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
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas: The Ultimate Collection (1998 compilation)
17 Jun 2019 | 4 min read
Before the Supremes overtook them – on the charts and in Berry Gordy's affections – Martha Reeves and the Vandellas were the seminal girl group on Gordy's emerging Motown label out of Detroit. In '63 they had three singles on the US charts: Come and Get These Memories, Heatwave which went top 5 on the main charts and to the top of the R'n'B charts, and... > Read more
Flying Lotus: Flamagra (Warp/Border)
17 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
Jazz composer/trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his cheerleader Stanley Crouch often used to talk about how much “musical information” there was on certain albums. You'd like to hear how they might interpret and decode this one by Flying Lotus aka Steven Ellison: Years in the making; a celebrity collision of guests including Thundercat, Anderson.Paak, George... > Read more
Debbie is Depressed
Daddy Long Legs: Lowdown Ways (Yep Roc/Southbound)
17 Jun 2019 | <1 min read
Along the line of rubbed raw blues and minimalist swamp rockabilly which runs from Muddy Waters, early John Lee Hooker and Howling Wolf through the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Cramps and RL Burnside, this New York-based trio of guitar, drums and a honking harmonica/singer have invited acclaim from the likes of Lenny Kaye for their basement punk approach to the idiom.... > Read more
Mornin' Noon and Nite
Marianne Faithfull: Come and Stay With Me (Ace/Border)
16 Jun 2019 | 2 min read
On her Strange Weather album in '87 and No Exit (live from 2016), Marianne Faithfull delivered more definitive versions of the song As Tears Go By which Jagger-Richards wrote for her in 1964 when she was a seemingly chaste Catholic schoolgirl full of innocence. Back then she sang it as if in a drawing room, the young Elizabethan girl looking out the world beyond the... > Read more
Counting
ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, A BOB DYLAN STORY, a film by MARTIN SCORSESE: The drifter escapes, again
14 Jun 2019 | 4 min read
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
THE MONKEES REVIEWED (2019): The last train to Pastville
10 Jun 2019 | 4 min read | 3
Two days after telling a friend I was a bit over all the touring nostalgia acts – not the least the UK punk-era bands trotting themselves out again – we went to see the Monkees at the Auckland Town Hall. Well more correctly, Mikey Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and their five-piece band (plus two women backing singers) in a concert announced as the “Mike... > Read more
Scott Mannion: Loving Echoes (Lil' Chief)
10 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
Although recorded in Spain, Norway, New Zealand and Wales over six years with a cast of Lil' Chief artists and fellow travelers, this debut album by Scott Mannion – who came to attention with the wonderful Tokey Tones in 2003, and has lived in Spain since 2013 – holds together as a musically coherent work. His reflective and understated lyrics follow the arc... > Read more
Somebody Else's Dream
Chris Gendall: Tones (Rattle)
9 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
Elsewhere never lied to you, we announced ourselves as an “ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more”. This album of contemporary chamber music by the award-winning composer Chris Gendall (a graduate of Victoria Uni, doctoral degree from Cornell, more recently Mozart Fellow at Otago... > Read more
Suite 4: Bagatelle
Eli Paperboy Reed: 99 Cents Dreams (Yep Roc/Southbound)
9 Jun 2019 | <1 min read
Channeling the sound and spirit of classic soul (Smokey, young Otis and Marvin, Al Green, Sam Cooke and more), Eli Paperboy Reed -- a white guy originally from Massachusetts, now in his mid 30s – has seriously immersed himself in blues and soul. His track record has been convincing and this album – recorded at Sam Phillips' studio in Memphis with local black... > Read more
Lover's Compensation
Vanishing Twin: The Age of Immunology (Fire)
8 Jun 2019 | <1 min read
As the Felice Brothers stare into the abyss of Amerikkka on their current Undress album, this UK-based group of migrant members (Belgium, Japan, Italy, France and the US) – helmed by writer Cathy Lucas – deliver an album which willfully denies the borders erected between people and musical genres. So they offer hope (the seven minute-plus folk-jazz... > Read more
Backstroke
Felice Brothers: Undress (Yep Roc/Southbound)
8 Jun 2019 | <1 min read
After all these decades people still cheer, perhaps more loudly these days, when Bob Dylan sings “even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked” in It's Alright Ma. The idea of the trappings stripped away – rather than literal nakedness – propels the opener/title track here where the long-running country-rockers Felice... > Read more
Socrates
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE INNOVATORS' QUESTIONNAIRE: Julianna Barwick
7 Jun 2019 | 2 min read
Those with keen eyes will note the heading on this particular questionnaire, it is a series of questions we have had to devise for artists like American singer- composer Julianna Barwick (who plays Auckland's Tuning Fork on June 19 with harpist Mary Lattimore). LA-based Barwick has collaborated with Philip Glass, the Flaming Lips, Yoko Ono and others, written for dance,... > Read more
SCOTT MANNION INTERVIEWED (2019): El grand jefe of Lil' Chief
7 Jun 2019 | 5 min read
It's a Sunday night in the mountain village of Chelva, about an hour from Valencia on Spain's Mediterranean coast. And Scott Mannion has spent some time today in the garden. “Yeah, some music today but also that. Julie's away for the weekend and I was left in charge of weeding which is usually her thing,” he laughs, referring to his wife, the Greek... > Read more
Jimmy Barnes: My Criminal Record (Bloodlines)
7 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
The great Australian rock legend JImmy Barnes has undergone a kind of soul-baring resurrection in recent years with his autobiographies Working Class Boy and Working Class Man, his garrulous interviews and a candour which endears him to an audience which can identify with his fuel-injected years in Cold Chisel and his songs about the harder edges of life which he sings about... > Read more
Medbøe/Halle/Malling: Hvor En Var Baen (Copperfly)
6 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
Following the recent 10 inch release with Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon, Edinburgh-based Norwegian guitarist Haftor Medbøe here teams up with Norwegian trumpeter Gunnar Halle and Danish bassist Eva Malling for a further limited edition, hand-numbered 10 inch installment of distinctive, lean improvisations. But here this trio stretch further using the folk poetry of... > Read more
Ae Nynner En Vis'
Lee “Scratch” Perry: Rainford (On-U/Border)
5 Jun 2019 | 1 min read
On his 1986 album Battle of Armagideon, the great producer/mixer/ dub magician and studio alchemist Lee “Scratch” Perry opened with Introducing Myself. By that time he hardly needed to, for more than a decade he had been legendary for his approach to a recording studio and had delivered early classic Bob Marley albums, Max Romeo's essential War ina Babylon... > Read more
Let It Rain
The National: I Am Easy to Find (4AD/Rhythmethod)
27 May 2019 | 2 min read
For almost two decades the National, originally out of Ohio but these days its members living on various continents, have inspired an almost slavish loyalty from those who, rightly, acclaim their smart amalgam of an almost art-rock approach to edgy but straight-ahead rock. And it has come with just enough of a whiff of avant-prog leanings which found its zenith on their... > Read more
Roman Holiday
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . HASIL ADKINS: Howling at the night
27 May 2019 | 2 min read
Whatever his style was, fame had no interest in embracing it. The closest this rockabilly blues screamer -- who started in the mid Fifties -- came to wider recognition was when the Cramps covered his song She Said and some of his music appeared in the film White Lightin'. But for Hasil (pronounced "hassle"), he just had to make do with juke joints and bars, and... > Read more
She Said (1955)
Kingfish: Kingfish (Alligator/Southbound)
27 May 2019 | 1 min read
From the scouring and driving opening track on this debut album by 20-year old Christone Ingram – aka Kingfish – you might feel you are in for a pretty familiar electric blues ride out of the Chicago-based Alligator label. But this guy from Clarksdale, Mississippi – Jeez, they are still producing blues artists from there all these decades after Robert... > Read more
Before I'm Old (w Keb Mo)
Elroy Finn: Elroy (Rhythmethod/digital outlets)
27 May 2019 | 1 min read
After years playing in various bands with the likes of Lawrence Arabia and Connan Mockasin, in the vanity project Pablo Vasquez, as well as Finn family line-ups (notably on father Neil's dreamy and darkly beautiful Out of Silence album), multi-instrumentalist Elroy Finn releases this, his debut album. Out of those diverse experiences, this self-titled album emerges more... > Read more