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 and be in to win CDs, DVDs, books and more. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . PILOT: They're only the band the Beatles had once been
18 Oct 2019 | 4 min read
In the absence of the knock-about lovable mop top Beatles of A Hard Day's Night – who were moving on from Rubber Soul to Revolver, drugs, Sgt Pepper and moustaches – it was necessary to invent them again for a teeny-bopper audience. And so in '65 filmmakers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider did. Hence the Monkees.... > Read more
JAMES MACKINTOSH OF SHOOGLENIFTY INTERVIEWED (2019): From the Scottish Highlands to northwest India
16 Oct 2019 | 10 min read
Percussionist James Mackintosh sees the irony. When he was a teenager growing up in the picturesque Scottish Highlands at Fort William he was in a spiky-haired punk band playing Clash covers. It was only when he went to the big smoke of Edinburgh – once nicknamed Auld Reekie for the smoke from coal fires – that he started to play traditional Scottish... > Read more
The High Road to Jodhpur/Am Bothan a Bh'aig Fionnghuala
GREG FLEMING, GET OFF AT LINCOLN ALBUM: (2019) A track-by-track drive-by from Greg
14 Oct 2019 | 5 min read
Elsewhere makes no secret of its admiration for the work of Auckland singer-songwriter Greg Fleming and his band the Working Poor. Call them country-rock or rocking-country if you will, we think they just deliver hard-edged songs about real life and lives, snapshots of people and places, political and social commentary and much more. Previous Fleming albums... > Read more
BOB DYLAN, BROWNSVILLE GIRL CONSIDERED (2019): The classic that got away?
14 Oct 2019 | 11 min read
By the mid Eighties, Bob Dylan's career was in considerable disarray. After the so-called "Christian trilogy" there had been two mostly middling albums -- Infidels and Empire Burlesque -- and he seemed directionless. The old gunfighter who once commanded the territory had been outdrawn by his acolytes, notably Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen. There had... > Read more
Toiling Midgets: Sea of Tranquility (Green Monkey/digital outlets)
14 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
It has been about 15 years since we sat on the back deck of the Seattle home of musician Jeff Kelly and his artist wife Susanne. But we've never forgotten their hospitality . . . and the regular albums by Kelly and/or his band Green Pajamas (new or reissues) from the local label Green Monkey have just kept arriving. Green Monkey is the project of Tom Dyer... > Read more
Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Sorrow Tears and Blood (1970)
14 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
Not many years after this extraordinary piece came out – somehow on vinyl which is in our collection -- Elsewhere was in contact with what what called the Africa Information Centre in Wellington, New Zealand. It was an organisation, the purpose of which was to disseminate black African culture and politics from across the continent into a (white Western) world... > Read more
Beth Hart: War in My Mind (Provogue/digital outlets)
12 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
Let it be said clearly: the 2015 Powerstation concert by American soul-blues singer Beth Hart was one of the most enjoyable, gripping, cathartic, vocally impressive and sometimes very funny and heartfelt shows that Elsewhere has seen in the past five years. Hart – coming off the back of her exceptional and personal Better Than Home album –... > Read more
Kim Gordon: No Home Record (Matador/digital outlets)
12 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
Points go on the board immediately for Kim Gordon with this debut under her own name after the collapse of Sonic Youth. This starts with a broody, discordant clash of sonics and electro-crunch on Sketch Artist as she menaces close to the mic for an unsettling, industrial mood-setter beamed in from Eraserhead or some collapsing, future technology. When she follows... > Read more
Air BnB
COLIN McCAHON: THERE IS ONLY ONE DIRECTION VOL. I 1919 - 1959 by PETER SIMPSON
11 Oct 2019 | 6 min read
There is an easy and perhaps even amusing heresy to commit in New Zealand art: simply say aloud at a swanky cocktail party you think Colin McCahon is over-rated. When the sound of foreheads being slapped and sharp intakes of breath have faded you can drill down: his palette was limited (no cheery sky-blue available, Colin?); his representational figures are... > Read more
AND THE VNZMA ARTISAN FINALISTS ARE? (2019): Behind the scenes, the makers and creatives
10 Oct 2019 | 2 min read
Music which connects with an audience doesn't just drop from the heavens courtesy of a bandcamp or Soundcloud posting. Hundreds of songs out of bedrooms and cheap studios arrive on those portals every day, so somewhere along the line the music needs professional shaping and sharpening, a bit of promotion (video is logical) and a nice bit of packaging if it is an album.... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE SONGWRITERS' QUESTIONNAIRE: Joshua Hedley
10 Oct 2019 | 3 min read
Although only his mid Thirties, fiddle player Joshua Hedley who appears at this year's Southern Fork Americana Festival at the Tuning Fork in Auckland (see details below) has got a lot of road miles on him already. He got his first violin when he was 8 and at 12 was playing with older country musicians around his hometown of Naples in Florida. Before he was 20 he'd... > Read more
LLOYD COLE, REVISITED (2019): Adding the Guesswork to synth-pop
9 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
The first person to answer a Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire was . . . Lloyd Cole, the transplanted-to-USA British songwriter who leapt to attention with the album Rattlesnakes in '84 with his band the Commotions. We'd interviewed him back in 2000 and when he toured in 2011we , pressed for time, invented a Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire for him . . . and since then scores... > Read more
John Coltrane: Blue World (Impulse! digital outlets)
9 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
The past couple of years have been busy times for great jazz musicians no longer with us: out of the vaults recently has emerged Miles Davis' previously unreleased Rubberband (not that great unfortunately), the Stan Getz Quartet live at the Village Gate in '61 (fascinating, Getz at a kind of crossroad), radio recordings of Charles Mingus live in Detroit in '73 (recommended)... > Read more
Blue World
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some international releases
9 Oct 2019 | 3 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists and Yasmin does with EPs. Comments will be brief. . Refuge: Haven to Heavy Soul Anyone looking for a fix of classic... > Read more
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Coincidence and Likely Stories (1992)
7 Oct 2019 | 1 min read | 1
There are three distinct but overlapping public faces of the great Native American singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-MarieSainte-Marie: the woman who wrote and sang Universal Soldier and the theme to the film Soldier Blue in the Sixties; the permanent cast member of Sesame Street between '76 and '81; and a lifelong activist in the Native American movement. But there was... > Read more
The Big Ones Get Away
Mousey: Lemon Law (digital outlets)
7 Oct 2019 | 1 min read
This assured debut by the young New Zealand singer-songwriter Mousey – Sarena Close to her family – from Christchurch comes straight out of the indie-pop genre. But it also manages to deliver up some serious handclap jangle-pop (With No You with a guitar solo, the bright shine of Extreme Highs which was on the longlist of finalists for the recent APRA Silver... > Read more
YOKO ONO PLASTIC ONO BAND, BETWEEN MY HEAD AND THE SKY RECONSIDERED (2019): It was 10 years ago today, Yoko got the band to play
7 Oct 2019 | 3 min read
When Yoko Ono released her artistically packaged Onobox in 1992 -- a six CD retrospective of a solo career which had ceased in the mid Eighties -- that would seemed to have been it from the most famous widow in the world. She was almost 60; had stopped recording because as she wryly noted "there seemed no great call" from the public for any more albums by her;... > Read more
Higa Noboru
EPS by Yasmin Brown
7 Oct 2019 | 3 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column by the informed and opinionated Yasmin Brown. She will scoop up some of those many EP releases, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up albums by New Zealand artists, and IN BRIEF does for international artists. You can read her... > Read more
Pixie Williams: Maori Land (1949)
7 Oct 2019 | 1 min read | 1
If Pixie Williams had done nothing else, she would still be in the history books for what happened on October 3, 1948 when she turned up at a makeshift recording studio in Wellington, New Zealand, still wearing her hockey uniform. On that day she sang with the Ruru Karaitiana Quintette on Ruru's Blue Smoke, the first song to be written, recorded and pressed on a local... > Read more
Cream: Pressed Rat and Warthog (1968)
5 Oct 2019 | 1 min read | 1
At the time of this writing the drummer Ginger Baker has just died. He was 80 and, if you know anything about his life, you might be amazed that he lived so long. In the obituaries or fan comments, some will hail hm as the greatest drummer in rock . . . but that's always going to be a debatable point. That he could play different but interlocking rhythms on all four... > Read more