Writing in Elsewhere
Books, authors, spoken word and poetry which may appeal to the curious spirit of Elsewhere.
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YOKO ONO by LAURIE ANDERSON, ERIKO OSAKA and THIERRY RASPAIL
10 Feb 2025 | 2 min read
At the time of this writing Yoko Ono is a week short of her 92nd birthday, no longer lives at the Dakota which had been her home for 50 years from 1973 and is in a wheelchair. It is believed she has dementia and her son Sean controls her extensive portfolio of investments, music, artworks and properties. By some accounts she's worth US$700 million. This officially approved large... > Read more
SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS; THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF SONNY ROLLINS by AIDAN LEVY
3 Feb 2025 | 2 min read
In 1956, the year he turned 26, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins appeared on 10 albums, among them six as leader which included Tenor Madness and Saxophone Colossus (which gave him a nickname, one of many) and Thelonious Monk's widely acclaimed Brilliant Corners. However just 18 months before he was struggling to put years of heroin addiction behind him and had been working as a janitor, a... > Read more
THE McCARTNEY LEGACY VOL. 2 1974-80 by ALLAN KOZINN and ADRIAN SINCLAIR
27 Jan 2025 | 3 min read | 1
Such was the detail in the first volume of this remarkable project – “granular” seems to be the current term – that we privately doubted we'd ever see this second volume. The first took McCartney from being an unemployed musician sitting in his remote Scottish cottage drinking whisky and feeling depressed to a career resurrection with the Band on the Run megaseller.... > Read more
Old Siam, Sir (Wings, 1979)
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
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
WE ALL SHINE ON; JOHN, YOKO & ME by ELLIOT MINTZ
4 Nov 2024 | 4 min read
For a man who, by his own account, spent many hundreds of hours talking with Yoko Ono and John Lennon – on the phone, in person in LA, New York and on a trip to Japan – radio host Elliott Mintz isn't able to tell us much new in this conversational autobiography. In Lennon-Ono lore, Mintz is a storied off-sider who first came into their world (more correctly them into his) when... > Read more
FUTURE JAW-CLAP by DANIEL BEBAN
30 Oct 2024 | 6 min read
If you weren't there at the time and looked at just what some today say New Zealand music was in the Eighties, you'd probably conclude it was only Flying Nun, some reggae, mainstream pop and a few noisy underground guitar bands. But there was a lot more than that reductive view allows. There was a significant experimental scene, in Auckland most visible with the people around Ivan Zagni... > Read more
KINGMAKER by SONIA PURNELL
28 Oct 2024 | 5 min read
Pamela Digby did not marry well but she did, in a way, marry wisely. Everyone warned her off Randolph whom she had only been with a few times before she agreed to his proposal. Both wanted marriage: she because as a plain, dumpy redhead who had been passed over in her coming-out season; he because with the war coming he wanted to sire a son before he was sent off. Randolph was a... > Read more
ADVENTURES IN MODERN RECORDING by TREVOR HORN
14 Oct 2024 | 2 min read
Acclaimed and award-winning producer Trevor Horn probably long ago resigned himself to the fact that the first paragraph of his obituaries would invariably mention Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. It was a massive one-off hit for Horn and others, a studio band which never played live but – with the video which was the first played on the new MTV channel – became... > Read more
THE MEN WHO KILLED THE NEWS by ERIC BEECHER
24 Sep 2024 | 2 min read
Anyone who watched the Succession series, is following the real-life replay as media mogul Rupert Murdoch goes to war against some of his children or found on a streaming service Faking Hitler (about the fraudulent “Hitler diaries”), will find this book a compelling account of the venal, manipulative and self-interested men who have controlled and corrupted the traditional media... > Read more
BOOKSHOP PRAYERS by PAUL McLANEY
9 Sep 2024 | 2 min read
Although better known as a musician – an impressive number of albums under various guises – Auckland's Paul McLaney surprised recently with the beautifully presented little book The Deep Dark Hole/The Faint Glimmer of Hope which was designed like a physical metaphor of a journey into depression and, when flipped over, the pathway out. It was a lovely, thoughtful and useful book.... > Read more
The Tide
EARTH TO MOON by MOON UNIT ZAPPA
9 Sep 2024 | 3 min read
When Moon Unit Zappa went to college she felt sorry for the kids because they had to share their name with other people, and she couldn't believe that some of the kids' parents had divorced because of infidelity. Her dad Frank had serial relationships with women other than his wife Gail, sometimes these women staying in the family home. “It's just fucking,” he says. But... > Read more
CHASING ME TO MY GRAVE by WINFRED REMBERT
2 Sep 2024 | 3 min read
It is said that history is written by the winners, and that is largely true. But it is also written by academics with access to files. Notes, documents and the work of other academics. Many of these researchers are dedicated and intent of getting to the multi-dimension truths of events. A writer/researcher like Antony Beaver is someone whose view from the battlefield to the cabinet... > Read more
UNCOMPROMISING EXPRESSION; BLUE NOTE by RICHARD HAVERS
13 Aug 2024 | 3 min read
Although there have been a number of books dedicated to the history of the influential American jazz label Blue Note -- and a few just dealing with the innovative, singular cover designs -- there's still a place for this contentious, large-format 400-page paperback which comes with more than 600 illustrations of album covers, studio shots and reproductions from contact sheets. In a clear... > Read more
Queen of the Sea, by Norah Jones
3 SHADES OF BLUE by JAMES KAPLAN
9 Aug 2024 | 2 min read
The opening sentence here is the kind of summation which would normally appear at the end of a review, but let's get it out of the way quickly. If you only buy one book on jazz this year, make it this one. Subtitled “Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool” it is by James Kaplan who delivered the magisterial two volumes on Frank Sinatra's life,... > Read more
NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO by ANNIE JACOBSEN
22 Jul 2024 | 3 min read
Good evening and welcome to the world's most terrifying pub quiz. Strap yourself in because this is going to be a white-knuckle ride. Your starter for 10 . . . In 1946 a year after the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the USA had nine atomic bombs. How many did it have six years later in 1952? a] 19 b] 89. c] 501 d] 841 Good guess, the answer is a... > Read more
Infinite Mind, by Justin DeHart
ME AND MR JONES by SUZI RONSON
12 Jul 2024 | 3 min read
In the early Seventies, Suzi Fussey was living a conventional life at 96 Cumberland Road in suburban London with her mum, dad and brother. She'd quit school at 15, took a course at Evelyn Paget College of Hair and Beauty in Bromley, got a job in Beckenham, sees bands like the young Pink Floyd and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, likes to get a bit creative with hairstyles because that was... > Read more
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, by Mick Ronson
UNDER A ROCK; A MEMOIR by CHRIS STEIN
3 Jul 2024 | 3 min read
There's a widespread and understandable belief that the chasm between San Francisco's hippies in the late Sixties and the New Wave kids hanging out at New York's CBGB's in the late Seventies was so wide as to be unbridgeable. Two culture separated by a decade and very different ideas. Yet Chris Stein of Blondie – one of the most successful of the skinny tie, dark suit and classy... > Read more
HELLFIRE: EVELYN WAUGH AND THE HYPOCRITES CLUB by DAVID FLEMING
17 Jun 2024 | 3 min read
Those lucky enough to go to university in the Sixties or Seventies can reflect on halcyon days when a bursary or scholarship made life easier, there were plenty of casual jobs available in holidays and you could have a relaxed attitude all year until a few weeks out from the final exams. The economic slide, changes in the education system in schools and on-going internal assessment at uni... > Read more
DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM by SERJ TANKAIN
14 Jun 2024 | 2 min read
Those who only recognise the name Serj Tankian as a singer in the explosive, socio-political heavy rock band System of a Down may gravitate to this “memoir (of sorts)” because they want to hear tales of touring, decadence and the rock'n'roll life style. Others might avoid it for the same reason. Both parties will be surprised by this fascinating book because it largely... > Read more