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LARAAJI (AKA EDWARD LARRY GORDON) PROFILED 2010: Relax, you are feeling sleepy . . .
Rather cruelly, when the English rock writer Andy Gill reviewed the Laraaji album Days of Radiance back in 1980 he opened with "Zzzzz . . ." Fair call in some ways, but in its defense the album was the third in Brian Eno's ambient series and the second side was taken up with two long pieces entitled Meditation #1 and Meditation #2. And you could hardly expect someone who played... more >>
Added: 10 May 10
MIKE EDWARDS OF JESUS JONES INTERVIEWED (1993): Right here, right now . . . back then
Mike Edwards has got a big mouth - and without going too far into the anatomically impossible, it’s his big mouth that gets right up people’s noses. And right here, right now in Birmingham, he’s been getting up the noses of the British music press - which admittedly isn’t hard to do and probably quite worthwhile. A quick glance at the British music... more >>
Added: 10 May 10
KINKY FRIEDMAN INTERVIEWED (1994): The art of irritation
You have to admire Kinky Friedman. With very little effort he manages to irritate just about everybody. He did in the early 70s when he fronted his country music band Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, who parlayed broadly satirical political and country songs and willfully provocative anti-feminist rants such as Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed. And... more >>
Added: 3 May 10
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN LIVE IN SYDNEY (2003): Normal transmission will be resumed shortly
Bruce Springsteen won't forget his show at Sydney's Cricket Ground last Saturday. He said so repeatedly and meant it. Losing power in a show can never be discounted as a possibility. But losing it twice would suggest alarmingly bad luck or poor technical support. Losing your stadium rock thump four times in the first hour, however? Well, that makes a show memorable. The first... more >>
Added: 1 May 10
THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND: Away with the faeries and poets
Unexpected people are into the Incredible String Band: Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin you can understand, given LedZepp played a kind of Anglofolk/Tolkein thing alongside their hijacking of black blues and other hoary riffs. But bristling DIY post-punk Chris Knox speaking highly of this slightly fey Scottish folk group who pioneered the use of instruments from across the planet and... more >>
Added: 26 Apr 10
FRANK TURNER: AUDIO INTERVIEW (2010): The documentarian of politics and the soul
British singer-songwriter Frank Turner moves between many worlds with ease: he plays to hardcore audiences (and started his career in such bands) but also works the folk circuit. He also plays huge festivals and small clubs. His music roams across politics (Thatcher Fucked the Kids), wry humour (I Don't Care What You Did in Your Gap Year) and social obsrvation("once an honest man... more >>
Added: 22 Apr 10
NICK CAVE, THE SEEDY MIDDLE YEARS: From Tender Prey to Henry's Dream
In the early Eighties the safe money would have been on Nick Cave -- then battling various demons and his elusive muse -- not making it much further. Yet here is Cave, now in his early 50s, dutifully going to the office every day to write songs, novels, screenplays and soundtracks, and curating arts festivals . . . And seeing his back-catalogue with his longtime band/co-conspirators the... more >>
Added: 19 Apr 10 
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NATALIE MERCHANT INTERVIEWED 2010: The child inside
At age 10, Nathalia Crane was an acclaimed poet and the subject of great controversy, not least for the sexual innuendo of The Janitor’s Boy in which she wrote of lustful feelings and how she would “dutifully shiver in bed”. “Her poems came to attention when she was published in American newspapers,“ says singer Natalie Merchant, who has included a musical... more >>
Added: 16 Apr 10
ARTISAN GUNS INTERVIEWED (2010): Heart, and art, on their sleeves
The guys in the young Auckland band Artisan Guns remind me it was four years ago that I first saw them, in this very same room -- the boardroom of EMI in Auckland where the harbour views can be so distracting. When they played four years ago -- an acoustic set to maybe a dozen people on a beer-drinking Friday after work -- the room hushed and everyone was impressed by these high school... more >>
Added: 16 Apr 10
THE AMAZING VOICE OF TIMI YURO: Soulful, sassy and show tunes
When PJ Proby burst onto the British pop scene in 1964 he was an amazing anomoly. The Texas-born singer had been doing demos for various people in the States (including Elvis) and arrived in the UK to appear on a Beatles television special. He cracked a number of big pop hits in '64-'65 (Hold Me, Mission Bell, Let the Water Run Down) and with his velvet suits and ponytail (adopted from the... more >>
Added: 10 Apr 10 1 Comment
JOAN ARMTRADING INTERVIEWED (2008): Into and out of the blues
Joan Armatrading makes an embarrassing admission for someone whose most recent album Into the Blues debuted at number one on the Billboard blues charts: she doesn’t listen to the blues and while some interviewers have noted the influence of John Lee Hooker in a couple of tracks she couldn’t identify a Hooker song if she was asked to. “Yes, some people have said John... more >>
Added: 2 Apr 10
MARILYN MANSON INTERVIEWED (1999): The spook circus, cont'd
The curious thing about Marilyn Manson isn't the pancake makeup, the alarming contact lenses or even the cover of his latest album, Mechanical Animals, where he's some kind of naked androgynous character looking like a leftover from the cover shoot for David Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs album. No, the curious thing is that the music - which we must remind ourselves is actually what MM does in... more >>
Added: 29 Mar 10
CAROLE KING AND JAMES TAYLOR INTERVIEWED (2010): Attitudes and platitudes
Carole King and James Taylor hardly need an introduction. For 40 years -- more in King’s case, she started writing the music for Gerry Goffin‘s lyrics in the early 60s -- their songs and lives have been public property. No classic hits station (or student flat in the early 70s) could be without a copy of Taylor’s Sweet Baby James (1970) or Kings’ Tapestry of the... more >>
Added: 22 Mar 10
HAYSEED DIXIE: The hillbilly humorists
The remote community of Deer Lick Holler in the Appalachians isn't on the way to anywhere, so there aren't many outside influences. It's where musicologists go to study authentic hillbilly music -- and be fearful of the sound of Duelling Banjos. So it was a significant day when a stranger drove into the valley on crisp autumn afternoon a decace or so ago -- and promptly crashed into the... more >>
Added: 21 Mar 10
JIMI HENDRIX AND ALAN DOUGLAS: The fireball and the keeper of the flame
The name Alan Douglas raises mixed feelings among Jimi Hendrix fans. By a series of canny and right-place, right-time manoeuvres after the death of Hendrix in 1970, Douglas -- a former jazz producer, and a friend and adviser to Hendrix in his final years -- ended up as the curator of the Hendrix legacy. While others, notably the many claiming to be the late guitarist’s manager,... more >>
Added: 8 Mar 10
JIMI HENDRIX: THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE BOX SET (2000): Get experienced, but differently
It should be easy to get together a thorough Jimi Hendrix collection. After all, his recording career lasted fewer than four years. Presumably, all you'd need would be his exceptional debut album Are You Experienced, the follow-up Axis: Bold As Love and the expansive, Essential Elsewhere double album Electric Ladyland. The Smash Hits collection would fill a few gaps, although only the... more >>
Added: 6 Mar 10
GANG OF FOUR, A 100 FLOWERS BLOOM: Would you like politics with that?
The ideas and ideologies which came in the late 70s with punk, new wave and anarcho-pop threw up some extraordinary bands, not the least of which was Gang of Four, an outfit from Leeds whose 1979 debut Entertainment! brought together minimalist punk-funk bass and drums with guitarist Andy Gill's switchblade guitar and howling feedback. Oh, and over the top were Jon King's Marxist lyrics... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 10
BRIAN AUGER INTERVIEWED (2002): Still on fire, still rollin down the road
How's this as a measure of a man's modesty: it is only in the closing overs of a lengthy conversation that Brian Auger mentions in passing he plays on an album which is nominated for a Grammy in the contemporary jazz category. And so, three decades after he took the sound of his rocking and swinging Hammond organ into the vanguard of jazz fusion, he is still on the cutting edge.... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 10
JAKOB DYLAN INTERVIEWED (2002): Out of his father's long shadow
You gotta feel sorry for the guy. He's 32 years of age, is now on his fourth album with his band the Wallflowers, and still people want to talk about what he politely calls "the peripheral stuff". You can guess what that might be when the guy's name is Jakob Dylan and he was the youngest of five children growing up with their dad Bob. But the Wallflowers have a 10-year... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 10
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, WHAT GOES ON (BOX SET, 1993): The velvet blueprint
Most reviewers of this well-packaged, 57-track, three-disc set can’t help but comment on the overwrought essay by Clinton Walker who starts with superlatives, then works up to a screech. He sets up the customary and needless rock-crit comparisons (VU more street-damaged than the Beatles. So?) to advance the case that the Velvets were the most important band ever in rock –... more >>
Added: 20 Feb 10
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