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
Darren Watson: Getting Sober for the End of the World (Lamington Records/digital outlets)
25 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
As with his previous, excellent Too Many Millionaires two years ago, singer-songwriter and guitarist Darren Watson again steps even further away from his previous incarnations as a fiery electric player and in a series of acoustic-framed songs – recorded at home with a few sympathetic fellow players -- touches some deeper and different places.... > Read more
DeBARGE: IN A SPECIAL WAY, CONSIDERED (1983): Love in the school corridors
25 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
In this on-going series of articles about albums randomly pulled off the Elsewhere shelves for consideration, they've all made sense and have a memory/backstory somewhere. Except, so far, this one. In a Special Way on Motown by the dance/disco r'n'b-cum-ballad band from Detroit is a mystery to me: I have no idea why I have it or where I got it from. It is in... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Neil Johnstone
25 Sep 2020 | 5 min read
Multi-media artist Neil Johnstone from Britain – who came here in 2017 -- has appeared a few times at Elsewhere, most notably with the wonderfully oceanic album Panthalassa and the more recently with the very different Chalk Dogs. Where the former – with guitarist Sam Leamy and taonga puoro player Al Fraser – was a majestic, emotional roll of sound and... > Read more
Sola Rosa: Chasing the Sun (Kartel/Border/digital outlets)
25 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
There's a swag of retro-soul around right now: from Troy Kingi repurposing and sometimes replicating the styles of the late Sixties/early Seventies on his album The Ghost of Freddie Cesar, through the sensitive/falsetto-ache of many young pretenders who never offend on an innocuous Spotify playlist (but don't make a distinctive impression). And now the long-running... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LOLA FALANA: Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl . . .
23 Sep 2020 | 3 min read
When the singer-dancer-actress Lola Falana arrived in New York in the early Sixties with, by her account just US$26 in her pocket, she took whatever dancing jobs she could get, mostly in Harlem clubs. And it was in one such place that she was spotted by Sammy Davis Jnr. In quick succession she appeared in his Broadway musical Golden Boy, recorded her debut single... > Read more
THE BEATLES IN COMICS by MICHELS MABEL and GAET'S
23 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
Some weeks ago with a bit of downtime and prompted by a comic All Our Yesterdays -- which traced the Beatles' career -- we offered an illustrated look at how the Beatles had been portrayed as cartoon and comic characters. One things was clear, many artists didn't feel the need to try to portray their subjects faithfully. Sometimes a Beatle mop-top was... > Read more
THE MERSEYBEATS: THE MERSEYBEATS, CONSIDERED (1964): Really mystified . . . and the mystifying rest of it
21 Sep 2020 | 4 min read
Across a number of illustrated articles, Elsewhere has shown how Beatles' album covers became so iconic that they would be copied, parodied and paid earnest homage to. If their debut Please Please Me caused no visual ripples at the time (although it did subsequently), With the Beatles of 1963 was a real game-changer. By this time they were Enormously Famous in... > Read more
THELONIOUS MONK, DISCOVERED (2020): Not a “lost” recording, but one we never knew of
20 Sep 2020 | 3 min read | 1
The story is so unexpected and unusual that it just has to be true: Thelonious Monk and his group playing at a high school in Palo Alto, Northern California in October '68 at a concert organised by a 16-year old fan . . . and the concert being recorded by the janitor. And until recently no one knew the recording existed, not even Monk researcher Robin D G Kelley who... > Read more
John Lennon: I'm Losing You (1980)
20 Sep 2020 | <1 min read
The remastered Lennon catalogue (released on the anniversary of what would have been his 70th birthday in 2010) naturally allowed a reconsideration of some of his material. (See essay here.) This song -- when it appeared on Double Fantasy, see clip -- had a brooding quality and the anger seemed self-directed. But this version, taken from the Lennon Anthology set of 2003,... > Read more
Bright Eyes: Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was (Dead Oceans/digital outlets)
19 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
There's a typically quirky opener here, Pageturners Rag, and you need to be patient. It takes a while to kick in, there's an announcement in Spanish and an audience talking through the woozy, Thirties piano music and then some woman taking about plants . . . So initially it seems that Conor Oberst and friends are out to provide something of an amusement and... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Helena Massey
18 Sep 2020 | 3 min read
With her new album Brothers Puffins and Half Skulls, the Australian singer-songwriter Helena Massey makes a real impression as someone who is a conduit for a kind of ethereal ambient Anglo-folk with her ears on contemporary artists like Steve Gunn and going way back to Pentangle's airy and elegant folk. It is quite a beautiful and mystical collection -- as mysterious as... > Read more
GRAEME JEFFERIES, THE SELECTED BACK-CATALOGUE REVISITED (2020): You know we really like his style
18 Sep 2020 | 5 min read
Some time between Elsewhere reviewing his latest album as The Cakekitchen, Trouble in this Town Again and him ending up in hospital with a broken collar bone, Graeme Jefferies kindly sent Elsewhere four of his Cakekitchen releases from the early 2000s. None of these were readily available in New Zealand and they were recorded in... > Read more
ELECTRONIC ART ENSEMBLE: INQUIETUDE, CONSIDERED (1982): Electric music for the mind and boredom
18 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
In the early Eighties the great American jazz labels like Columbia/CBS and Verve were struggling: at CBS Miles Davis wasn't selling and Wynton Marsalis was only just starting his career; Verve was undergoing constant business and takeover issues to its detriment. In Europe however ECM was flourishing, recording the kind of jazz which appealed to a young, educated, white... > Read more
Riki Gooch/Alistair Fraser: Rangatira (Noa Records/digital outlets)
18 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
It was not that long ago – around the time Shihad first appeared – that traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoro) were barely heard in the mainstream. The work of Richard Nunns, Brian Flintoff and Hirini Melbourne in bringing the instruments out of the museum cases seemed like a kind of ethnomusicology project for many. And although the likes of... > Read more
Johnstone/Leamy/Garden: Chalk Dogs (Rattle/digital outlets)
16 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
The previous album by Neil Johnstone (synths) and Sam Leamy (guitar) – with taonga puoro player Al Fraser – was the extraordinary Panthalassa which was a powerfully impressionistic series of pieces which conjured up the ancient, fathomless oceans of eons long gone. It was, as we noted, so evocative as to be cinematic. And it is little surprise that here... > Read more
RUBY SOLLY, AT THE BIG IDEA (2020): Pōneke, poetry & personality
16 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
When Ruby Solly was in Victoria University's jazz school, she studied cello. “Yeah. Superfruity, I know. And there was this idea that I'd never get any work. It was constantly said that if I was lucky, I might get a job on a cruise ship. “I heard that. A lot. “But there aren't many cellists around who can play without scores, and also I'd played... > Read more
THE BEATLES AS COMIC AND CARTOON CHARACTERS (2020): The greatest story ever sold, and sold again . . .
16 Sep 2020 | 3 min read | 1
From the moment they first appeared, the Beatles' look was so distinctive that it only took a few scribbles of a black pencil and you had the makings of a mop-top hairstyle. Often not much more than that appeared in advertisements and on Beatle product. It was a powerful enough visual signifier. As individuals they were also distinctive so by the time they had... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
The Flaming Lips: American Head (Bella Union/digital outlets)
14 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
Longtime fans of Oklahoma's Flaming Lips – the pivotal figure being the delightfully humorous but here deadly serious Wayne Coyne -- know how frustrating they can be. Elsewhere goes as far back as Transmissions from the Satellite Heart ('93) and even before that courtesy of the '98 triple CD compilation Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid 1983-1988. But... > Read more
ELLEN FOLEY; SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS, CONSIDERED (1981): Here, there and all over the place
14 Sep 2020 | 3 min read
In the slipstream of their success with London Calling, while battling with CBS, changing managers and wresting scattershot material for what would become their triple album Sandinista!, the Clash still found time for other projects. Among them they helped out their friends Pearl Harbor and Mikey Dread on their albums, and most notably were all over Spirit of St Louis,... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Emily Barker: A Dark Murmuration of Words (Thirty Tigers/digital outlets)
12 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
Those who were engrossed by the British version of the television series Wallander (guilty!) about a Swedish detective played by Kenneth Branagh – and many Swedes I've met preferred it to the local original – might recognise the name of this Australian singer-songwriter. She wrote the haunting theme music for that BBC series, which alone might be... > Read more