Keep up to date with new articles on Elsewhere as they're added 
with Rss or subscribe to receive a weekly e-newsletter with updates, giveaways
Music interviews, overviews, critical essays and reviews. Big names, cult acts and interviews exclusive to Elsewhere. Straight and bizarre, oddball and ordinary music and musicians.
Important moments from the past . . . and things happening right now. Or about to.
The Elsewhere place if you are curious about music.
LOU REED'S BETWEEN THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION: Boxed for you in '92
Blame Dylan for box sets. It was his Biograph in November ’85 (16 unreleased tracks among the 53 spread across five albums, later three CDs) which began things by reaching 33 on the American charts. Sure, there had been box sets before – but mostly for dead guys. Dylan and CDs together proved there was money in this market. Then his spectacular Bootleg Series in 91 set... more >>
Added: 30 Aug 10
R.E.M.; THE EARLY YEARS: Mumbling into the future
When R.E.M sneaked up in the early 80s with their debut album Murmur, few could have anticipated what the band meant – and would become. Just as Talking Heads had become the banner-waver for emotionally distant New York art-rock a few years previous, R.E.M were the band which announced college rock radio could be as influential as mainstream stations. And that “alternative... more >>
Added: 19 Aug 10
BURT BACHARACH IN 1995: The slow rehabilitation
Mainstream pop culture has witnessed some peculiar pairings, none more so than when Noel Gallagher, mastermind and songwriter behind the Britrock band Oasis, climbed on stage in London recently to perform with Burt Bacharach. Gallagher, a 29-year-old mouthy wide boy from Manchester, would seem to have nothing in common with the urbane, tanned 67-year-old Bacharach, the elder statesman... more >>
Added: 16 Aug 10
MEAT PUPPETS 1982-88: Acid rock baked by desert grunge
In the more strange corners of the Eighties on the SST label there were -- between the dreadful Zappa-clown Zoogz Rift and solo projects by various Violent Femmes – thrilling bands like firehose, Black Flag and Husker Du. And the very wonderful Meat Puppets, a trio out of Phoenix, whose brains seemed completely fried by drugs, comics and the desert sun. And in that post-punk,... more >>
Added: 16 Aug 10
MICHAEL JACKSON; LIVE IN '96: The man who fell to Earth
Somewhere around the midpoint of his often exceptional but undeniably messianic concert in Amsterdam 10 days ago, Michael Jackson fell to his knees and appeared to weep uncontrollably. Jackson -- whose stage craft was impeccable and dancing as exciting as expected -- remained hunched over and apparently sobbing on the enormous stage for what seemed a remarkably long time. But it... more >>
Added: 12 Aug 10
PAUL JONES PROFILED: Can sing, can act . . . can do
Paul Jones has enjoyed a remarkable career in and – most rewardingly -- out of pop music. After only three and a half years with the Sixties band Manfred Mann, during which he sang their chart hits, Do Wah Diddy, If You Gotta Go and Pretty Flamingo, Jones walked away and into a solo career (hits High Time, I've Been a Bad Boy (which was used in the film Privilege in which he... more >>
Added: 10 Aug 10
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AT 60: Still running through America
Sometimes we forget just how huge Bruce Springsteen has been: between '75 and '85 alone he sold in excess of 50 million albums (one of them, The River, was a double) and although he deliberately turned from mainstream success with low-key albums like Nebraska (in '82) and The Ghost of Tom Joad ('95) that has hardly stopped his juggernaut. His Greatest Hits released in '95 notched up a... more >>
Added: 9 Aug 10 
2 Comments
BLAIR JOLLANDS INTERVIEWED (2004): Kiwi expat under a watchful eye
The Cafe Bangla restaurant in London's Brick Lane isn't too difficult to find - and it's worth the effort. It's a couple of doors along from the one with Prince Charles' photo in the window. Which is ironic because the chief feature of Cafe Bangla - aside from reasonably priced and generously sized Indian meals - is a mural of the face of Lady Di hovering over a landscape. It is... more >>
Added: 2 Aug 10
DEAN HAPETA'S 2002 UPPER HUTT POSSE REMIXES: Say The Word, and you'll be freed
Dean Hapeta was the mainman in the Upper Hutt Posse (which also included singer-songwriter Emma Paki), the group which recorded the first New Zealand rap single E Tu in 1988. It was a powerful (if thin-sounding) statement of Maori anger and unashamedly used te reo (the Maori language) to strident effect. See lyrics below. Hapeta - as Te Kupu/The Word - has since carved a distinctive... more >>
Added: 2 Aug 10
THE GRATEFUL DEAD: The Dead rise again
There are some pretty odd tribute albums out there lately - and they seem to be getting stranger by the day. A couple of years ago it was all sensible kind of stuff, artists getting together to play Byrds songs or salute Neil Young. That’s cool. These days, however, we are getting albums like the Manson Family Sings the Songs of Charles Manson(previously unreleased 1970... more >>
Added: 28 Jul 10
POI E AND PATEA MAORI (1988): Dalvanius, man of passion
The old wooden Methodist church in a side street in Patea isn’t used much anymore. A lot of places in Patea aren't. It's a town battered by the economic ideas of successive governments and people have had to move out. The work just isn’t there anymore. But at least once a week the cobwebs in the church rafters shake when the Patea Maori group, the town's most visible... more >>
Added: 27 Jul 10 1 Comment
WAI INTERVIEWED (2000): One hundred percent te reo to the future
Maaka McGregor has had a good day. In Auckland for a week from his home in Titahi Bay and talking up the Wai 100% album he has recorded with his partner Wai (aka Mina) Ripia, he's just come from Mai FM. His pitch met with a positive, if unpublishably enthusiastic, response from programme director Manu Taylor. A good day. McGregor is under no illusions how difficult it will be to... more >>
Added: 27 Jul 10
ROGER GUINN, BACK FROM RIO (1991): The return flyte
When Jim McGuinn changed his name to Roger in ’67 during a period of chaos without and within for The Byrds, there were those who thought it was an elaborate hoax. Jim had taken off to Rio and been replaced by his lookalike brother, said Paul-is-Dead paranoids and conspiracy theorists. Hence the wry in-joke title on his album Back From Rio in 1990, McGuinn’s first solo... more >>
Added: 19 Jul 10
QUINCY JONES INTERVIEWED (1990): The boss back on the block
Quincy Jones does quite put it this way, but he knows that with great power comes great responsibility. And Jones has great power because of a financial empire founded on an extra ordinary career in music which spans from be-bop to hip-hop. This is the man who hung out with jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the early Fifties, counts his Grammy nominations in the... more >>
Added: 19 Jul 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: 14 Jul 10
WANDA JACKSON INTERVIEWED (2010): The 72-year old teenager
As a teenager barely out of school, Wanda Jackson – “the sweet girl with the nasty voice” as she became known – toured with and dated Elvis Presley; scored minor hits with Mean Mean Man, Fujiyama Mama (big in Japan in '58) and her signature song, the larynx-tearing invitation Let's Have a Party in 1960. Let's Have a Party – which Presley had... more >>
Added: 14 Jul 10
GUY CLARK INTERVIEWED (1989): Close to the chest and heart
In a way it almost doesn’t matter if you don’t know who Guy Clark is -- Bono and the rest of U2 do. Not only do they attend his concerts (and a month ago, when Clark was in Dublin for a television show, they dropped by there too), but the Irish stadium rockers have signed this quiet singer/songwriter from Nashville to a distribution deal with their newly established Mother... more >>
Added: 12 Jul 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: 11 Jul 10
MIKE McGEAR'S VANISHED MASTERPIECE: Brother can you spare me the time?
Perhaps "masterpiece" is too strong a word, but the singer-songwriter Mike McGear -- a member of Liverpool's poetry/music group the Scaffold who scored the '68 hit single Lily the Pink -- did crack quite a remarkable album in 1974, which seems to have disappeared entirely. Simply entitled McGear, it was originally released on Warners and in 1991 given CD reissue by Rykodisc. The... more >>
Added: 10 Jul 10 1 Comment
TODD RUNDGREN INTERVIEWED (2010): Getting out his Johnson for you
Todd Rundgren laughs as he predicts the end the current model of on-line music sales which will disappear like the Sony Walkman and vinyl singles: “Because some songs are priceless, some songs are worthless . . . and some songs are worth exactly 99 cents”. He should know. In a 40-plus year career he's made songs, and whole albums, in each category. However although he... more >>
Added: 8 Jul 10
2
