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The Remains: Don't Look Back (1966)
8 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Pub quiz time: Which four-piece Sixties group quickly became adept at wrting their own material, built a local following, eventually appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, hung out with the Byrds in Hollywood, listened to Indian music . . . and played their final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966 before a crowd of 55,000. Easy as, huh? It is of course, the... > Read more
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U2: Mysterious Ways (The Perfecto Remix, 1991)
26 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
U2 may have reverted to musical type with stadium anthems and those long chiming chords which roll towards singalong or bellicose choruses, but around the time of Achtung Baby and Zooropa they were a genuinely innovative band. And much of the music of that period lent itself to remixing and mashing. Their fan magazine Propaganda issued a nine song remix collection in '95 entitled Melon... > Read more
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Waylon Jennings and Steve Cash: They Laid Waste to Our Land (1978)
11 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Melody Maker was blunt about the country music concept album White Mansions on its release in '78: "A dilemma -- on the one hand we have some exceptionally good music; on the other, a project of doubtful worth". Because White Mansions -- which featured Jessi Colter and her husband Waylon Jennings, John Dillon and Steve Cash with stellar help from Eric Clapton, Bernie Leadon, Henry... > Read more
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Charles Amirkhanian: Just (1972)
11 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Unless he was blessed with some weird insight, it's a fair guess that American sound-poet and composer Amirkhanian could not know how this text-sound piece would be heard in the wake of what happened in Auckland's harbour in 1985. One night in July as the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was moored at a central wharf in downtown it was bombed -- one crew member killed -- and sunk by two... > Read more
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Elton Motello: Jet Boy Jet Girl (1978)
3 Nov 2010 | 1 min read | 2
Most people have heard Belgian faux-punk Plastic Bertrand's one-off single Ca Plane pour moi of '77 (see clip). Fewer will have heard this bastard half-sister version by the UK rock'n'roll punk band Elton Motello (also the adopted name of singer Alan Ward) out of South London around the same period. But the backstory is a little confusing. Ca plane pour moi was actually recorded... > Read more
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Lou and Simon: Converted Maori Car (1965?)
22 Oct 2010 | <1 min read
Lou and Simon (Lou Clauson and Simon Meihana) were one of the most popular and entertaining groups of the early Sixties. Like the Flight of the Conchords they were a kind of folk-comedy duo and very adept at parodies. The other side of this single is a medley which pokes fun at Les Andrews' then-current song Click Go the Tollgates (itself a knock-off of Click Goes the Shears), Jerry Lewis,... > Read more
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Section 25: Looking from a Hilltop, Megamix (1980)
22 Sep 2010 | 1 min read | 1
The jury is perhaps still out on Blackpool's Section 25: dismissed in some circles as a pallid version of Joy Division/New Order for their electronica dance music, hailed by others who heard in them an innovative band well in the vanguard of post-punk dance pop. Sharing a label with Joy Division/New Order and A Certain Ratio (also with whom they were also sometimes unfairly compared) as... > Read more
Various People: A crowd at the futbol in Buenos Aires
25 Aug 2010 | 1 min read
Okay, this is from the "Maybe you had to be there part" shelf in the Elsewhere vaults but . . . In Buenos Aires we went to a huge soccer ("futbol") match at Rio del Plata Stadium -- about 60,000 in the stadium where U2 filmed their U23D concert film -- between River and Arsenale. It was near the airport so planes would fly alarmingly (but further way than they... > Read more