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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.
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JOSH RICHARDSON OF FLAVOR CRYSTALS INTERVIEWED (2013): And the dream goes on
There's something important we need to know from Josh Richardson of the Minneapolis psyche-rock band Flavor Crystals: Is that square where Mary Tyler Moore threw her beret in the air during the opening credits of her famous television show still there? Like, can we go there and throw our caps up as a homage to her? “Oh yeah,” laughs the singer-guitarist, “Where's... more >>
Added: 13 May 2013
SWAMP DOGG PROFILED (2013): Covering up his talents
The world of popular music is populated by lost prophets, wandering souls, damaged geniuses and those taken too young. There are also musicians who couldn't handle the sudden fame thrust upon them, and those who couldn't handle it when fame never knocked on their door or suddenly abandoned them. This is a world of venal villains (record companies, managers and lawyers usually) and... more >>
Added: 6 May 2013
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LAIBACH (2013): The politics of noise
Out of the old Yugoslavia in the early Eighties they came, their industrial sound grinding like tank tracks across the earwaves of Europe, their look unacceptably miltaristic, their irony bludgeoning all before them into submission. Laibach - who took the name from the German version of their hometown Ljubljana -- were a four-piece band like no other. They brandished slogans and wore... more >>
Added: 29 Apr 2013 
1 Comment
THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION (2013): Flights of the phoenix
The name, even now, is a little odd: The Phoenix Foundation. It sounds like some right-wing think-tank, or a high-profile business whose directors appear in court for fiddling the books. You can imagine the logo of a stylised bird rising from flames on the front of the company prospectus. And oddly enough Wellington's Phoenix Foundation – which has spawned a number of side... more >>
Added: 24 Apr 2013
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THE BUZZCOCKS (2013): A Different Kind of Punk
Even in the white-heat of the moment when it was happening, you just knew some of Britain's punk and post-punk bands weren't going to last. The Sex Pistols were always destined to burn out fast in a fire fueled by public outrage, politics and Malcolm McLaren, and bands like GBH, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, the Ejected and Undead just didn't have the depth to go much beyond a few... more >>
Added: 22 Apr 2013
STEVE EARLE PROFILED (2013): Only the strong survive
Few musicians have gone as far and as wide in their career as Steve Earle. These days we know him as an actor (notably in the tele-series The Wire and Treme), playwright, novelist, short story writer and a political activist. Not to mention being married seven times (twice to Lou-Anne Gill, he's now with songwriter Allison Moorer) and doing record production. He's just signed a book... more >>
Added: 15 Apr 2013 1 Comment
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . YOKO ONO (2013): The noises from within
Yoko is a concept by which we measure our pain -- New York graffiti, 1970. A voice that comes once in a lifetime; unfortunately it came in ours -- Critic Jim Mullen, 1992 Yoko Ono was always an easy target. Conceptual artists who mount exhibitions of chess sets where all the pieces are white, or write books which consist of ambiguously and unintentionally... more >>
Added: 11 Apr 2013 1 Comment
THE HENDRIX PERPLEX (2013): How to buy Jimi
In a recent conversation about the “new” Hendrix album People, Hell and Angels with Eddie Kramer (see here) -- Jimi's longtime engineer and behind a number of posthumous Hendrix releases since the guitarist's death more than 40 years ago – I asked the obvious: What next? Kramer said People, Hell and Angels – which followed South Saturn Delta and Valleys of... more >>
Added: 29 Mar 2013 3 Comments
BONNIE RAITT INTERVIEWED (2013): To everything, there is a season
When Bonnie Raitt's most recent album Slip Stream – her first in seven years – picked up a 2013 Grammy for best Americana album, it was yet another rung on her increasingly high ladder. Her 10th Grammy in fact. At the previous year's awards she had paid tribute to the late Etta James performing with Alisha Keys, and her signature song I Can't Make You Love Me has most... more >>
Added: 29 Mar 2013 1 Comment
PAUL SIMON; GRACELAND, AGAIN (2012): We can all be received . . .
Hard to believe from this distance of some 25 years, but Paul Simon's award-winning and much loved Graceland album of 1986 – which went on to sell around 15 million copies – was once a flashpoint for protest and rage. Strange, when you listen to magical songs like the buoyant title track which shimmers over mercury smooth guitars and echoes between Christianity and the... more >>
Added: 22 Mar 2013 1 Comment
JIM OF SEATTLE INTERVIEWED (2103): Famous, but just a little bit
The artist's name on the album is Jim of Seattle. Because he is Jim. And he is of Seattle. And although Jim of Seattle has been making music for more than 30 years, this is his debut album. It is entitled We Are All Famous. Jim of Seattle is not famous. Not even in Seattle where he is of. And although, as he says, there has been high approval from those who have heard We Are All... more >>
Added: 20 Mar 2013
STEVE MILLER INTERVIEWED (2013): Band still on the money and run
Steve Miller is a man who takes his time and gets things right: he is perhaps one of the most savvy musicians on the block (he held all his own publishing at a time when others were giving theirs away for a small bag of cash) and was within a whisker of finishing a university degree when he decided in the early Sixties to be a full time musician. Did well at it too. His Greatest Hits... more >>
Added: 11 Mar 2013 2 Comments
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LEON THEREMIN (2013): The sound of sci-fi and nightmares
You gotta hand it to inventor Leon Theremin, no one else had thought of a stringless cello. And if that sounds a bit Dada or like an installation at a Yoko Ono art exhibition, be assured. It was the real thing. Theremin invented an electronic stringless cello for the British conductor Leopold Stokowski. He also developed an early form of television which his homeland, Russia,... more >>
Added: 11 Mar 2013 1 Comment
EMMYLOU HARRIS INTERVIEWED (2013): Old friends and times long gone
That Emmylou Harris has known singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell since 1974 but has only now got round to recording a duet album with him makes her seem a little tardy. If not downright remiss. But at last here is Old Yellow Moon, a dozen songs with Crowell and typically superb musicianship from members of her touring band, Bill Payne from Little Feat and Vince Gill. But Jeez... more >>
Added: 8 Mar 2013
CARLOS SANTANA, THE CRUCIAL ALBUMS (2013): White light, with a Latin beat
One of the dumbest questions you can ask a musician in an interview – and it was asked a lot by people writing for teen-pop magazines in the 60s – is this conversation-stopper: What's your favourite colour? I've asked it a few times, but only when I knew the artist would get the joke. Because Carlos Santana was such an enjoyably strange character when I spoke with him a... more >>
Added: 7 Mar 2013
EDDIE KRAMER INTERVIEWED (2013): Wingman for the genius of Jimi
Some people get to sit at the right hand of genius. Eddie Kramer is one of those. As a producer/engineer he has worked with a glittering galaxy of rock's stardom: Led Zeppelin, the Stones, the Beatles briefly, Bowie, Santana . . . The list goes on. But one name, perhaps even more so now, will alwys be associated with him: Jimi Hendrix. Kramer was working in Olympic Studios in London... more >>
Added: 6 Mar 2013
DAVID BOWIE IN THE SEVENTIES (2013): Ch-ch-changes
That one of the most identifiable and famous men on the planet, David Bowie, managed – in this age of tweeting and endless internet gossip -- to spend the past two years recording his new album The Next Day without anyone knowing (or at least saying they knew) is surprising. Then again, Bowie always had the capacity to surprise. In fact, for a decade from the mid 60s he was... more >>
Added: 6 Mar 2013
HAL WILLNER INTERVIEWED (2013): More rum, sodomy and the lash
So how do we describe Hal Willner? He's a musician and producer, of course. And while he's a music supervisor for Saturday Night Live (a role had throughout the Eighties) he also stages concerts based around concepts which interest him, like the songbook of Doc Pomus or civil rights songs. He's also a man with a very fat contact book because on tribute albums to Italian composer Nino... more >>
Added: 4 Mar 2013 2 Comments
RICHARD THOMPSON INTERVIEWED (2013): Audiences and the art of the song
Richard Thompson should need no introduction. He has been an acclaimed songwriter/guitarist for over 40 years dating back to his innovative work with the pioneering English folk-rock group Fairport Convention. There were albums with his wife (the ex) Linda – some of which appear in many critics favourite-ever lists -- then a solo career stretching to well over 20 albums under... more >>
Added: 27 Feb 2013
MAREE SHEEHAN INTERVIEWED (2013): The beginning of the second act
After a fine start with a series of singles in the mid Nineties (Make You My Own, Fatally Cool which used taonga puoro), awards, her debut album Drawn in Deep, and the song Kia Tu Mahea on the soundtrack to Once Were Warriors, Maree Sheehan seemed to suddenly fade and disappear. By the turn of the century this talented woman – part of wave of smart young Maori women... more >>
Added: 18 Feb 2013 2 Comments
