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JIMI HENDRIX AND ALAN DOUGLAS: The fireball and the keeper of the flame
The name Alan Douglas raises mixed feelings among Jimi Hendrix fans. By a series of canny and right-place, right-time manoeuvres after the death of Hendrix in 1970, Douglas -- a former jazz producer, and a friend and adviser to Hendrix in his final years -- ended up as the curator of the Hendrix legacy. While others, notably the many claiming to be the late guitarist’s manager,... more >>
Added: 8 Mar 10
JIMI HENDRIX: THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE BOX SET (2000): Get experienced, but differently
It should be easy to get together a thorough Jimi Hendrix collection. After all, his recording career lasted fewer than four years. Presumably, all you'd need would be his exceptional debut album Are You Experienced, the follow-up Axis: Bold As Love and the expansive, Essential Elsewhere double album Electric Ladyland. The Smash Hits collection would fill a few gaps, although only the... more >>
Added: 6 Mar 10
GANG OF FOUR, A 100 FLOWERS BLOOM: Would you like politics with that?
The ideas and ideologies which came in the late 70s with punk, new wave and anarcho-pop threw up some extraordinary bands, not the least of which was Gang of Four, an outfit from Leeds whose 1979 debut Entertainment! brought together minimalist punk-funk bass and drums with guitarist Andy Gill's switchblade guitar and howling feedback. Oh, and over the top were Jon King's Marxist lyrics... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 10
BRIAN AUGER INTERVIEWED (2002): Still on fire, still rollin down the road
How's this as a measure of a man's modesty: it is only in the closing overs of a lengthy conversation that Brian Auger mentions in passing he plays on an album which is nominated for a Grammy in the contemporary jazz category. And so, three decades after he took the sound of his rocking and swinging Hammond organ into the vanguard of jazz fusion, he is still on the cutting edge.... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 10
CARLOS GARDEL: The voice of Argentina
Just as there is no English-language equivalent of Jacques Brel (suggestions anyone?) or Edith Piaf, so there is no equivalent to Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) who became the voice of Argentinean folk-tango. At a guess we might say Gardel was akin to an implosion Irving Berlin/Lennon-McCartney/Hank Williams with a touch of (unhelpfully) Brel and Piaf. Although the facts of his birth are often... more >>
Added: 22 Feb 10
FIFTIES ROCK'N'ROLL; LOUD, FAST AND OUT OF CONTROL: Rock 101, The Originators
Billy Joel isn't usually cited in the Elsewhere world as an insightful reference, but his feisty We Didn't Start the Fire of the mid-Nineties was a brisk, rocking historical synopsis of our time (JFK, Chernobyl etc) which was referenced a little in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues chant-poem of three decades previous. However, by starting his countdown of great events from the... more >>
Added: 21 Feb 10
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, WHAT GOES ON (BOX SET, 1993): The velvet blueprint
Most reviewers of this well-packaged, 57-track, three-disc set can’t help but comment on the overwrought essay by Clinton Walker who starts with superlatives, then works up to a screech. He sets up the customary and needless rock-crit comparisons (VU more street-damaged than the Beatles. So?) to advance the case that the Velvets were the most important band ever in rock... more >>
Added: 20 Feb 10
LOU REED AND PATTI SMITH IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Patent pending
When those archetypal New Yorkers Lou Reed and Patti Smith both released albums in the early days of 2000, it allowed anyone still interested in their careers the chance to consider their relative positions as they entered a new decade -- in fact a new century -- about 25 years (and more) on from their career defining best work. Neither of them seemed especially interested in what we might... more >>
Added: 15 Feb 10
A RHYTHM AND BLUES TIMELINE 1900 - 1960
Here follows a broad outline of the growth and development of rhythm and blues, courtesy of Rhythm and Blues Records in the UK, a company which specialises in this music. PRE 1910 1877 Invention of the Phonograph 1883 Racist coon songs introduced into vaudeville and burlesque 1896 Jim Crow Segregation laws 1897 World’s first radio station on the... more >>
Added: 12 Feb 10 
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EVAN DANDO OF THE LEMONHEADS INTERVIEWED (2004): Learning to crawl
You know how the arc of fame moves in the States: you have a minor career in rock, hip-hop or the movies so you take to drink, drugs or become addicted to pain-killers. (Who knew there was that much lower back pain in success?) Then you spin out of control. You do silly things such as marrying in Las Vegas to someone you just met, date transvestites or punch a photographer. Then you get... more >>
Added: 1 Feb 10
LIKE, OMIGOD! THE 80'S POP CULTURE BOX (TOTALLY) (Rhino box set)
The Eighties was probably no more different or diverse than any other decade, but it does seem weird on reflection: Ronald Reagan and the Rubik Cube; the arrival of CDs, CNN and MTV; personal computers and ghetto blasters; Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta; Ozzy eating a bat and suave Duran Duran; cocaine and Jane Fonda's workout videos; Thriller; the departure of John Lennon, Bob Marley,... more >>
Added: 1 Feb 10
JEFF KELLY AND THE GREEN PAJAMAS: The other sound of Seattle
One day, just before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I had lunch with a friend. When I told him I was going to Seattle he said, "Are you going to see Green Pajamas? I had no idea what he was talking about, I thought he meant some stage play.At this point my friend -- who has a big-time job in a major record company -- regailed me with enthusiasm about the genius of Jeff Kelly,... more >>
Added: 29 Jan 10
DANIEL JOHNSTON: In a mixed up, shook up world
Being eccentric or even downright loopy has never disqualified anyone from a career in rock culture. Indeed, some would argue being slightly off-beam is a prerequisite. Rock is littered with oddballs: acid-damaged Syd Barrett, who signed out of Pink Floyd in '68 and reality shortly after; those Fleetwood Mac guitarists who went walkabout mid-career; Brian Wilson lolling on his bed for a... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 10
LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING; SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970 (Rhino): Flowers and freak outs
Any 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 example and it doesn't have anything by Madonna, Prince, Springsteen and Michael Jackson. That the Rhino label did such... more >>
Added: 24 Jan 10
THE AMAZING VOICE OF TIMI YURO: Soulful, sassy and show tunes
When PJ Proby burst onto the British pop scene in 1964 he was an amazing anomoly. The Texas-born singer had been doing demos for various people in the States (including Elvis) and arrived in the UK to appear on a Beatles television special. He cracked a number of big pop hits in '64-'65 (Hold Me, Mission Bell, Let the Water Run Down) and with his velvet suits and ponytail (adopted from the... more >>
Added: 17 Jan 10
PET ROCKS AND PUNK ROCK: Have A Nice Decade; The '70s Pop Culture Box considered
It might have been famously "the decade that taste forgot", but the Seventies has spawned an interesting nostalgia for smiley faces (on e-mails!), terrific films such as Dazed and Confused . . . and this extraordinary box set of seven CDs which unflinchingly collects up the great (James Brown's The Payback, Freda Payne's Band of Gold and Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train to... more >>
Added: 17 Jan 10
PETE HAM OF BADFINGER: Take a sad song and make it sadder
Put simply: Pete Ham was one of the singer-songwriters in Badfinger, the British pop band of the late Sixties and early Seventies which enjoyed the patronage of Paul McCartney. He gave them his Come and Get It (used in the Ringo-Peter Sellers movie The Magic Christian) on the condition they record it exactly as his demo. They did, it was a hit, and a band was born which always... more >>
Added: 11 Jan 10
MOTOWN, THE FIRST TWO DECADES: There's a place in the sun
In 2009, Motown celebrated its 50th anniversary. Not that there was much to celebrate in 2009. The golden years for this classic and culture-shifting label had started to wither some three decades previous and it was notable that when it released compilation albums to cash in on this anniversary they were shoddy and sorry affairs, woeful in their tracklisting, and elevated Michael Jackson.... more >>
Added: 11 Jan 10
MARIANNE DISSARD INTERVIEWED (2009): The Tucson chanteuse
Marianne Dissard is a woman whose music confounds expectations, yet there is an impeccable logic to it: she is French but lives in Tucson, so there is an almost inevitable marriage of chanson and Americana on her album L’entredeux which was produced by Joey Burns of Calexico, who also wrote the music which envelops and supports Dissard’s poetic lyrics. She in fact has also been... more >>
Added: 7 Jan 10
TRAVELLING RIVERSIDE BLUES: Robert Johnson, the blues and Clarksdale, Mississippi
The intersection of highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale in northwest Mississippi doesn't look particularly special: there's a car yard, a service station, a couple of kids listlessly kicking a ball outside Abe's barbecue shop . . . Just the usual stuff. The only thing to distinguish it from hundreds of other such intersections in the state is the odd looking monument-cum-sculpture thing at... more >>
Added: 4 Jan 10 1 Comment
