immediate post-punk days -- decided to take the long view on his career and reposition himself. As he told Elsewhere late last year, “Back when I first got noticed in the Seventies it was for being rather irreverent and popping bubbles, and I was a bit cheeky. A certain... > Read more
You Inspire Me
Paul Revere and the Raiders: Greatest Hits (1967)
8 Nov 2011 | 4 min read
Yes, a greatest hits collection does look a bit like cheating for an Essential Elsewhere album. But wait, there’s a good reason. Back in the mid-Sixties after the Beatles breakthrough when groups were popping up everywhere from Seattle to Sheffield, few record companies -- let alone the bands themselves -- expected they might make more than a single. So if a band cracked a hit it... > Read more
Paul Revere and the Raiders: Just Like Me (1965)
Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel (1980)
15 Aug 2011 | 6 min read
When Peter Gabriel released his third solo album -- the third to simply be entitled "Peter Gabriel" although widely known as Melt after its Hipgnosis-designed cover image -- it was met with almost unanimous and unequivocal approval. Even the notoriously hard to please punk and raw rock advocate Nick Kent, writing in NME, hailed "the sheer ferocious power of conceit, vision... > Read more
And Through the Wire
Various: Get a Haircut compilation (2007)
7 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
Back in the mid Sixties Auckland’s Fair Sect Plus One -- originally an all-girl band called the Fair Sect who adopted the new name with the arrival of their male drummer -- released a terrific single with a raging bagpipe solo. At least I think it was terrific, I can’t say for certain. I only heard it once -- on a transistor radio in Allan Parson’s car while careering... > Read more
Social End Product
Magazine: Real Life (1978)
1 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
If there was a godfather of the Manchester scene in the Eighties there's a good case to be made that it wasn't Tony Wilson (who founded the Hacienda and Factory Records) but that it was Howard Devoto, singer and songwriter for Magazine, the band he formed in 1977. In that crucial year Devoto promoted the two local concerts by the Sex Pistols (poorly attended but hugely influential) and had... > Read more
Shot by Both Sides (single version)
Can, Tago Mago (1971)
2 Jul 2011 | 3 min read | 2
Only a rare band could count among its admirers and proselytisers the young Johnny Rotten, David Bowie and Brian Eno, eccentric UK rocker Julian Cope, and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream. Oh, and various contemporary classical composers, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and post-hippie rock fans. But then, Can from Germany were a rare band indeed. Because the albums recorded in... > Read more
Oh Yeah
Ken Emerson: Slack and Steel Kaua'i Style (2007)
21 Jun 2011 | 3 min read | 2
A few years ago when I was on the island of Kaua'i in the Hawaiian chain I went into a CD store in the pretty town of Hanalei on the north east coast. I was looking for some compilations of classic Hawaiian musicians such as Sol Hoopi whose music I recall from 78rpm discs my dad had. The otherwise excellent shop didn't have any, but my wife picked up a disc and said, "This looks... > Read more
Ken Emerson (steel guitar) and Pancho Graham (bass, slack key guitar): Sleepwalk
Various Artists: Delta Swamp Rock (2011)
16 May 2011 | 4 min read | 3
Anyone who has traveled extensively in the United States would tell you that the South is different. Certainly Boston, Omaha and Portland are different. But the South is different different. And even though there are -isms and schisms in the broad church that is "the South" and it is impossible to define what that distinction is, you know it, sense it, feel it -- and... > Read more
Out in the Woods (1972)
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (2011 reissue)
8 May 2011 | 8 min read | 7
Those who were there say everything changed when he walked in the room and started to play. He’d been away a long time -- learning guitar was what they said -- but the last time anyone had seen him he was an uppity kid and not that good. You can imagine how it must have been that Saturday night in a small run-down club in Banks, Mississippi. The old guys are hanging out and this slim... > Read more
Hellhound on my Tail
Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygene (1977)
8 May 2011 | 4 min read | 2
Sometimes in history there comes that rare conjunction of the artist, the time and the art. In the case of Jean Michel Jarre it seemed they were all out of alignment. He could not have chosen a more inhospitable climate into which release his work. Jarre's album Oxygene came out in France in 1976 but wasn't given release in Britain until the following year.It was the height of... > Read more