THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and for many years Graham Reid has been going there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review columns and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more. This site is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It is an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
The Replacements: Tim (1985)
5 Dec 2020 | 2 min read | 1
The swaggering, often drunk Replacements hold such a firm place in many people's affections that singling out just one of their eight studio albums for attention is bound to irritate someone. Maybe many someones. But this ragged outing was their last with the original line-up and first for a major label, Seymour Stein's Sire, which made them labelmates with the Ramones,... > Read more
The Replacements: Swingin Party
Half Japanese: Crazy Hearts (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)
4 Dec 2020 | 1 min read
And still it comes, this left-field, marginal project of avant-guitarist and noise-maker Jad Fair and his now established fellow travelers (John Sluggett, Giles Vincent Reader, Mick Hobbs and Jason Willett). This is the 19thalbum under Fair's Half Japanese name and if you are expecting him to change direction you haven't been paying attention for the past 40 years.... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . DON BLACK: The man with the Midas touch
4 Dec 2020 | 3 min read
It's a safe bet that if you asked 10 people to come up with 10 names associated with James Bond no one would mention Don Black. Most of the Bonds would be there (Connery, Moore, Dalton, Craig and maybe that Australian one-off) and doubtless a few of the “Bond girls” (perhaps by character rather than the actor's name: Moneypenny,... > Read more
Chris Stapleton: Starting Over (Universal/digital outlets)
4 Dec 2020 | 1 min read
If you didn't know what he looked like, how might you picture songwriter Chris Stapleton from knowing his songs had been covered by Adele and he's co-written with Ed Sheeran, Peter Frampton and Sheryl Crow? You might see Stapleton as some bookish-looking writer in an office in London, New York or LA. But add in a swag of country music awards for his songs and his... > Read more
Lontalius: Side One (digital outlets)
4 Dec 2020 | 2 min read
Earlier this year Hayley Williams, frontwoman and writer for the US rock band Paramore released her debut album Petals for Armor. However within the 15-song album, the first 10 had been already released as two separate EPs. And all five in the second had appeared as singles. In the world of streaming, the definition of singles, EPs and albums has become... > Read more
Ennio Morricone: Morricone Segreto (Decca/digital outlets)
30 Nov 2020 | 1 min read
The late Ennio Morricone's work was so diverse – orchestral scores to oddball sonic vignettes – that listeners almost invariably default to their favourite style: the quirky spaghetti Western soundtracks, the more heroic and expansive works like the music for The Mission and so on. Elsewhere's favourite spaghetti Western soundtrack is that for The Good, The... > Read more
Tristan Perich: Drift Multiply (Nonesuch/digital outlets)
30 Nov 2020 | <1 min read
Although hailed in the New York Classical Review as “establishing a new language and a new future path for music”, many who have heard a fair swag of early Philip Glass (North Star and 1000 Airplanes on the Roof come to mind), Steve Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings & Keyboards ('79) or even the Fripp/Eno collaborations in the mid Seventies, may feel that... > Read more
Lil Johnson and Black Bob: Press my Button, Ring My Bell (1932)
30 Nov 2020 | <1 min read
When Anita Ward scored a big disco hit with Ring My Bell in '79, the saucy yet somewhat lyrically bland song was in a long tradition of "ring my bell" metaphors in popular music. As far back as '32 the raunchy Lil Johnson -- about whom little is known other than her catalogue of songs about sex, getting drunk, sex and more sex -- was singing "press my... > Read more
A LANDSLIDE OF PROVOCATIONS FROM RATTLE (2020): Five albums in five days?
29 Nov 2020 | 4 min read
In its first 15 years after it was launched, the Auckland-based label Rattle was averaging just one release a year. In 2021 the label will celebrate its 30thanniversary and since the late 2000s the release schedule has really hit a cracking pace of albums which cover avant-garde music, classical (traditional and contemporary), jazz, taonga puoro, quasi-pop and everything... > Read more
COLLABORATION AND CONNECTION IN THE 21st CENTURY (2020): Psathas, Hooker and digital file sharing
29 Nov 2020 | 3 min read
Three decades ago the American composer Philip Glass fended off a question about “crossover albums”. He preferred to talk of crossover audiences. Glass was observing that those who liked Talking Heads, for example, would also probably listen to the Kronos Quartet or his music. Frequently we see musicians with eclectic tastes pushing into... > Read more
GREAT LOST KIWI SINGLES: Rock follies
28 Nov 2020 | 9 min read | 10
They are found at the back of cartons at record fairs, under beds in long abandoned houses and sometimes stored lovingly -- but rarely played -- in the collections of the obsessives. They are those great, and not that great, singles by Kiwi artists which existed either in limited pressings or were simply so awful the artists themselves tried to buy and destroy every copy.... > Read more
Peter Cape: Coffee Bar Blues
LENNON REMEMBERED, AND REMIXED (2020): Does he still shine on?
28 Nov 2020 | 4 min read
When the Beatles were breaking up, more over money and management than over Yoko Ono's permanent presence, Ringo Starr was despatched to see Paul McCartney to tell him that he should delay the release of his solo album McCartney. This was because it would go up against the Beatle's patched-together and patchy Let It Be, scheduled for release a few week later.... > Read more
TH'DUDES, REVIEWED (2020): Right first and last time
27 Nov 2020 | 4 min read
A few weeks ago at a family function I was talking with Daniel, the bass player in the Auckland rock band Racing. We were bemoaning – among other things – the fact that somewhat vacuous soul-funk-reggae pop has such a foothold on the local scene and that there weren't as many rock bands as there once was. And Racing are a rock band. A second generation... > Read more
Scalper: The Beast and the Beauty (Like Water/digital outlets)
25 Nov 2020 | 1 min read
Those old Romans had a phrase which is very useful: sui generis. It means singular, unique, in a genre/category of its own. The music of Auckland-based producer/poet/rapper and former Fun-Da-Mental member Nadeem Shafi aka Scalper is definitely sui generis. His voice and spoken-word lyrics are dark, full of foreboding, touch on the mythic and are sometimes --... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE SONGWRITERS' QUESTIONNAIRE: Hachiku
24 Nov 2020 | 3 min read
Melbourne-based Hachiku's debut album I'll Probably Be Asleep was one which slipped past us a month ago while we were diverted by other work. But belatedly we get the chance to bring its hypnotic, lyrically incisive electro-kissed dark alt.pop (with gritty guitars) to your attention courtesy of an insightful interview. Hachiku – aka Anika Ostendorf – is... > Read more
Songhoy Blues: Optimisme (Transgressive/digital outlets)
23 Nov 2020 | 1 min read
When we first encountered this four-piece from Mali in 2015 with their debut album Music in Exile we were impressed. So much so that it ended up in our Best of the Year picks. We heard but didn't review their follow-up Resistance – which had an appearance by Iggy Pop – but one of our number chose that in the reader's best of for 2017. Neither album perhaps... > Read more
HEART: DREAMBOAT ANNIE, CONSIDERED (1975): Figuring their way through pop-folk and prog to rock
23 Nov 2020 | 2 min read
In 1997 when Rolling Stone had a substantial Women of Rock issue, they paid scant attention to Heart, just half a dozen sentences. Admittedly their best days seemed to be behind them, but with six multi-platinum albums to that point they certainly deserved more space than Yoko Ono whose contribution to “rock” was marginal. Yet she scored twice as much space... > Read more
THE RETURN OF ROTOR PLUS (2020): Dream fugues and sonic inner space
23 Nov 2020 | 3 min read
It has been more than seven years since we last heard from rotor plus (sometimes rotor +) when his trilogy of remarkable albums reached their quiet but compelling conclusion with Dust. Beautifully packaged as limited edition art objects (only 300 of each) with photos and collages in the hardback CD format , these interrelated albums – Aileron in 2000, Map Key... > Read more
Art Pepper: Smack Up (1960)
23 Nov 2020 | <1 min read
Art Pepper hardly hid his dependency, so he must have been amusingly drawn to the title of this piece by Harold Land. Pepper had already served time for heroin possesion but after the sessions for the album of this name, he would be in and out of San Quentin on almost consecutive terms for a long time. It would be almost 15 years before he made any kind of serious... > Read more
TODAY IN HISTORY: The day John Kennedy died
22 Nov 2020 | 1 min read
In an interview with Elsewhere in advance (well in advance) of his two concerts in New Zealand in 2014, the conversation with Steve Earle turned -- as it usually does with him -- to politics. After some to and fro about various issues of homelessness and such, I asked him why he had the same touchstones in his lyrics (Guthrie, Kennedy, Kerouac) and if they symbolised... > Read more