Essential Elsewhere
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Debashish Bhattacharya/Bob Brozman: Mahima (2003)
2 Jul 2018 | 1 min read | 1
The late American guitarist and raconteur Brozman was one of the unexpected delights at the 2003 Womad, where he appeared with Takashi Hirayasu playing Okinawan folk songs which they took off into the realms of Delta blues, soul funk, punk and boogie. Brozman was one of those irritatingly gifted performers who seemed to acknowledge no boundaries between cultures and styles and immerses... > Read more
Debashish Bhattacharya/Bob Brozman: Maa
Charles Mingus: Thirteen Pictures, The Charles Mingus Anthology (1993)
25 Jun 2018 | 6 min read
Like Duke Ellington -- with whom he is most frequently (and fairly) compared for the vastness, depth and diversity of his recordings -- no single album could stand as emblematic of Charles Mingus, although many are certainly essential. In fact after The Wire magazine offered its primer on Mingus albums in early 2004 (14 albums under his own name, a Columbia Records compilation and a... > Read more
Charles Mingus: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (1959)
Smokey Robinson: Being With You (1981)
11 Jun 2018 | 4 min read
Michael Jackson sometimes said that Smokey Robinson – 18 years his senior at Motown – was the one who showed him that it was permissible for a male to sing high. When Jackson started at Motown of course he had little choice as he was a pre-teen (just listen to I'll Be There in '70 when he was 12 – but after puberty he continued to develop the top of his range like Smokey... > Read more
If You Wanna Make Love (Come 'Round Here)
The The: Soul Mining (1983)
8 May 2018 | 4 min read | 2
Although British punk fury exploded during the Labour government of James Callaghan (who succeed another Labour leader Harold Wilson, giving them about five years as an increasingly beleaguered minority government) the anger really became focused when Margaret Thatcher's hard-right Conservatives took over and unemployment rose, the recession bit hard, there were strikes and closures in... > Read more
Uncertain Smile
Public Enemy: It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
7 May 2018 | 3 min read | 1
By the late Eighties when this announced itself like a live album with stadium sound from the audience and a siren wail, hip-hop had sprung past the sampling innocence and good times of its early period in Stateside inner-city block parties and cheap steals from bits of vinyl. Within the first few minutes of this confrontational, sometimes annoying but often brilliant album, the global... > Read more
Public Enemy: Show 'Em What You Got
Elton John: Tumbleweed Connection (1970)
31 Mar 2018 | 4 min read | 1
There are some images which are imprinted in my rock’n’roll memory -- one was when the young Elton John played at Auckland’s Western Springs Stadium in October 1971. That’s a long time gone so you have to remember the context: Elton wasn’t the glittery star he later became, in fact he seemed a pretty straight rock’n’roller with only two creditable... > Read more
Elton John: Burn Down the Mission
JPS Experience: Bleeding Star (1993)
26 Feb 2018 | 3 min read | 3
Because – as Elsewhere's favourite philosopher Ken Nordine put it -- “We all see the world from our own disadvantage point”, – we understand there are those who don't see the world from our perspective. So we can happily accept that in Grant Smithies' excellent book Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums – to which Elsewhere contributed some pieces... > Read more
Spaceman
Charles Lloyd: Lift Every Voice (2002)
13 Nov 2017 | 4 min read | 2
It's a fair bet the average jazz musician earns considerably less than Lenny Kravitz, and probably works a darn sight harder. Sales of jazz albums are modest – in the US 10,000 was considered a good seller – and not too many jazz musicians find their music used in Tom Cruise or J. Lo movies, let alone lucrative advertisements. Of course some jazz musicians have been... > Read more
What's Going On
Various Artists; Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol 1 (1966)
30 Oct 2017 | 2 min read
With an American history over a century long, the blues isn't easy an easy journey to begin on: do you go at it chronologically from slave chants and field hollers, or work back from white popularisers like George Thorogood, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Led Zeppelin? Given that most people live in what we might call the post-rock era it might be easiest -- and is certainly rewarding -- to hit... > Read more
Junior Wells with Buddy Guy: Messin' With the Kid
Mantovani: A Lifetime of Music 1905-1980 (1980 compilation)
25 Sep 2017 | 4 min read | 2
In later years he might have looked like an extra from The Sopranos (when smiling maybe a restaurateur, when sullen certainly a hit man) but orchestra-leader Annunzio Mantovani was one the most popular light entertainers of his era -- which was the period before rock’n’roll hit in the mid Fifties. Most people today would quickly dismiss his sweetly orchestrated albums -- yes,... > Read more
Judy Garland: Judy at Carnegie Hall (1961)
11 Sep 2017 | 4 min read | 1
Many people who saw Judy Garland in the final weeks of her life in mid '69 described her in similar terms: That she looked like a sick bird, broken and unable to fly. She was battling a lifetime of debts, betrayals, pills, booze, chronic unhappiness, self-doubt . . . In one of her last interviews she said, “I've worked very hard, you know, and I've planted some of – I've... > Read more
Stormy Weather
Irma Thomas, The Irma Thomas Collection (1996)
19 Jul 2017 | 3 min read
In music, titles are bestowed by The People rather than being handed down from above -- and they are so singular and specific that there can only be pretenders but no replacement figures. So there is only one King of Rock'n'Roll and that's Elvis, only one Queen of Soul and that will always be Aretha, and only James Brown will ever be considered The Godfather. And Irma Thomas will always be... > Read more
Irma Thomas: Wish Somebody Would Care
Dr John: Gris Gris (1968)
12 Jul 2017 | 3 min read
Long careers generally mean the raw and rough edges of the early days are smoothed out, and that audiences forget just how edgy and unusual the artist’s music actually was. So it is with Dr John whose career reaches way back to playing piano in bars as teenager in New Orleans during the 50s alongside legendary figures such as Professor Longhair and Huey Smith. The Dr -- Malcolm... > Read more
Dr John: Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya
Young Marble Giants: Colossal Youth (1980)
5 Jul 2017 | 2 min read
Just as Dylan emerged in the middle of the day-glo psychedelic era on a quieter rural route with John Wesley Harding, and the Cowboy Junkies whispered their way to the foreground amidst the bellicose noise of grunge, so Young Marble Giants emerged in the post-punk era with something quieter and more considered than the jerky anger of bands like Public Image, Gang of Four and The Fall. Their... > Read more
Young Marble Giants: Include Me Out
Souad Massi: Honeysuckle/Mesk Elil (2007)
5 Jul 2017 | <1 min read
On her two previous albums it was evident that Algerian-born Massi was never going to conform to the prevailing sounds of rai and pop of her homeland. And on this instantly engaging album she takes a step even further away and pulls in Latin sounds alongside her already established, if slightly unusual, blend of Algerian pop-folk with hints of Spanish flamenco music. At its best as in... > Read more
Tell Me Why
The Tokey Tones: Butterfly, Caterpillar (2007)
28 Jun 2017 | 5 min read | 2
It’s a common occurrence: just when popular music has got up a head of steam, some supportive critical consensus, and is charging off in a particular direction along comes something which, by going the opposite way, captures the imagination. At the height of Day-Glo acid-dropping hippiedom along came the Velvet Underground in all their monochrome gloominess singing about heroin and... > Read more
Tokey Tones: Yoghurt and Vinegar (from Butterfly)
Drive-By Truckers: Brighter than Creation's Dark (2008)
24 Apr 2017 | 2 min read | 2
Now more than two decades into their impressive career -- and with more than two dozen live and studio albums behind them -- the Drive-By Truckers out of Athens in Georgia inspire passionate loyalty for their Southern-framed country rock'n'roll and literate, sometimes provocative, lyrics. They often make you want to crack the top off a beer and kick back, but the words touch some deep... > Read more
Daddy Needs A Drink
The Undertones: The Undertones (1979, reissue 2009)
10 Apr 2017 | 4 min read | 2
It's a measure of how obsessed rock music is with the present tense that in 1979 Paul Morley in the NME would proclaim, "The Undertones have created the greatest pop of this age and thus every age". That use of "thus" there says so much about the pressing immediacy of the punk era in Britain. New and urgent was what mattered. The Undertones out of Derry, Northern... > Read more
The Undertones: Here Comes the Summer
Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers: Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers (1971)
27 Feb 2017 | 4 min read | 3
Although the blues can be a sophisticated music, there's something more earthy, vibrant and appealing about it when it is played from somewhere further south than the cerebral cortext. Hound Dog Taylor played from a point somewhere between the heart, the gut and the groin -- and made the most thrilling music to come out of the Chicago blues scene in the late Sixties/early Seventies. The... > Read more
Phillips' Theme
The Sorrows: Take a Heart (1965)
16 Feb 2017 | 5 min read
Just as the Beatles '64 album With the Beatles defined the sound of Beatlemania, so too its album cover became iconic and an emblem of the era. Those half-lit faces on the cover were shot by Robert Freeman but perhaps had been prompted by Lennon's appreciation of Astrid Kirchherr's similarly lit photos taken of him, Harrison and Stu Sutcliffe in Hamburg. And that arty look was seen... > Read more