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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 
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JUDY MOWATT INTERVIEWED (1990): The black queen arises
Judy Mowatt wears her unofficial title “the queen of reggae" easily. A striking figure of regal bearing, she holds her head high, and, as a member of The Twelve Tribes of Israel, talks as easily about the Queen of Sheba in ancient times as she does about Yellowman, and DJ dancehall stars in Jamaica today – and shows a canny knowledge of chart placings for various reggae... more >>
Added: 26 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 Jim had taken off to Rio and been replaced by his lookalike brother, said Paul-is-Dead paranoids and conspiracy theorists.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
THE OUTER LIMITS OF THE HUMAN VOICE (2010): That sound, it haunts me still!
Blame punk’s redrawing of the map - or Yoko Ono, or the much more irritating Celine Dion if you will -- but the limits of our tolerance to the human voice have certainly shifted over the past few decades. We can now listen with impunity to Natacha Atlas’ careening Arabic trip-hop as much as be in awe of Whitney Houston’s lung capacity, or delight in the qawwali music... more >>
Added: 5 Jul 10
BILL LASWELL INTERVIEWED (1994): In the den of the alchemist
The apartment seven floors up on Park Ave South, just around the corner from the exclusive Gramercy Park area of New York, is much as you might expect. Albums and CDs line the walls. Over there the new Last Poets 12-inch single leans against the wall, on that shelf there the Yoko Ono CD box set sits alongside books by Carlos Castenada. Photographs of William Burroughs and Lee Scratch... more >>
Added: 28 Jun 10
ROSANNE CASH INTERVIEWED (2004): The road less travelled
When Rosanne Cash crashed into the country music scene in the late 80s she was, as the Americans say, a real piece of work. With purple hair, a drug problem and a brusque manner, she arrived in Nashville from California and immediately alienated the country music establishment. Despite her high irritant factor, Cash - daughter of Johnny and born the same month in '55 that her dad... more >>
Added: 21 Jun 10
THE CHURCH INTERVIEWED (1994): Men keeping the faith
Fourteen years after springing their classic paisley-pop hit An Unguarded Moment, six years on from picking up an American gold disc for their album Starfish and looking at a back-catalogue of releases that reaches dangerously close to double figures, the Church -- now trimmed back to founder members Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper after the departure of bassist Peter Koppes - are... more >>
Added: 21 Jun 10
CHRIS BAILEY, THE SAINTS, INTERVIEWED (1994): From Saint to Pope
There were always a couple of good reasons for liking the Saints, Brisbane’s punk-to-pop finest who were fronted by sole constant Chris Bailey. The first was Bailey running intellectual rings around rock show host Dick Driver on national television. The other was a great song. What that song was came down to taste. Maybe it was their first hit from ’77, a piece of... more >>
Added: 21 Jun 10 1 Comment
BOB MARLEY; RASTAMAN VIBRATION RECONSIDERED (2003): The legacy is music and the message
The bassist with Hamilton reggae band Katchafire, Ara Adams-Tamatea, said it: "You go to parties now and they are still playing the same '70s Bob albums 20 and 30 years later. Why is that? Because Bob's message is still alive and the things he was singing about are still relevant." The Bob in question is dread rebel Bob Marley, whose music spoke to many in this country more... more >>
Added: 14 Jun 10 1 Comment
BILLY BRAGG INTERVIEWED ABOUT WOODY GUTHRIE (1998): Woody'n'Wilco and rude'n'boozy songs
From the rollicking singalong which opens the new Mermaid Avenue album by Billy Bragg, you know something is different. There’s Bragg and the American band Wilco in a swaggering tale of looking for booze and, to put it delicately, female companionship. From there on it’s a strange trip with Bragg and the band: an old man’s teenage reminiscences of taking a girl’s... more >>
Added: 14 Jun 10
NEIL FINN AND CROWDED HOUSE (2010): The returning son
Many, many years ago Neil Finn told me he believed bands, and he was referring to Split Enz at the time, had a natural lifespan. Some years after that – in 2001 when he was well into a solo career with the album One Nil – I asked him the question again, and specifically if he felt that about Crowded House. His answer was the same. Yes, bands did have a natural... more >>
Added: 14 Jun 10
ANTON FIER PROFILED (1988): A new career in a new town
Anton Fier was, until recently, a star without a bank account -- or manager come to that -- and yet at the nucleus of the hippest collection of New York’s avant-garde ever to hit vinyl. When Fier gets going, the going gets fearful as left-field jazz players, peripheral rockists and unusual combinations of singers,squawkers and shapers come together under the banner of his band,... more >>
Added: 7 Jun 10
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