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
Jon Balke: Discourses (ECM/digital outlets)
12 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
Norwegian pianist Jon Balke is quite unlike any other on the ECM label. Elsewhere first encountered him about four decades ago when he was in his Twenties and briefly in the Arild Andersen Quartet, but we lost touch with him until his engrossing solo piano outing Book of Velocities in 2006. Then he went off our radar again. He had often melded acoustic piano with... > Read more
STEVE REICH: DIFFERENT TRAINS/ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT, CONSIDERED (1989): Repeat as required
10 Aug 2020 | 3 min read
The 1965 recording It's Gonna Rain by the New York composer Steve Reich was one of the most interesting, innovative and important pieces of its era. At least for Reich. In San Francisco, Reich had heard a streetcorner preacher Brother Walter in apocalyptic mode warning of another Great Flood to wipe out sinners, and Reich recorded him. As with Dylan's Hard Rain's... > Read more
Paul and Linda McCartney: Ram (1971)
10 Aug 2020 | 5 min read | 2
Sir James Paul McCartney has released around 50 albums under his own name -- or that of Wings, with his late wife Linda, or under some other nom de disque -- since the break-up of the Beatles in 1970. That's about an album a year, and even if we take out live releases or compilations, his strike rate is astonishingly high -- although diminishing... > Read more
Paul and Linda McCartney: Back Seat of My Car
Milly Tabak and the Miltones: Honest Woman (digital outlets)
10 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
When singer/songwriter of the Miltones, Milly Tabak, said recently they sound more sensual live and that would come through on this new album, she wasn't kidding. There were steamy moments on their self-titled debut, notably on the brooding almost swampy Glory. But this one announces itself with opener Cognac (on Spotify, the title track comes first on record... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Graeme Jefferies of the Cakekitchen
10 Aug 2020 | 4 min read
In a career stretching more than 40 years, Graeme Jefferies (under his own name or with the Cakekitchen) has made some fascinating, left-field but accessible music which seems to be more appreciated and acknowledged internationally than it is on his home turf. His music has been released on Flying Nun (back in the late Eighties) and international indie labels such as... > Read more
A FURTHER FIVE FOR FEWER THAN FIFTY: It looks weird and a bit scratched, but it's cheap
10 Aug 2020 | 6 min read
Previously Elsewhere has written about cheap vinyl picked up and enjoyed (or endured) because in a world of collectors out for rarities or obscurities we would like to note that not every old record is a hidden treasure. Some records are just rubbish. But a few even among the detritus can still be enjoyable albums going cheap. So once again we take $50 for a walk... > Read more
Gary Harvey: Outlaw (Wilde Records/digital outlets)
9 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
Guitar slinger Gary Harvey has been around since giants walked the earth, playing blues-rock in clubs and bars from North Auckland to North America, serving up blistering solos or ballads. Harvey has been doing this for so long he's doubtless taken for granted by many and certainly some might finds his genuine infatuation with Native Americans and the Old West (and new... > Read more
THIS TOWN, a film by DAVID WHITE
9 Aug 2020 | 2 min read
As an elevator pitch, a script draft and even on the screen, this film by first time feature director David White shouldn't work. It channels – sometimes without much repurposing – just about every trope in recent New Zealand comedy. You can tick them off if you care to: the small town populated by sometimes slightly eccentric or stereotypical characters... > Read more
MUSICIANS' FEARS HEIGHTEN BECAUSE OF LOCKDOWN (2020): Experts warn worse to come
8 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
Authorities in the US confirmed yesterday that with the release of Taylor Swift's new album Fauxklore, the number of albums recorded in lockdown had reached 75,000 and rising. “However fortunately there are very few active cases,” said ASCAP head Shondra Baker-Towne earlier today, “and by that we mean albums which have actually had any chart action... > Read more
The Cakekitchen: Trouble Again in this Town (Ally/digital outlets)
7 Aug 2020 | 2 min read
Because it would take far too long to fill in just part of the fascinating career of Cakekitchen's mainman Graeme Jefferies, let us simply default to a recent biography at audioculture and you can follow his peripatetic life which has seen him back in New Zealand in recent years. His vehicle the Cakekitchen has a long, illustrious and internationally appreciated... > Read more
Paul McCartney: Rainclouds (1980)
7 Aug 2020 | <1 min read
The day that Britain and the world woke to the news that John Lennon had been shot in New York both George Harrison and Paul McCartney went to work, Harrison in his home studio and McCartney in London. That may seem strange, but what else to do? As Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains – who had been booked for the McCartney session – said later,... > Read more
ALBERTA HUNTER: WITH LOVIE AUSTIN'S BLUES SERENADERS, CONSIDERED (1961): And the blues shall not weary them
6 Aug 2020 | 5 min read | 1
In 1961, the blues singer Albert Hunter – who'd been born at the end of the 19thcentury and had recorded with Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake and many others – went into Rudi Van Gelder's studio to record with Victoria Spivey and Lucille Hegamin for the Prestige label. It was the first time she'd been in a studio in almost 20... > Read more
PAUL McLANEY, AT THE BIG IDEA (2020): Helping to see the sound
5 Aug 2020 | <1 min read
Few musicians have brought quite as much emotional intelligence and appreciation for the synesthetic relationship between the visual arts and music as Auckland's Paul McLaney. For McLaney, cultural memory and personal imagination feed into what images he chooses for album covers. In a career spanning three decades, he has performed and recorded... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE HIGHLY PERSONAL ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Milly Tabak of the Miltones
5 Aug 2020 | 4 min read
For their new album Honest Woman, Milly Tabak steps out a little from Auckland's Miltones whose excellent self-titled debut three years ago – which won them Best Independent Debut at the Taite Music Awards 2018 – just appeared under the band name. Honest Woman is credited to Milly Tabak and the Miltones, which may seem an elevation but perhaps is just a fair... > Read more
DINAH LEE: INTRODUCING DINAH LEE, CONSIDERED (1964): Pop, ska and whatever else is available
4 Aug 2020 | 2 min read
The problem which popular artists had in the mid Sixties was that after the hit singles they were expected to release an album. For r'n'b artists like the Rolling Stones, Pretty Things and Downliners Sect that wasn't such a stretch: all they needed to do was pull out of their grab-bag of blues and r'n'b covers a selection to go alongside their singles and the album would... > Read more
TONY'S RESTAURANT IN AUCKLAND (2020): Home away from home, endangered
4 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
There’s a scene that has played out hundreds of times at Tony’s restaurant on Wellesley Street in central Auckland. I’ve witnessed it frequently. A young person, possibly a student, asks if there’s any chance of waiting work. Often they are anxious and looking for their first paying job, maybe presenting what passes for a CV at their age.... > Read more
GUEST ART WRITER AND RESEARCHER PETER SIMPSON on a turning point in painter Colin McCahon's career
3 Aug 2020 | 6 min read
This is an edited extract of the speech Peter Simpson gave at Gow Langsford Gallery, July 28 2020 on the launch of the second and final volume of his biography of Colin McCahon, Is This The Promised land? Vol II 1960 - 1987. . I would like to say something about the methodology which I followed in the books and focus on just one brief sequence in McCahon’s... > Read more
Rei: Hoea (Kog/digital outlets)
3 Aug 2020 | <1 min read
Rei is one of the most interesting and successful local artists who has successfully bridged r'n'b, pop and hip-hop as well as effortlessly using te reo as a vehicle, as he does on this album which is replete with strong songs and messages of positivity, self-determination and some amusingly explicit or metaphorical sexual imagery: “No matter how long I'm gone for,... > Read more
MERV THOMAS, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2020): Brass bands to Bird Dog, via rock'n'roll
3 Aug 2020 | 1 min read
No other musician could claim to have backed the young rock’n’roller Johnny Devlin, and built the tape recorder on which they originally recorded his debut single Lawdy Miss Clawdy in 1958, to have played Dixieland jazz at Mt Eden’s Crystal Palace ballroom during its heyday in the late 1950s into the 60s – and also to have appeared on the... > Read more
PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA: PLAYS THE POPULAR CLASSICS, CONSIDERED (1974): So bad it's . . . just bad?
2 Aug 2020 | 3 min read
In the liner notes to this hilariously unlistenable and sometimes punishingly painful album, the producer Brian Eno notes that “it is important to stress the main characteristic of the orchestra, that all the members of the Sinfonia share the desire to play the pieces as accurately as possible”. Well, they might try. But they can't . . . and in fact their... > Read more