Other Voices, Other Rooms
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This page offers the opportunity for other opinions to be added to Elsewhere. Contributions should be around 600 - 1000 words and can be sent to Graham Reid for consideration. (Use the "contact" link, bottom left.)
And because this is Elsewhere, there are no constraints on the subject matter. A small idea written large or a big idea distilled down are equally acceptable. We invite your contributions.
GUEST WRITER AND PHOTOGRAPHER JONATHAN GANLEY on Nick Cave and the Birthday Party at Mainstreet, 1983
Friday May 3 2013 marks 30 years to the day since Nick Cave and The Birthday Party played their first New Zealand show at Mainstreet nightclub on Auckland’s Queen St. Photographer Jonathan Ganley provides the images and the story from the audience, while Simon Grigg of Propeller Records and tour promoter Doug Hood give some background and recollections of this legendary but... more >>
Added: 2 May 2013 
2 Comments
GUEST MUSICIAN MATT LANGLEY on the genesis of his new album Virginia Avenue
Whaka oho rahi…Broad Bay. A place of plenty. I’ve certainly spent plenty of time here over the last few years in various cribs and little houses watching the harbour, trying to track her moods, walking to Portobello, writing, hitching into town, meeting locals, tourists, travellers. There’s nothing here at first glance…buses and tourist traffic wind their way... more >>
Added: 29 Apr 2013
GUEST WRITER ROB SOUTHERN recalls getting happily stuck with Traffic
Leaving school in the summer of 1966, I started and finished more than 25 different jobs before the end of 1970. I tried selling ice-creams at London’s Victoria Coach Station, stacking bath crystals in a London warehouse, working in an office for a building firm, machinist in a furniture factory, gutting fish at a fishmongers, digging roads for the council, driving an ice-cream... more >>
Added: 15 Apr 2013
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER BUCK NELSON captures the passion of the blues
Buck Nelson is an American blues lover whose motto is "Have Canon Will Travel". He also takes wildlife photos, has a passion for motorcycles and captures images of people on the street. You can check out his work here. But for this photo essay, Elsewhere had him present a series of shots which capture the facial expresions of blues players -- of all ages as you may see... more >>
Added: 1 Apr 2013
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER JONATHAN GANLEY consider the work and relevance of Ansel Adams
“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term – meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolour or etching – there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster... more >>
Added: 28 Mar 2013
GUEST WRITER SARAH JANE ROWLAND explores a Hollywood treatment of mental illness
Much of the hoopla surrounding Anatole Litvak’s 1948 drama The Snake Pit focused on the treatment of its subject matter. It was one of Hollywood’s first attempts to tackle mental illness sympathetically, backed by extensive background research and a sincere performance from lead actress Olivia de Havilland as a young woman institutionalized after a nervous breakdown.... more >>
Added: 25 Feb 2013
GUEST WRITER SOMSAK LANTANA offers poems of elegant and honest simplicity
My friend Somsak (James) Lantana from Thailand is not just an excellent chef, but also a very generous one. He has previously shared recipes with me and we posted one for Thai chicken (superb!) which appeared here. His fish dish (here) is unbeatable and also equally easy to make. But there is more to James than those skills. He has increasingly indulged in his passion for photography,... more >>
Added: 18 Feb 2013
GUEST WRITER STEVE GARDEN considers the spiritual complexities of Terrence Malick's controversial film The Tree of Life
Note: there is no synopsis of The Tree of Life in the following article. It has been written with the assumption that those reading it have seen the film. Opening quote: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?” (Job 38:4, 7) Image one: a formless warm light in a dark void. Voiceover: “Brother. Mother. It was they who led me to your... more >>
Added: 11 Feb 2013 1 Comment
GUEST MUSICIAN GRAHAM CLARK tells tales of Dr Feelgood and taking coals to Newcastle
In the late Seventies, like hordes of young Kiwis, I spent my OE in the UK. It was while waiting for a bus in the pouring rain, that I encountered a young punk walking along the street carrying a ghetto blaster on his shoulder that was pumping out a kind of music I had not heard before. I asked the young punk what it was, and he told me it was British rhythm and blues, and the band was... more >>
Added: 4 Feb 2013
GUEST WRITER OWEN WOOD consider the strangeness of the South
Traveling around America's South off the highways and interstates is, as many will tell you, a sometimes frightening experience. Not because of the bad characters -- although there are plenty of those -- but more because of something unspecified. In his documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus the singer-songwriter Jim White encapsulates this feeling in words which rang with truth... more >>
Added: 21 Jan 2013
GUEST WRITER MATTHEW BARNETT considers the art of putting science to song
One of my favourite TV shows is The Big Bang Theory. Admittedly this could be a case of damning with faint praise. Rising above the veritable array of “reality” TV shows that seems to make up the majority of prime-time viewing (involving food, alleged talent, or extreme inability to control a motor vehicle) requires very little effort. However, I believe Big Bang is... more >>
Added: 14 Jan 2013 1 Comment
GUEST MUSICIAN PAUL McLANEY on pinning down the elusive musical dream
In the majority of recording situations I have been in, either by accident or design, the initial idea or inspiration for a piece of music is necessarily altered by the filter of musicians and collaborators through which it passes. That is not to say the original thought is diluted; in many instances it is magnified. But nonetheless it is altered via the thoughts, deeds, abilities and... more >>
Added: 9 Nov 2012
GUEST WRITER OWEN WOOD sees the writing on the walls
At some time in the mid Nineties when I was working in Parnell, there was an open air carpark just off the main road. The back wall was perhaps two storeys high and painted white. One day, right at the very top in letters at least a metre high, this sentence appeared: "SHORT PEOPLE GIVE ME THE SHITS". It was clever, funny and looked impossible to accomplish without a ladder.... more >>
Added: 23 Oct 2012 2 Comments
GUEST MUSICIAN DANIEL BOOBYER on being old school and making a vinyl record
My new release Time Killed The Clock was sort of an unplanned birth. It mysteriously crept into existence with the first track of the same title being recorded on my trusty Pioneer cassette deck that was pulled from a skip several years ago - yes, I did say cassette. At the time I already had another album in the works to follow up my first release Dripping With (2010). This... more >>
Added: 19 Oct 2012
GUEST WRITER SARAH JANE ROWLAND goes back to Berlin of the Cold War
Nunnally Johnson’s Cold War drama Night People (1954) opens with the words "Berlin Today" superimposed over a shot of the four flags of the city’s occupying forces. The French, British and American flags of the capitalist west stand together; the Soviet hammer and sickle stands alone smaller, less prominent, giving the bad guys of this film an unequal billing.... more >>
Added: 8 Oct 2012 2 Comments
GUEST ARTIST ANGELA KEOGHAN opens her portfolio of the quirky and cute
When New Zealand artist/photographer Angela Keoghan this week won the 2012 award for best album cover for her work on Bannerman's Dearly Departed (right), you looked again at it and realised how subtle and engaging it is. And of course she had previously done the artwork for his Dusty Dream Hole album the previous year, which had been a finalist in the same category. Keoghan's... more >>
Added: 5 Oct 2012
GUEST WRITER ANDREW SCHMIDT considers a documentary about Beat writer Jack Kerouac
You meet them occasionally. The smart, self-hating sons of the aspirant working class, embedded in a system, which offers them two choices. Drink from the master’s cup or leave. Those who stay are like dry drunks in constant denial. They wrap themselves in the affectations of the educated upper classes and channel their unarticulated anger towards their roots. The rejection... more >>
Added: 5 Oct 2012
GUEST WRITER OWEN WOOD looks at when genius gets the blues
The flawed and ultimately doomed genius Truman Capote once wrote, "When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation". When we consider the nature of genius, it often seems to beat itself up up. Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, Jim Morrison and others did it through belligerent alcoholism; Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy... more >>
Added: 24 Sep 2012
GUEST WRITER JAMES BLICK considers the art, craft and pitfalls of travel writing
“White sand? Tick. Turquoise sea? Tick. Sunset cocktails? Yep.” That was the opening line of a travel newsletter that dropped into my inbox the other day. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, except that I was part way through home & away, a new collection of award-winning Kiwi travel writing (New Holland $35). As a young travel writer still... more >>
Added: 23 Sep 2012
GUEST WRITER DON McGLASHAN on the power of songwriters in a cold climate
What follows is Don McGlashan's speech at the Apra Silver Scroll Award in Auckland on September 13, 2012. We print it here with Don's permission and it's our privilege to do so, as much for its inspirational quality as its political truth. Welcome to another Silver Scrolls - the special night in the year where we celebrate music and the people who write it. I want to talk about... more >>
Added: 17 Sep 2012 6 Comments
