Absolute Elsewhere
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OKKERVIL RIVER. AN UPDATE (2014): Watching the river flow
27 Jan 2014 | 3 min read | 1
One of the most interesting and unexpected albums recently came from the emotionally damaged Roky Erickson – formerly of 60s psychedelic Texas rockers Thirteenth Floor Elevators – who had his brain fried by electroshock treatment and prescription drugs back in the late 60s/70s and spent many years in institutions. The album True Love Cast Out All Evil (2010, see... > Read more
Pink Slips
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, AGAIN (2014): Still at all tomorrow's parties
24 Jan 2014 | 3 min read | 1
Every now and again when music magazine editors get bored, or some significant anniversary rolls around, they gather the staff and usually some guests to vote on The Greatest Albums of the Rock Era. Or something like that. In the two decades after its release in 1967, the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's frequently took out the top spot – often juggling it with Marvin Gaye's... > Read more
Run Run Run (live)
THE BEATLES' US ALBUMS REISSUED: How America misheard the Beatles
20 Jan 2014 | 7 min read | 3
Thanks to record company exec Dave Dexter Jnr, Americans got to hear the Beatles . . . although if Dexter had had his way they might not have. Dexter – the Capitol Records man charged with releasing non-American acts in the States – turned down the first Beatles singles on offer from the UK (Love Me Do, Please Please Me, Ask Me Why and She Loves You, plus their... > Read more
Help! (US version)
MATMOS CONSIDERED (2014): The art of understatement and the unusual
20 Jan 2014 | 1 min read
In the secretive world of code-breakers and cypher-deciphering the Enigma machine is legendary. It is one of that family of highly complex machines designed by mathematicians and boffins used to crack the codes of Nazi comunications during the Second World War. But for the Baltimore electronica duo Matmos -- Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel -- it became another tool for creating and... > Read more
For the Trees
NICK DRAKE, AGAIN (2014): Songs from a troubled soul
13 Jan 2014 | 2 min read | 1
Anyone hearing Nick Drake's hushed final album Pink Moon from '72 or looking at photos of that young man -- eyes averted, the frail figure hunched, the mouth rarely smiling – might have guessed here was a soul too sensitive for this wicked world. And sure enough he was dead in late November 1974, at just 26. But there's another view of this doomed and depressive romantic... > Read more
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, REDUX (2014): The Return Again of White Light/White Heat
10 Jan 2014 | 4 min read | 2
Elsewhere has previously quoted Brian Eno from 1976 about Velvet Underground, but it bears repeating. He said, "I knew that they were going to be one of the most interesting groups and that there would be a time when it wouldn’t be the Beatles up there and then all these other groups down there. “It would be a question of attempting to assess the relative values of the... > Read more
The Gift (instrumental only)
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BILL HALEY (2013): Don't knock the rocker
27 Dec 2013 | 13 min read
One of the first victims of rock'n'roll was a founding father of the style: Bill Haley. A country singer with a love of Western Swing, Haley was 30 when his signature song Rock Around the Clock became a massive hit in '55 when it appeared on the soundtrack to the juvenile delinquent film Blackboard Jungle. He would also appear in the first real rock'n'roll film Don't Knock the Rock the... > Read more
Skinny Minnie
ROBERT GORDON INTERVIEWED (2013): The soul of Memphis revealed
24 Dec 2013 | 16 min read | 1
Memphis-born and based writer Robert Gordon knows the musical pulse of his city. He documented it in his book It Came From Memphis and has written essays about Elvis Presley after being given access to private material in the Presley estate. He has made documentary films, wrote the definitive biography of Muddy Waters (Can't Be Satisfied) and, among other things, produced an Al Green... > Read more
STEVE EARLE INTERVIEWED (2013): Observations from the low road
16 Dec 2013 | 8 min read
No subject – be it family, money, his job or politics – is off-limits in a conversation with Steve Earle, if you can get a word in. A talker whose conversation takes off into interesting tangents, Earle is like Bruce Springsteen, a well-off musician who can relate to the working class and those suffering economic privation. His most recent album with his band The... > Read more
21st Century Blues
THE DUTCH WOODSTOCK (2013): Three days of love, peace and . . .
7 Dec 2013 | 2 min read
If the golden age of hippiedom was supposed to have gone nose down in the mud and the blood and the beer at Altamont in early December 1969, someone forgot to tell the Dutch. Because in June 1970 -- a full three years on from the Summer of Love -- they held the "Holland Pop 70" festival with an impressive line-up. It rained of course, but well over 100,000 turned up at a site... > Read more
Wasted Union Blues
SKEPTICS REMEMBERED (2013): All Sum Null
4 Dec 2013 | 3 min read | 1
On the 25th anniversary of the Flying Nun label back in 2006, Real Groove published a special edition as a salute to the label. Among the many fine articles -- some archival, others reminiscences -- was an emotional and descriptive piece by Chris Matthews (Children's Hour, Headless Chickens) about Skeptics, and particularly about their singer David D'Ath who died of leukemia in September... > Read more
Threads (1990)
WHEN ROCK STARTED ROLLING (2013): Black rhythm and blues goes white
2 Dec 2013 | 3 min read
In the early Sixties the sound of black rhythm and blues -- played by young white musicians -- could be heard pounding out of the fleshpots of Hamburg, a pub in Richmond, bars in Belfast, clubs in central London, the dancehalls of Liverpool and Newcastle, and makeshift rehearsal spaces all over Britain. This was music made by the post-rock'n'roll generation, those who had been 15 or 16 in... > Read more
I'm a King Bee (1957)
SHONA LAING PROFILED (2013): The legacy of a Legacy Artist
21 Nov 2013 | 4 min read | 1
Popular music – and pop music in particular – usually comes from, and speaks to, young people. This year with the success of Lorde, not 17 when her debut album Pure Heroine was released, we seem very focused on the age of performers. However we need only look back to the success of Gin Wigmore who won the International Songwriting Competition in 2004 when she was still... > Read more
Mercy of Love
BOB THIELE PROFILED (2013): At the helm of the Flying Dutchman
18 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
On paper certain things don't seem to match up in Bob Thiele's professional life, especially in the late Sixties. As a producer at Impulse he had steered the careers of many notable jazz artists (Mingus, Ayler, Shepp, Rollins etc), chief among them John Coltrane whom he had encouraged to follow a singular path which lead to the spiritually imbued A Love Supreme and beyond. After... > Read more
Lanoola Goes Limp
TOMMY by THE WHO (2013): Tommy can you hear me, again?
15 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
Back in the early Eighties – years before the Beatles' Anthology and Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series offered us alternative histories through previously unheard versions of songs alongside revelatory interpretations – Pete Townshend of the Who began releasing a series of double albums under the generic title Scoop. On these he offered up his home demos of famous and... > Read more
Dream One (unused Townshend demo)
THE BEATLES AT THE BBC (2013): A tendency to play music
11 Nov 2013 | 4 min read | 1
While often jokingly referred to as "the Greatest Story Ever Sold" (a reference to the 1956 Biblical epic film The Greatest Story Ever Told about the life of Christ), there is a part of the Beatles narrative of truth, myth and legend which has gone largely under-explored. In their much analysed and discussed career, those many sessions they spent recording for the BBC haven't... > Read more
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
ELVIS AT STAX STUDIO (2013): Robert Gordon on the inside
7 Nov 2013 | 5 min read
Memphis-born and based writer Robert Gordon knows the musical pulse of his city. He has documented it in books like It Came From Memphis and has written essays about Elvis Presley after being given access to private material in the Presley estate. He has made documentary films, wrote the definitive biography of Muddy Waters (Can't Be Satisfied) and, among other things, produced an Al... > Read more
Mr Songman (outtake)
MERZBOW INTERVIEWED (2013): Is it loud enough yet?
4 Nov 2013 | 3 min read | 1
The name Merzbow is synonymous with noise. In fact Merzbow – aka 56-year old Masami Akita – might be Japan's pre-eminent noise artist. Since the late Seventies he has – under a few other pseudonyms as well – been crafting out huge slabs and walls of sonic density which hit head, chest and internal organs simultaneously. He is not for the faint-hearted but he is... > Read more
Phillo-Jazz Electronica
PAUL McCARTNEY, NEW AGAIN (2013): His ever-present past
27 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 1
Since he got a new wife and a better dye-job, Paul McCartney has seemed happier, reinvigorated and enjoying being back in the frontline as a headliner (the Queen's Jubilee bash, the opening of the London Olympics) after some leaner years. Speaking of which, McCartney today looks as slim as Cliff Richard – perhaps British war-baby deprivations prevented that generation ballooning... > Read more
Early Days
VAN MORRISON CONSIDERED (2013): The long and winding road
25 Oct 2013 | 5 min read | 4
The respected American cultural critic Greil Marcus has given us some insightful books, among them Mystery Train; Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music and Like A Rolling Stone which uses that Bob Dylan song for an analysis of the musician in his time and at a crossroads, and of the song itself. But Marcus – perhaps most widely known for his opening line of his Rolling Stone... > Read more