Absolute Elsewhere
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BARRY SAUNDERS INTERVIEWED (2015): The road and the runaways days call again
15 Jun 2015 | 10 min read
Barry Saunders is lighting the first fire of winter at his Wellington home when he takes the call. But as the singer and songwriter in the long-running Warratahs, he's got plenty to talk about . . . because they've just released their first album in nine years. And they are going back out on the road [dates below]. Although of the latter prospect he's prepared to admit as... > Read more
Faraway Sun
GARRY VAN EGMOND INTERVIEWED (2015): It's only rock'n'roll but I underwrite it . . .
12 Jun 2015 | 14 min read
Garry Van Egmond has never had a heart attack, and given the nature of the business he's been in for more than four decades – where the stakes a big, the egos often bigger and financial ruin can be looming at any point – that's a real surprise. “I've always stayed very calm,” he smiles with a demeanor which confirms it. It's big business but “I play a bit... > Read more
Rock Or Bust
CAIRO KNIFE FIGHT INTERVIEWED (2015): Two for the road
28 May 2015 | 8 min read
The body language of the two men sitting in the corner of this Mt Eden cafe could hardly be more different. Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Gaffaney (on the right) seems slightly ill at ease, the eye contact fleeting and smiles wry and rare. Guitarist/songwriter George Pajon Jr seems entirely comfortable, maintains a steady and clear gaze and speaks with a smile. He even... > Read more
Climbing Through Ashes
PRINCESS CHELSEA INTERVIEWED (2015): She are very happy-ish
7 May 2015 | 13 min read
Chelsea Nikkel – aka Princess Chelsea – sits at the table in her flat-cum-studio space (the latter rightly referred to as "the Ghetto") with a second-pour coffee and admits she's tired. She looks it. And during the course of our digressive, always interesting and sometimes extremely candid hour-long conversation -- which traverses her excellent second album The... > Read more
All the Stars
BRITPOP IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR (2015): From Blur to beyond
4 May 2015 | 4 min read | 1
When Britpop was going off in the Nineties, we had some cynical distance from the hype. Life had taught us the British press would build 'em up and knock 'em down. And this time round with different clothes (shell suits?), a bit of anti-American jingoism added (Who needs Nirvana when you've got Menswear, right?) as well referencing the great heroes of the Sixties, Britpop looked as... > Read more
RINGO STARR REFLECTING (2015): He ain't going nowhere, man
20 Apr 2015 | 4 min read
Ringo Starr's few -- actually only two -- contributions to the Beatles' vast catalogue of original songs hardly set the world alight or gave any indication of great promise, unlike late bloomer George Harrison. Neither Octopus' Garden nor Don't Pass Me By (which tok him six years to finish and get on a Beatles album) suggested any great writing talent, but as a drummer his gifts lay... > Read more
Rory and the Hurricanes
NOOKY STOTT INTERVIEWED (2015): Bringing on the Rebel beat
15 Apr 2015 | 15 min read
The guy who had the best seat in the house to watch the rise of the Auckland rock band Larry's Rebels in the Sixties was Nooky Stott. He was the group's drummer and a child of Fifties rock'n'roll. “I lived in Ponsonby and our local picture theatre was the Britannia. I think I saw Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock at least 10 times,” he says. Stott –... > Read more
Let's Think of Something (NZ version)
HERBS; WHATS' BE HAPPEN? (2015): The hard truths from the street
14 Apr 2015 | 2 min read | 1
History, according to Napoleon (among others), is written by the winners. True in one sense. But if the losers are still out there they are often so forgetful of their history as to be worthless and absent witnesses. Many buy into the narrative of the winners, whom you might have thought would be their adversary. Take the New Zealand reggae band Herbs for example: Their Very Best Of... > Read more
Whats' Be Happen?
MEL PARSONS INTERVIEWED (2015): And the road goes on forever
13 Apr 2015 | 7 min read
On a wet Monday morning in Wellington, Mel Parsons takes a break from rehearsals in the Surgery studio with her band and, cheerful as ever, talks about her new album Drylands which she is taking to the country with starting on Wednesday in Auckland (see dates below). “It's exciting actually, just nice to have a new body of work to be touring with and be... > Read more
Get Out Alive
DON McGLASHAN INTERVIEWED (2015): This time it's personal
13 Apr 2015 | 14 min read | 1
In late January I was approached to write a brief biography for Don McGlashan to accompany the release of his new album Lucky Stars album. At the time I wasn't available but was sent an advance download of the 10 songs . . . and because the album release was some way off and many of the songs sounded so self-revelatory I made the time in early February to interview Don – whom I... > Read more
The Waves Would Roll On
JIMMIE DALE GILMORE INTERVIEWED (2015): A mind with a mind of its own
8 Apr 2015 | 8 min read | 1
Jimmie Dale Gilmore – speaking from his country home 45 miles outside of Austin, Texas – takes a stab at what his most popular song on Spotify might be. “Now let's think. I would suspect it might be Dallas, that's the best known one,” he says referring to his bitter-sweet paean to that Texas city which includes the lines “Dallas is a jewel, Dallas is a... > Read more
Dallas
THE GRATEFUL DEAD CONSIDERED (2015): If you can remember the Sixties . . . they were there
6 Apr 2015 | 4 min read | 2
The word is "oxymoron": it means when words putting together seem to contradict each other. Like “honest politician” or “skinny bass player”. Or “The Best of the Grateful Dead”, the title of a new double CD. Most people would say there can't be a “best of” a band which started its career half a century ago and has divided... > Read more
Ripple
LED ZEPPELIN REVISITED, PART THREE (2015): More graffiti scribbles
1 Apr 2015 | 1 min read
As we have now learned to our (literal) cost, the Jimmy Page remastering of Led Zeppelin albums plus a "bonus disc" of uneccesary "mixes" is little more than a PR job to flog more product. The previous reissues and remasters of the actual albums are excellent, but this nonsense about rough mixes or a different mix from a different studio elevates discarded versions.... > Read more
Sick Again (early version)
POKEY LaFARGE INTERVIEWED (2015): The past is alive and well and living in the present
26 Mar 2015 | 15 min read | 2
In a stylish blue shirt buttoned to the neck and topped by a red neckerchief, blue dungaree jeans with turned up cuffs above his sturdy and well polished lace-up boots, Pokey LaFarge cuts a very interesting figure in this downtown Auckland hotel room. He may look like someone from the better-scrubbed end of the Thirties – and his music certainly steeped in traditional jazz,... > Read more
Underground
MIKE SCOTT OF THE WATERBOYS INTERVIEWED (2014): The nearest thing to hip . . .
26 Mar 2015 | 8 min read
About 15 months ago Mike Scott of the Waterboys released a whopping seven CD set of the sessions which lead to the band's two-years-in-the-making breakthrough album Fisherman's Blues. The band had enjoyed success prior to this particular channeling of Celtic music, rock'n'roll and American gospel – notably with the singles the Big Music and Bang on the Ear – but... > Read more
I Can See Elvis
BETH HART INTERVIEWED (2015): Coming home to herself at last
24 Mar 2015 | 6 min read
After repeated efforts – I have been the wrong international codes – I finally get through to Beth Hart who it turns out is in Pattaya, Thailand. “It's rock'n'roll and we're supposed to be late,” she laughs when I explain my delayed phoner. No, we are supposed to be punctual because we are older and know better, I say.... > Read more
Tell Her You Belong To Me
TYSON KELLY INTERVIEWED (2015): He is the walrus
11 Mar 2015 | 8 min read
If we were in England – and believe me, he does an excellent Liverpudlian accent – then we might say, in the phrase much favoured by British bobbies, that Tyson Kelly has some “prior form”. Kelly from LA, who plays John Lennon in the acclaimed stage production Let It Be which opens in Auckland soon (see dates below), has been playing Lennon for years in various... > Read more
THE EASYBEATS REMEMBERED (2015): I got hit songs on my mind . . .
9 Mar 2015 | 6 min read | 1
The edges of the vision are blurry but at the centre of the frame things are clear. I am a teenager, my friend Barry and I and perhaps a couple of others are stumbling down a dark road near what is now the Whangaparaoa shopping centre. We had just been at a movie – may have been kicked out – and are drunk on Blackberry Nip or McWilliam's Sweet Sherry. As we pass by the old... > Read more
She's So Fine
ADESOLA OSAKALUMI INTERVIEWED (2015): The fellah who is Fela
9 Mar 2015 | 11 min read
When the Nigerian military raided the compound of the outspoken activist and musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti in 1977, they beat him senseless, destroyed his famous nightclub The Shrine and threw his 82-year old mother to her death from an upstairs window. Yet Kuti – who died of Aids-related illnesses in 97 – just kept coming back, presenting and recording his incendiary music... > Read more
WOMAD ARTIST 2015: Richard Thompson
2 Mar 2015 | 7 min read | 3
Richard Thompson starts on the back foot. The legendary British songwriter whose career dates back to the seminal folk-rock group Fairport Convention in the late Sixties and whose admirers include the Finns, Bob Mould and latterly Jeff Tweedy of Wilco among many others, including Elsewhere – came to New Zealand's inaugural Womad at Western Springs Park in Auckland in '97, but hasn't... > Read more