Book reviews, author interviews, spoken word and poetry

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

Chop Suey!, by System of a Down

WHEN WE WAS FAB: INSIDE THE BEATLES AUSTRALASIAN TOUR 1964 by ANDY NEILL and GREG ARMSTRONG

3 Jun 2024 | 4 min read

The Beatles' story never seems to tire in the telling and retelling. Even small events can be illuminated by new information or previously unheard recordings, once marginal characters can suddenly appear in the spotlight. The debate to name The Fifth Beatle will probably carry on long after we're all gone. The events of the Beatles' 1964 tour in New Zealand – 60 years ago this... > Read more

Yeah Yeah We Love Them All, by Dinah Lee (1964)

JAMES by PERCIVAL EVERETT

29 May 2024 | 2 min read

If this provocative, award-winning novel were ever adapted for film the temptation for the soundtrack composer would be, when we reach the final significant words, to deliver a swell of emotional, uplifting orchestration as if redemption had been delivered. That would be wrong. This version of aspects of Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are seen through the eyes of... > Read more

THE DICTIONARY PEOPLE by SARAH OGILVIE

13 May 2024 | 3 min read

One of the most popular books of the early 2000s – the readers' enthusiasm spread by word-of-mouth – was The Surgeon of Crowthorne by the well-known journalist and travel writer Simon Winchester. Subtitled “A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words”, it was a non-fiction account of the American Dr William Chester Minor who had moved to London in 1871 and, in a... > Read more

Wide angle reviews, interviews and opinion
on music, travel and the arts by writer Graham Reid

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