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
Steph Casey: The Seats in My Car (digital outlets)
24 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
Recorded at Lee Prebble's Surgery in Wellington and backed by the likes of Caroline Easther, Allan Galloway, Murray Costello and others with impeccable pedigree, this second album by the acclaimed indie.folk singer Steph Casey – whose debut Whisper and Holler went top five here at home and got favourable notices internationally – confirms a strong and unique... > Read more
MUSIC AND HOW WE SEE IT (2019): Movies about music in the NZ International Film Festival
23 Jul 2019 | 2 min read
NZIFF has kicked off in Auckland and this year's festival boasts an eclectic mix-tape of music-themed films. A major highlight is the stunning film Amazing Grace – featuring the undisputed queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, as you’ve never seen her before. This spine-tingling film captures a two-night recording session in a Los... > Read more
Wukong the Monkey King: 21st Century Time Travelling (digital outlets)
22 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
It's widely accepted that some of the most interesting things in life and the arts happen when cultures rub against each. Focus that down onto music and when genres are scrambled or denied, and when sounds from various cultures come into play you get Womads, contemporary world music and things like the recent albums by 75 Dollar Bill, Sarathy Korwar and . . . and this... > Read more
Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues: Roots and Branches, The Songs of Little Walter (Alligator/Southbound)
22 Jul 2019 | <1 min read
Harmonica player and singer Little Walter – Marion Walter Jacobs – died in 1968 just as the British blues boom was taking off although he'd achieved some career acclaim (he still wasn't 40 when he died after a fight) he didn't live long enough to see how big the blues – and its acolytes – would get in Britain and Europe. A gifted and innovative... > Read more
My Babe
Gary Bartz: Music is My Sanctuary (Capitol)
21 Jul 2019 | <1 min read
Saxophonist Gary Bartz was a graduate of Juilliard and in the early Sixties was a real frontline player with McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and others. He could play in the pocket (as they say) but also get into the free jazz/Black Consciousness movements of the late Sixties and early Seventies with his Gary Bartz NTU Troop which melded funk and... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: Mark Mulcahy: The Gus (Mezzotint/Southbound)
21 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
Given the admirers who appeared on the 2009 tribute album to him included Frank Black, Thom Yorke, Juliana Hatfield, Michael Stipe, the National and many other luminaries, you'd think this US singer-songwriter would be much better known. He's released five albums under his own name (Elsewhere reviewed the last two) as well as those with his bands Miracle Legion (mostly... > Read more
Wicked World
The Four Fours; Complete Singles 1963-66. Human Instinct and the Four Fours; 1983-68 (both Frenzy)
20 Jul 2019 | 2 min read
While talking with a friend, who knows a lot about all kinds of New Zealand music, we agreed that not every local band was great and not every album a Kiwi classic. Despite what their champions might say. Yes, we had some excellent musicians, and even many great ones, but often the vehicles they had – the band around them, their singles and/or... > Read more
Renaissance Fair, by Human Instinct (1968)
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Sarathy Korwar: More Arriving (Leaf/Southbound)
19 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
The previous studio album Day to Day by this US-born, India-raised and Britain-based percussionist/scene-maker received immense praise at Elsewhere and was in our best of 2016 list. It was a blazing and exciting fusion of samples, electronica and jazz. It was also quite the challenge. This time out Korwar – shying not a bit from making challenging music –... > Read more
Mumbay
Gil Scott-Heron: Whitey on the Moon (1970)
18 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
Not everyone was ecstatic when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon in July 1969, 50 years ago as we write. The superb Apollo 11 doco is very much worth seeing for the visceral thrill of the event, an admiration for those who developed the technology and the courage of the men who went in that tiny capsule which was flung across deep space. Back on Earth... > Read more
APOLLO 11, a doco by TODD DOUGLAS MILLER (2019): Close enough to touch . . .
17 Jul 2019 | 2 min read
Even in the too-near future when fancy rockets from President Trump's visionary Space Force are shuttling Russian oligarchs and wealthy white billionaires off to the safety of Mars as the polluted Earth chokes and dies, people will still marvel at the technical genius and singular courage which took Man to the moon in July 1969. As we labour today under social division,... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE JAZZ QUESTIONNAIRE: Jan Preston
16 Jul 2019 | 4 min read
Earlier this year when pianist Jan Preston released her Play It Again Jan album and toured, we reviewed the album and peppered in some of her background: Red Mole Cabaret, Midge Marsden's Country Flyers, Coup D'Etat, soundtracks, awards . . . Born in Greymouth but a longtime resident of Australia, she returns to New Zealand for further dates to pick up where that... > Read more
GUEST WRITER JACCI GRACE considers a lost classic album from '65
15 Jul 2019 | 11 min read | 1
This we know: the Sixties in America was a period of cultural, political and social change. The decade brought historic counterculture movements, led by the new liberal generation. The counterculture movements included the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, the freedom of sexuality, and the demand for peace as the American government was sending... > Read more
Orange Blossom Special
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Andrew Masseurs
15 Jul 2019 | 2 min read
Wellington singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Masseurs is one of those rare talents, but very few people seem to know of him. Back in 2005 he and Mathew Powell were featured in the Play It Strange documentary Songstar and he seemed to take that as a sign. Good. Because he then went on to front the rock band Ammp which picked up some... > Read more
Dion: Sisters of Mercy (1968)
15 Jul 2019 | 1 min read | 1
Two parallel stories of birth here. Sisters of Mercy was on Leonard Cohen's debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen and thus was his birth – at 33 – as a recording artist. For Dion however, who'd had a lengthy career on the pop charts and was something of a teen idol, it was a rebirth when, at almost 30, he looked to songwriters like Dylan, Fred Neil, Joni... > Read more
YOKO ONO, FEELING THE SPACE RECONSIDERED (2019): Singing on the feminist frontline
12 Jul 2019 | 5 min read
Put aside Yoko Ono's contributions to the silly audio-verite and self-centred avant-garde albums (“French for bullshit,” John Lennon had said just a few years previous) with Lennon in the late Sixties: the two Unfinished Music volumes Two Virgins (more famous for its cover than its contents) and Life with the Lions, and the vanity project Wedding Album. Take... > Read more
Woman Power
Favourite Five Recent Releases
75 Dollar Bill: I Was Real (Glitterbeat/Southbound)
12 Jul 2019 | 2 min read
Anyone who saw the extraordinary Noura Mint Seymali from Mauritania at Womad Taranaki in 2018 couldn't help but be impressed by her husband on guitar whose playing was fluid, mercurial, seemingly effortless and shapeshifting of melodies and chords. Unfortunately that playing by Jeiche Ould Chigaly was only hinted at on the album Arbina . . . but his name alone made such... > Read more
WZN4
Troy Kingi and the Upperclass: Holy Colony Burning Acres (digital outlets/Rhythmethod)
12 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
If Troy Kingi's impressive double album debut Guitar Party at Uncle's Bach announced a singer/guitarist and songwriter of considerable breadth and accomplishment, the follow-up Shaky Your Skinny Ass All the Way to Zygertron was a largely shapeless psychedelic journey which, while enjoyably self-indulgent, never quite gripped – unless perhaps you were very stoned.... > Read more
Glass Eel
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Thom Yorke: Anima (XL/Rhythmethod)
8 Jul 2019 | 1 min read
When the Italian indie-cult horror film Suspiria – with a soundtrack by prog-rockers Goblin – appeared on television recently you had to wonder why, after more than 40 years, it would suddenly pop up on the small screen. Perhaps because of the recent remake which had new and very impressive music by Radiohead's Thom Yorke? Maybe encouraged by the approval... > Read more
TELEVISION PERSONALITIES CONSIDERED (2019): They could have bigger than . . .
8 Jul 2019 | 4 min read
Give the English credit, they do eccentricity and whimsy better than anyone. And when it enters popular music – the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, the Soft Boys, Half Man Half Biscuit and so many others – the performers bring a curious humour which can be part satirical, part wry social observation and often droll and funny. Who... > Read more
We Will Be Your Guru
ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, A BOB DYLAN STORY, a film by MARTIN SCORSESE: The drifter escapes, again
8 Jul 2019 | 4 min read | 2
In 1975, when the acclaimed actor and playwright Sam Shepard was invited by Bob Dylan – whom he had never met – to come on tour with him, Shepard wasn't sure why. Nor, it turned out, was Dylan. Maybe he could write some lines for the artists who would be performing on what was called the Rolling Thunder Revue, said Dylan, but there would be... > Read more