Absolute Elsewhere
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BARBRA STREISAND CONSIDERED (2014): The born star and the way we were
1 Oct 2014 | 6 min read
One of the funniest and most bitchy pieces of music writing I've ever read was by David Rakoff about a Barbra Streisand farewell concert in 2000. La Streisand (as she is sometimes known) had, as Rakoff noted, “come out of retirement to retire” . . . and who better to consider this than a New York Jew who admits he'd never been “a Barbra queen”. But he was... > Read more
Come Rain or Shine
RYAN ADAMS CONSIDERED (2014): If you liked that here's many more
29 Sep 2014 | 3 min read | 1
When Ryan Adams was forced to take a break from recording in 2009 after being diagnosed with an inner ear disorder even his most dedicated fans probably heaved a sigh of relief: the guy was just releasing so much music it was impossible to keep up. And that's what his record company thought too when four years previous he announced he'd recorded enough songs for a dozen albums. And... > Read more
Kim
TERENCE REIS INTERVIEWED (2014): Going strait to the heart of Mark Knopfler
28 Sep 2014 | 5 min read | 2
Although they rarely enjoyed the acclaim of critics for their half dozen studio albums, you can guess that hardly worried Dire Straits frontman and songwriter Mark Knopfler. In their career they sold in excess of 120 million albums, won four Grammy and three Brit awards (among other trophies) and, through the canny positioning of their likable manager Ed Bicknell, they became the first... > Read more
BERNIE GRIFFEN INTERVIEWED (2014): Tales of a survivor
25 Sep 2014 | 10 min read | 1
Bernie Griffen lets out a wheezing laugh when I ask him if he's in decent health these days. He's 63, has lived hard and by his own admission not spared himself sometimes through drugs, self-doubt and damaging choices. “Well I've got emphysema,” he says. “I had an accident and my lungs got burned, but I also keep on smoking and don't do myself any favours. I'm... > Read more
Burial Ground
HARRY MANX INTERVIEWED (2014): Has slide, has travelled
22 Sep 2014 | 7 min read | 3
Born on the Isle of Man, grew up in Canada, busked around Europe, lived in Japan for a decade, at 34 traveled to India to learn how to play the complex 20-string Mohan Veena under master musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a blues-cum-world music traveller, talked to us from Tasmania . . . This is the shorthand on 59-year old multi-instrumentalist Harry Manx whose music scopes from blues to... > Read more
A Love Supreme
RACHEL DAWICK INTERVIEWED (2014): History alive in songs and theatre magic
16 Sep 2014 | 9 min read | 1
Last week, the day before our conversation, disaster befell singer-songwriter Rachel Dawick. Invited to the New Zealand Woman's Weekly for an interview about her ambitious theatrical production The Boundary Riders; Musical Tales of New Zealand Pioneer Women, she was then asked if they could get some photos of her with her guitar. When she opened up the case she discovered her... > Read more
Jennie Anderson
BLACK TO THE FUTURE: The Beatles on vinyl in mono
9 Sep 2014 | 2 min read | 2
Recently I played the Beatles' Helter Skelter from “the White Album” to a class of my university music students. But something odd happened. And no, they didn't all want to foment race war like Charles Manson after he heard it. At the end instead of fading out then returning in a blast of noise and Ringo shouting “I got blisters on my... > Read more
It's All Too Much (mono)
HENRY WAGONS INTERVIEWED (2014): The write stuff
25 Aug 2014 | 10 min read
Even in a country with a long lineage of great songwriters, Henry Wagons stands out. As the writer and frontman for his band Wagons, Henry from Melbourne – born Henry Krips and the grandson of the Australian conductor of the same name credited with bring Mahler to Australian audiences – is a physically energetic entertainer who unashamedly loves his job and sees it as a public... > Read more
Hold On Caroline
JODI VAUGHAN AND JODY DIREEN INTERVIEWED (2014): Having different country music in common
1 Aug 2014 | 5 min read
Although separated by four decades the two Jodies – Jodi Vaughan and Jody Direen – have at least one thing in common, they are in that broad landscape that is New Zealand country music. Of course those decades – Vaughan born in Australia in 1950 and moving to New Zealand in her mid 20s, Direen from Wanaka and only now in her in her mid 20s – would suggest they... > Read more
Lay a Little Lovin' On Me
ROBERT SCOTT RETURNS (2014): This quiet life
21 Jul 2014 | 3 min read
Noel Gallagher once enviously said of Ian McLagan that he'd been enough of a jammy bastard to be in two great bands; the Small Faces and the Faces. We might say the same of Robert Scott of the Clean and the Bats, two of the seminal Flying Nun bands . . . and who, in addition to short stints in Magick Heads and a few other side-projects, has latterly sprung a third parallel life with... > Read more
Your Lights Are Low
MIDGE MARSDEN INTERVIEWED (2014): Going to a well that never runs dry
21 Jul 2014 | 8 min read | 2
Midge Marsden has carved out a singular career in New Zealand music. He has won awards, toured this country and the USA, counted among his friends Stevie Ray Vaughan, studied in Mississippi and has passed the torch on through university tutoring and on bandstands. Marsden – who admits to being “sixty-several” – first came to attention in Bari and the Breakaways... > Read more
I'll Drown in My Own Tears
RIVERS INTERVIEWED (2014): In the footsteps of the master
14 Jul 2014 | 6 min read | 1
Hamilton-based singer-songwriter Chris Baigent aka Rivers makes a fairly extravagant and unquantifiable claim on Facebook as the Number One Dylan Fan in New Zealand. And if you think you are a bigger fan, he challenges you to write in and say why. “No one's really challenged but a friend from Australia said I was like Dylan Fan 102 which was amusing,” he laughs. “The... > Read more
Bird on a Wire
CROSBY STILLS NASH & YOUNG IN '74 (2014): if you can't love the one you're with . . .
11 Jul 2014 | 3 min read
Although their name might have sounded like a corporate entity putting up a united front Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were anything but. “We had to put Crosby’s name first otherwise he’d be impossible to live with,” Stephen Stills told me back in 2007 when talking about CS&N, “and of course once we put him first there was no living with him. We... > Read more
Ohio
J.J. CALE REMEMBERED (2014): Old slowhands together
23 Jun 2014 | 3 min read | 1
I came to the late J.J. Cale rather late. Sure, I heard those Seventies albums, but they were mostly just aural wallpaper to whatever else was going on. Cale didn't shove his music at you, he was like a hoarse whisper in the background. So it wasn't until the late Nineties when, leaving for Australia, I stopped at the letterbox, grabbed a CD which had arrived and put it my bag. The... > Read more
Magnolia
THE BEATLES INVADE AUCKLAND, JUNE 1964
16 Jun 2014 | 12 min read
On the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in New Zealand (June 21 1964) Elsewhere is pleased to present an exclusive extract from the forthcoming book Half a World Away: The Beatles' Australasian Tour 1964 by Greg Armstrong and Andy Neill. We pick up the story after they have arrived at Whenuapai Airport near Auckland and been transported to the Royal International Hotel hotel before... > Read more
Yeah Yeah We Love Them All
THE BATS REISSUED (2014): A timeless flight
16 Jun 2014 | 4 min read
Very few bands get better with age, despite what the members themselves might think or their record company would have you believe. Most make their greatest statements early on, or have a fine peak a bit further down the track. There are exceptions of course -- there are always exceptions -- but by and large you're better off with the second and third albums by a band than the 13th and... > Read more
Sir Queen
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LED ZEPPELIN REVISITED, PART ONE (2014): How many more times?
9 Jun 2014 | 5 min read
He may have been grumpy, sometimes racist and often on the wrong side of history when it came to the directions of jazz, but the writer and sometime jazz critic Philip Larkin could still make some valid points. With regard to critics who wrote that Billie Holiday used her voice like an instrument he said that was “a... > Read more
Gallows Pole (rough mix)
LARRY CARLTON INTERVIEWED (2014): Guitars for the stars
2 Jun 2014 | 5 min read
Larry Carlton --- four time Grammy winner and during the 60s and 70s one of the most in-demand session guitarists on Los Angeles for a roll-call of rock, pop and jazz stars – recalls one especially hopeless session in 74. It came when John Lennon – then on an 18 month “lost weekend” break from Yoko Ono – ended up on a booze'n'coke binge in Los Angles and,... > Read more
LED ZEPPELIN REVISITED. AGAIN (2014): Three steps along the road to the Stairway
30 May 2014 | 5 min read | 1
In all the words spilled about Led Zeppelin's classic Stairway to Heaven – a milestone or a millstone in popular music depending on where you stand, rock's national anthem, hippie vibe-meets-hard rock – it's often overlooked how obvious or inevitable it was in many ways. Although Led Zepp are most often thought of as a hard rock band, they were also just as much a... > Read more
The Immigrant Song (alternate version)
GRACE JONES, NIGHTCLUBBING REVISITED (2014): The ice-maiden returns
30 May 2014 | 3 min read
In Roman Polanski's 1988 thriller Frantic, the actor Harrison Ford gets to play a role he would repeat many times: Homo Panicus, the ordinary man under pressure. When Ford's character, a surgeon from San Francisco, arrives in Paris with his wife for a conference they discover she has collected the wrong bag at the airport. And there the story begins: she disappears mysteriously, he... > Read more