The proper return of Elsewhere for 2024 15 Jan 2024
Hello again and . . .
last week we had a kind of soft relaunch of Elsewhere, but now we are getting down to it good-and-proper.
I will remind you of a few things from the previous week and the New Year period but in the past week we have . . .
Something about the life and career of the remarkable Cy Grant, an excellent box set of psychedelic music which I rediscovered, a summertime compilation of world music and the debut album by Betsy and the Reckless from Taranaki.
There's also the debut by Dubin's Sprints, a cello and accordion album, a wild album by avant-guitarist Marc Ribot, two tracks pulled From the Vaults (one by Elvis Costello and the other jazz player Bud Shank on a George Harrison song) and an archive piece about a footnote in Tim Finn's long solo career.
A couple of book reviews, some personal stuff and . . .
That should keep you going and distract from work if you are back on deck.
I hope you managed to have a decent break and the weather was kind to you.
The year begins, I hope I can make it interesting for you.
cheers
G
WE NEEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CY GRANT: The dreaming soul of blacknessWe could start with his war record: he was a flight lieutenant navigator on an RAF Avro Lancaster in 103 Squadron (one of the few black officers in the airforce) but was shot down over Holland in 1943 and imprisoned at Stalag Luft III (made famous in the film The Great... |
LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING; SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970: Flowers and freak outsAny box set or collection which tries to mop up an era, genre or decade is probably doomed to failure, not from lack of genuine effort but because some artists (the big ones) don't want to be included. So you can get a multiple disc, very inclusive set of the Eighties for... |
MARC RIBOT AND CERAMIC DOG. CONNECTION, CONSIDERED (2023): Wrecks small speakers . . . .Although avant-guitarist Marc Ribot has appeared at Elsewhere under his own name, he is perhaps best known for his work on albums by Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson and with Robert Plant and Alison Kraus. We profiled him as a "cosmopolitan guitarist... |
Various Artists: Tropical Party (Putamayo/digital outlets)Most people would be selective about albums on the Putamayo label – children's songs aren't high on our list – but every now and again a compilation just catches a mood. And this breezy collection of tracks from hitherto unfamiliar or little known artists... |
Elvis Costello: You Hung the Moon (2010)On his 2010 album National Ransom, Elvis Costello gave dates and places for where his songs were located. In You Hung the Moon (a saying which means you were terrific/great/wonderful) he locates the song in "a drawing room in Pimlico, London, 1919".... |
Bud Shank: Blue Jay Way (1968)The great jazz flute and sax player Bud Shank -- who died in 2009, aged 82 -- had some form in turning his hand to popular songs (that's his flute on the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreaming) but he also worked with the late Ravi Shankar, notably recording the... |
Betsy and the Reckless: Salty (digital outlets)They may not live up the rock'n'roll/rockabilly suggestion of their name but Taranaki's Betsy Knox and her band do a very appealing line in originals on this debut album which draws on soul, nightclub cabaret, not too much default reggae and a little jazzy swing.... |
Sprints: Letter to Self (digital outlets)This debut album from a hotly tipped Dublin four-piece taps directly into the spirit of intellectual, fist-tight post-punk and – in the delivery and claustrophobic lyrical repetition of Karla Chubb – has something in common with Deborah Iyall of Romeo Void as... |
Tales from the Box: Ciel (digital outlets)Tales from the Box are cellist Stella Tempreli and accordion player Thanos Stavridis who across 11 tracks on this debut album – with some augmentation from guests on bass, drums, vibes and percussion in places – cover a wide swathe of original music by... |
TIM FINN, INTERVIEWED (1992): The art of always arrivingWhen there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a... |
IMPERIAL ISLAND by CHARLOTTE LYDIA RILEYWith colonisation under the microscope as a lightning rod in our own country (and sometimes a default position to close down a more wide and deep debate), this interesting if sometimes flawed book allows us to lift our eyes to look through the telescope at how Britain,... |
WARHOL AFTER WARHOL by RICHARD DORMENTThe late art critic Robert Hughes – who once described Andy Warhol as being “credited with sibylline wisdom because he was an absence conspicuous by its presence” – was an insightful and barbed writer, as adept and astute about the art market as... |
LIFE UNDER CANVAS: Squatting in our own homeJust before Christmas 2005, we fell victim to the pandemic sweeping across Auckland. You know how it is: you always think it’ll affect someone else and you’ll be okay. So we were ill-prepared. We'd just carried on as if nothing would ever happen to us.... |
McMinnville, Oregon: Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose follyIn a flat field outside the small town of McMinnville in northwest Oregon is a building so large that cars visibly slow on the highway so the occupants can take a look at it. Even in America -- the birthplace of bigness -- this enormous squat A-frame with its frontage... |
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT; BETWEEN GESTURE AND GEOMETRY by LUKE SMYTHEFor a couple of years in the mid Seventies I taught at Penrose High School – now One Tree Hill College. The school boasted a fine collection of New Zealand art, purchased through the agency of its new and innovative principal Murray Print (who'd started there in... |
Van Morrison: Accentuate the Positive (digital outlets)As we hinted at in the Editor's Picks of best albums of 2023, it was a strange year which saw attention-getting releases by the Beatles (the new single and the Red and Blue collections) and Rolling Stones, not to mention reissues of albums by Golden Harvest, the Proud... |
Elsewhere Art . . . PassagesI have mentioned previously how, in 1984, I launched the ambitious -- so ambitious it was doomed -- magazine Passages: The Magazine of Jazz and Elsewhere. And how at one point the late Jim Langabeer and I imported a bunch of now very rare Soviet free jazz albums... |
THE LURE OF A LAIR: Pumpkin candy and Korean piratesGod knows what I was thinking when I went to Ullungdo. It certainly wasn't for the well-advertised local attractions which are, in no particular order, dried squid, dried seaweed and -- its special delicacy -- pumpkin candy. Ullungdo is a spectacular lump of rock... |