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
Matthew Sweet: Catspaw (Omnivore/digital outlets)
18 Jan 2021 | <1 min read
Elsewhere is an unashamed fan of power pop and its best practitioners like Dwight Twilley and Matthew Sweet, both of whom have albums in our Essential Elsewhere pages here and here). For a guy who delivered what we called “ a thrilling trifecta of smart power pop-cum-indie rock in the early Nineties with his albums Girlfriend (91), Altered Beast (93) and... > Read more
Oscar LaDell: Love & Revolution (digital outlets)
18 Jan 2021 | <1 min read
Blues musician Oscar LaDell from Dunedin flew onto our radar in 2020 with his debut album Gone Away where his impressive guitar skills (across a number blues-related idioms) were showcased. That he had shifts into soul and funk, as well as wrote tight originals, was all to the good . . . although we did wonder the wisdom of the female backing singer in places. Still,... > Read more
Change the World (Part 1)
Reem Kelani: Sprinting Gazelle (2006)
18 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
Subtitled "Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora", this sometimes astonishing debut album remains breathtaking in its scope -- from a lullaby to a moving song of mourning, to tracks with jazzy saxophone or melancholy piano, and lengthy explorations of melody and emotions. And singer Kelani announced herself as possessing a keening, hypnotic... > Read more
Yearning
The Knack: And How To Lose It
18 Jan 2021 | 4 min read | 1
Okay, this is how I remember The Knack and its lead singer Doug Feiger, but it was a long time ago so the memory may be dodgy. It was August 13, 1979 to be exact and the ads boasted "biggest band in the world in NZ at their peak". They were playing at Mainstreet in Auckland. That claim was true, oddly enough: at the very time The Knack from California... > Read more
THE RAINMAKERS: THE RAINMAKERS, CONSIDERED (1987): God, Little Richard and JD Salinger
18 Jan 2021 | 3 min read
As we've noted previously, some of the albums puled off our shelves to consider are a mystery when it comes to why they were there in the first place. But how this album by a rock'n'roll band out of Kansas City, Missouri ended up in residence is easy to remember. It came my way just before Christmas 1987 – my first year as a writer at the Herald – and was... > Read more
David Bowie: This Is Not America (1985)
18 Jan 2021 | <1 min read
Accidentally catching David Bowie in Labyrinth on television recently reminded just how much he put himself about for a while there. Recording Peter and the Wolf, singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, strutting with Mick Jagger for Dancing in the Street, the Absolute Beginners and When the Wind Blows soundtracks, knocking off stuff for Labyrinth which allowed... > Read more
Guangzhou, China: The sour smell of respect
18 Jan 2021 | 3 min read
When you travel to foreign parts it is good to be respectful of local customs, and usually they are common courtesies or pretty obvious: you don’t wear shorts or a halter-top to St Peters -- or in various Muslim states -- and you should always take your headgear off (or put something on, depending on the faith) when you enter a place where people communicate with their... > Read more
THE CORNERSTONE VINYL COLLECTION (2020): 101, and more, records in any serious collection
16 Jan 2021 | 4 min read | 1
It was almost a decade ago when I wrote The Cornerstone Collection, a booklet like this which picked out 101 albums on CD which could be used as the building blocks for a serious and diverse music collection. Even today I get e-mails from people who tell me they are still working their way through it, making discoveries and... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JO ANN CAMPBELL: Another case of the singer not the song
15 Jan 2021 | 3 min read
If you were to believe standard histories of Fifties rock'n'roll, women were marginal figures at best and, in some books, non-existent. The great Wanda Jackson often gets a mention (her career as a rockabilly singer was short, she got religion) but beyond that the river runs dry. There were, of course, quite a number of young women – black and... > Read more
PREACHER JACK: 3000 BARROOMS LATER, CONSIDERED (1984): Pass the bottle and praise the Lord
11 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
When Elsewhere pulls albums off the shelf to consider for this on-going column it is a random process. Sometimes they can be a forgotten classic, at other times pretty rubbish and then there are those where the question we ask ourselves, “How did I get this?” Our Album Considered pages have more than a few like the latter: albums that we didn't even know we... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: The Chills: Submarine Bells (Fire/Flying Nun)
11 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release or reissue we recommend on vinyl, like this one . . . . There is a reason why many Chills' loyalists speak of Martin Phillipps' timeless songwriting for his Chills (by-any-other-name) outlet: It is that because he crafts pop songs which resonate long after their first blush. Nowhere is... > Read more
Richard Nunns: Mahi (Rattle/digital outlets)
11 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
When the histories of the Maori cultural renaissance of the 20thand 21stcentury are written, two musicians will stand proudly alongside the great orators, leaders, artists and writers. They are the late Hirini Melbourne (who died in 2003) and Richard Nunns who, with the guidance of kaumatua, freed traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoro) from the museum cases and... > Read more
The Flaming Mudcats: Forever and a Day (Mudcat Music)
11 Jan 2021 | <1 min read
As with their previous album Cut Loose of '18, Auckland's four-piece Flaming Mudcats here neatly mix things up using the blues as a springboard in soul-blues, funk, horn-punctuated r'n'b (sax, trumpet and trombone from guests Andrew Hall, Mike Booth and Jono Tan) as well as bringing in piano (Mike Walker), percussion (Steve Cornane) and Hammond organ (Ron Stevens). That... > Read more
Ane Brun: After the Great Storm/How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow (Balloon Ranger/digital outlets)
8 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
Born in Denmark but living in Stockholm, singer-songwriter Ane Brun was one the discoveries at the 2014 Taranaki Womad and a fascinating, candid interview subject. A writer who draws inspiration from diverse sources and located herself in a place of quiet when creating, Brun wasn't in any lockdown in the past year – the writing had begun earlier and Sweden... > Read more
GENE PITNEY: GENE PITNEY'S BIG SIXTEEN, CONSIDERED (1964): Teardrops topping the charts to dead alone in Cardiff
4 Jan 2021 | 4 min read | 1
Although the British Invasion in 1964-65 severely damaged the careers of many US artists – pretty-boy male singers most notably – a few survived the incursions. And in the case of Gene Pitney, paths sometimes crossed. Before the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February '64, Pitney from Connecticut had scored major hits with... > Read more
Sabir Mateen: Creation (577 Records/digital outlets)
4 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
Saxophonist Sabir Mateen is 69 and can reflect on a life in improvised music playing alongside greats such as Cecil Taylor, Jemeel Moondoc, Sunny Murray, Henry Grimes and many others who advanced the project of jazz into free jazz. He's also a member of the TEST collective alongside fellow saxophonist Daniel Carter. If free jazz rose in the late Fifties and Sixties,... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JACKSON C. FRANK: A folked up life
4 Jan 2021 | 3 min read
Unless you are into the small print about British folk music in the Sixties, you will be forgiven for not having heard anything by the lost folk legend Jackson C Frank, and excused for never having heard of him at all. After all, he did just the one album. Jackson C. Frank died in '99 -- he'd been a diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic and had been homeless on the... > Read more
My Name is Carnival
Massiel: La La La (1968)
4 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
In 1968 middle-class, middle-aged (and some kids) Britain held a collective breath. That year the Eurovision Song Contest was being hosted at the Royal Albert Hall, after a bare-footed Sandie Shaw had won it the previous year with Puppet on a String. This time success was assured because the committee had put up Britain's favourite pop star Cliff Richard . . . and the... > Read more
LEGAL REINS: PLEASE THE PLEASURE, CONSIDERED (1988): It's humpage Jim, but not as we know it
28 Dec 2020 | 1 min read
If there is any consensus about this American trio from LA – and believe me you search in vain for even just a few references to them – it was that they were ahead of their time. But that's actually the opinion of their drummer Tim Freund. He also said he couldn't understand why the band didn't make it adding “just goes to show even Clive Davis... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . MARNI NIXON: The voice of the famous faces
27 Dec 2020 | 4 min read
When the American singer Marni Nixon died in July 2016, her passing was barely noted in the music press. Major newspapers like the New York Times weighed in with obituaries, but the silence from the music press was deafening. Maybe contemporary music writers didn't know who she was, and that would be the irony of her life . . . Even though her music was enjoyed... > Read more