Absolute Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
BADFINGER, 1968-73 (2012): The shop-soiled Apple band
20 Feb 2012 | 8 min read
There are two stories every young musician should read, the first is obvious. The Beatles story is full of magic and coincidence; McCartney's meeting with a drunk Lennon, Harrison getting in by playing Raunchy to them while on a bus, the Hamburg days and the death of Stu Sutcliffe, the firing of Pete Best and Ringo entering just before they went into the studio, the touring and madness,... > Read more
Badfinger: Day After Day
ALABAMA 3 INTERVIEWED (2012): Pills'n'Thrills and country heartaches
13 Feb 2012 | 5 min read
On paper, it doesn't work no matter which way you look at it. A sound which brings together techno-dance beats with American country music and upbeat hand-clap gospel? If you tried to sell it as a concept you'd be turned down at every corner, as Alabama 3 out of Brixton in London were by big American record companies like Sony and Geffen. “Someone told me, 'You cannot mention... > Read more
Fix It (featuring Shane McGowan)
THE SHARP SARACENO AND THE MYSTERIOUS MARKETTS: Tales from the farce side
3 Feb 2012 | 4 min read
After the accountants took over what used to be called the entertainment business, there was less room for "real characters". Perhaps it was a good thing to get the Mafia out of the music business (for that story you should read Tommy James' autobiography Me, the Mob and the Music), but those larger than life people -- cigar chomping, money juggling and often opportunists at the... > Read more
Out of Limits
THE DOORS; LA WOMAN, 1971: Four decades gone, the big beat goes on
27 Jan 2012 | 3 min read
On record at least, the Doors career began and ended well. Their self-titled debut album of early '67 arrived in the same year as any number of striking first outings (Hendrix, the Velvet Underground, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape etc) and classic albums (Cream's Disraeli Gears, the Beatles Sgt Peppers). And in this company, the Doors' dark and poetic music stood apart as owing... > Read more
Riders on the Storm (rehearsal)
JOHN DENSMORE INTERVIEWED (2012): Re-opening the Doors four decades on
23 Jan 2012 | 10 min read | 2
When it came to watching the rapid decline of Jim Morrison – and the Doors' once promising career being relentlessly dragged down with him -- John Densmore had the best seat in the house. From his drum stool he saw it all – from the thrilled and awe-struck audiences as the handsome and sexually electric Morrison in leathers delivering his rock poetics through to the... > Read more
The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)
STEPHEN STILLS INTERVIEWED (2012): He's a real everywhere man
23 Jan 2012 | 6 min read | 2
Few musicians can claim to have played at the three defining musical festivals of the Sixties. But a few, very few, were on stage at all of them. One of them was in Buffalo Springfield at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 which launched the peace'n'love era, and with Crosby, Stills and Nash at Woodstock in mid 69 which was the zenith of the era (CS&N's second concert). And he was... > Read more
My Love is a Gentle Thing (demo)
BILLY EBELING PROFILED (2012): Troubadour for our time
10 Jan 2012 | 2 min read | 3
The way I remember it goes something like this. It was the early Nineties and on Auckland's Queen St there were very few buskers. And they were uniformly awful. A man playing a guitar who can't play guitar was funny once . . . but after that it was just sad. And it did no credit to the student radio station that they adopted him for a little while. So any busker who could stop... > Read more
I Want You To Want Me
CHARLIE RICH (1932-1995): The Smash hits that never were
9 Jan 2012 | 5 min read
When the Beatles visited Elvis Presley for the first and only time in August 1965, it wasn't quite the great meeting of minds or collision of musical genius as might have been expected. The Beatles were, by their own account, so into marijuana at the time they forgot where it was they were going until the limo pulled up outside Elvis place in Los Angeles' Benedict Canyon. When they got... > Read more
Dance of Love
RADIO BIRDMAN REMEMBERED: Detroit rock'n'roll . . . . outta Sydney, Australia
6 Jan 2012 | 4 min read
Radio Birdman were one of the great Detroit rock bands, except they came from Sydney. Inspired by the Stooges and MC5, they blasted out of Australia in the pre-punk Seventies in one of those short, fast flights that would end in legend or obscurity. They managed to achieve both. Most people have never heard of them let alone their sonic boom thrash-pop, but the few who did became... > Read more
New Race
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011: History repeats in box sets
16 Dec 2011 | 6 min read
Any clear-eyed look back on 2011 would say it wasn't a great one for electric guitars. Classic, mainstream rock albums were few and far between, and the singles charts – often a bridge between guitar pop and indie.rock – have long been the domain of r'n'b/hip-hop (“featuring Bulldog”). In what might loosely be called “rock culture”, rock music... > Read more
THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN SONGBOOK (2011): Songs from the great southern land
15 Dec 2011 | 4 min read | 1
As many Elsewhere readers will know, for my sins (and yes, driven by ego perhaps), I recently agreed to compile a list of albums which I thought would be useful building blocks in any serious music collection. From our initial discussions which started with the idea of 20 albums, over a beer that quickly expanded to 50 then at some point -- after more beers probably -- it became 101. ... > Read more
Friday on my Mind
THE ROLLING STONES, SOME GIRLS REISSUED (2011): Some girls give me diamonds
14 Dec 2011 | 5 min read | 4
There are a couple of unusual features about the sporadic reissue of the Rolling Stones' back-catalogue. Although all their albums have been sprung on CD a few times in the past, the current phase of expanded reissues seem to follow no chronology but a pattern running on an interesting internal logic. In recent years there have been the expanded live set Get Yer Yas Yas Out (with DVD) and... > Read more
When You're Gone (previously unreleased
PETER GABRIEL, THE SOLO FLIGHT 1985-2011: Into another world
12 Dec 2011 | 7 min read
By the mid Eighties when his years in Genesis should have been well behind him and his solo career was four albums down, Peter Gabriel was rather more battered than he had a right to expect. He's done good work -- some of it more worthy than wonderful -- but for his self-titled album of '82 (aka Security), he had been labelled by the NME reviewer as an "art-house bore". And... > Read more
Only Us
FAME STUDIOS: Where the good bizness got done
8 Dec 2011 | 3 min read | 1
In their 2003 book Temples of Sound -- a look into the history of great American recording studios such as Chess in Chicago, Sun in Memphis and Motown in Detroit -- the authors Jim Cogan and William Clark acknowledge there were others they could have included. And conspicious by its absence is FAME Studios. Admittedly FAME moved around -- from above a drug store to two stand-alone sites... > Read more
I Hope They Get Their Eyes Full
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVISITED: Doug "Cosmo" Clifford interviewed (2011)
7 Dec 2011 | 7 min read | 2
When a marriage breaks up or a couple separates there can be messy stuff, not the least of which can be fighting over property. It can be the same with bands when they split up – but the property is sometimes less tangible. Songs may belong to the writer, but anyone can sing them, so often the battle is over the band's name if some members want to continue you using it. Pink... > Read more
CAN'S CLASSIC TAGO MAGO; 40 YEARS ON (2011): Pre-post-rock with a sonic sweep
5 Dec 2011 | 2 min read | 1
If you applied cold logic, on paper most band line-ups wouldn't make much sense. With hindsight you can see the internal faultlines which would pull apart so many of them. None of that matters of course, as long as at some point they make great music. And Can out of Germany certainly did that, although on paper the line-up for their extraordinary Tago Mago album of 1971 -- a highwater... > Read more
Mushroom (live 1972)
BRIAN WILSON, THE LOST MASTERPIECE AT LAST (2011): And finally we can all SMiLE
14 Nov 2011 | 3 min read | 1
In the current issue of Uncut magazine, the editors have compiled a list of the 50 greatest bootlegs. Among the usual suspects are never-released Bob Dylan and the Band, the Clash, the Velvet Underground, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart, Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush (her demo sessions) and so on. Topping the list was the Beach Boys' SMiLE which the authors duly noted would... > Read more
Good Vibrations session
THE BEACH BOYS' SMiLE (2011): Reconstructing the jigsaw puzzle
14 Nov 2011 | 9 min read | 1
In a sense, the group's name was the problem: The Beach Boys. It was ideal when they were singing short-hair clean-cut Californian surf and hotrod songs in the innocent early Sixties. But as the decade turned, the Beatles arrived, passing marijuana replaced waxing down the board, and the Beach Boys music became more complex . . . but the band's name sounded juvenile and not a little... > Read more
Good Vibrations session
FLYING NUN AT 30 (2011): Getting older and bolder
4 Nov 2011 | 3 min read
If you are 20, jeez even if you are 30, the great days of Flying Nun -- that thrilling period between the Clean's rallying cry-cum-single Tally Ho in '81 and, say, Martin Phillipps announcing the end of the Chills on-stage in America in '92 to the surprise of his bandmates – is not something you experienced. Not for you the excitement of seeing the young Straitjacket Fits,... > Read more
Drawing to a Hole
TOM WAITS INTERVIEWED (2011): Cutting through tough scrub
31 Oct 2011 | 10 min read | 1
As many who've tried will attest, you don't so much interview Tom Waits as ask a question . . . then hope for the best. His reply might be an oddball witticism which is funny but evasive, a yawning and uncomfortable silence, a strange but insightful analogy which makes better sense later or a mumbled “I dunno, you know”. Of course sometimes he is sharp and penetratingly... > Read more