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
EPs by Yasmin Brown
22 Oct 2018 | 4 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 BRIEFdoes for international artists. You can read her previous... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: Macy Grey: Ruby (Mack Avenue/Southbound)
15 Oct 2018 | 1 min read
Strange how a great artist can arrive with fanfare and then there is an attrition of interest even if they maintain a consistently high standard. Think Alicia Keys. The extraordinary Macy Grey – here on her 10thstudio album – doesn't seem to get the attention she continues to deserve, especially for this album which is uplifting and joyous,... > Read more
Over You
John Prine: The Missing Years (1991)
15 Oct 2018 | 6 min read | 2
Around the time in the early 90s when he went from cult figure to frontline, American singer-songwriter John Prine got a nice kiss-off line to his entry in the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music: “His live solo act is spellbinding,” the final sentence of his brief career synopsis stated baldly. Well, he’d had plenty of years to get it right. For a... > Read more
John Prine: Jesus, The Missing Years
Hater: Siesta (Fire/Southbound)
15 Oct 2018 | <1 min read
With 14 songs running close to an hour this second album by a breezy and thoughtful Swedish band doesn't so much outstay its welcome as perhaps offer to much of a good thing. The result is the delectable individual flavours – shimmering guitar pop, electro-pop, indie-pop etc – can be easily lost over the full running time. There's a kind of autumnal... > Read more
All That Your Dreams Taught Me
Various Artists: Make Mine Mondo (Ace/Border)
14 Oct 2018 | 2 min read
There's not a lot of fun and frivolity in pop and rock these days. You wouldn't expect U2, Coldplay, Radiohead, Beyonce or Taylor Swift, for example, to release anything as juvenile as Yellow Submarine or as dumb as Neanderthal Man. It's true that a gimmick song can make you a bit of money but can also kill a career. It's hard to come back after one, especially if you... > Read more
The Thief, by Motion
Loretta Lynn: Wouldn't It Be Great (Sony Legacy)
14 Oct 2018 | 1 min read
About 14 years ago while traveling around the US for a few months we went to Loretta Lynn's estate at Hurricane Mills in Tennessee -- Loretta Lynn's Dude Ranch, the sign said. This was where she used to live in the antebellum mansion, had replicas of the crude home she grew up and her Daddy's coal mine, and a museum of dolls, gold discs and memorabilia. Not long before... > Read more
Ain't No Time To Go
HORST STUNZNER OF THE SAMOAN SURF RIDERS INTERVIEWED (2018): Fresh off the boat and into the studio
14 Oct 2018 | 7 min read
To hear 84-year old Horst Stunzner tell it, the recording session in 1964 took place somewhere just off Queen St in Auckland. The group was in and out quickly, he expected there might be a single come of it and as far as he remembers little if any money changed hands. “Rudolf and Hugo might have signed something,” he recalls, “but the rest of us never... > Read more
Tiligiligi (Medley)
Connan Mockasin: Jassbusters (Mexican Summer/Southbound)
13 Oct 2018 | <1 min read
Best to be honest. Elsewhere has tried to like albums and performances by Connan Mockasin but has mostly found them frustratingly unfocused to the point of being, as we have said, a kind of ADHD experience. This eight song, 35 minute album doesn't come with an inviting either: it relates to the “five-part melodrama film” Bostyn'n'Dobsyn which he has made . .... > Read more
Last Night
Paul Kelly: Nature (Universal)
12 Oct 2018 | 2 min read
The first important things to be said about Nature – Paul Kelly's 24thstudio album – is that the first two singles, With The One I Love and A Bastard Like Me (For Charlie Perkins), are not representative of the rest of the album. Both are Kelly originals, the former an uptempo acoustic-driven number in his unmistakable style and with a lyric open to multiple... > Read more
Mushrooms
THE ZOMBIES: ODESSEY AND ORACLE, REVISITED (2018): Still casting its strange spell(ing)
12 Oct 2018 | 4 min read
In this 50thanniversary year of big albums, many getting expanded reissue – Beggar's Banquet, the White Album, Are You Experienced and others – there will inevitably be those whose anniversary flies by largely unacknowledged. Like the Zombies' mostly wonderful, enduring and enjoyably misspelled Odessey and Oracle. To be fair though, O&O... > Read more
Beechwood Park
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Helen Corry
10 Oct 2018 | 4 min read
You may have seen – but maybe didn't if you follow her on Facebook – Helen Corry's arresting video for her song La Femme. Earlier this year the clip which she said showed feminine empowerment in the #metoo age saw her Facebook page suspended. Although ironically it was still on You Tube and was played on The Edge TV. And you can see it below. Although it... > Read more
Strike
JOHN LENNON, IMAGINE EXPANDED (2018): Just gimme some truth . . . and more
8 Oct 2018 | 6 min read
John Lennon's exceptional and essential Plastic Ono Band album of December 1970 was a self-lacerating autobiographical statement which drilled into skeletal and viscerally spare music, was courageous and emotionally naked. It was a farewell to Beatle John and the decade his band dominated and defined. It was imbued with anger and resentment, and in... > Read more
GUEST ARTIST AND VISUAL EXPLORER DAVID TRUBRIDGE shines a light on some of his work
8 Oct 2018 | 2 min read
Editor's note: Longtime Elsewhere subscriber David Trubridge is well-known in New Zealand for his range of lights and designs. But over recent years he and his company have produced a wide range of installations and commissions both here and overseas. He shows us here some of his recent work and also a short film about his ethos and ideas. The header image shows... > Read more
HARRY LYON INTERVIEWED (2018): The solo Sailor goes back To The Sea
8 Oct 2018 | 9 min read
Harry Lyon laughs. Yes, he confirms, at 68 he just released his debut solo album. But let's allow him some leeway here, after all he has been kinda busy since he first started getting paid for gigs way back in the mid-Sixties. There was the long-running Hello Sailor which he co-founded with Dave McArtney and which soon enough included Graham... > Read more
Luxury Cargo
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE TEACHERS' QUESTIONNAIRE: Liz Sneyd of Virtuoso Strings
8 Oct 2018 | 3 min read
When the organisers of this year's annual Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards were considering the landscape of local music they wanted the awards to acknowledge the past, the present and the future. The past is taken care of with the winner of the Legacy Award , the present is acknowledged on the night and the future is . . . Well, that is largely in the hands of the... > Read more
Tony Joe White: Bad Mouthin' (Yep Roc/Southbound)
8 Oct 2018 | <1 min read
Those who go to Tony Joe White concerts are really into his music. They have to be because there is no “act”: He just sits down and plays guitar, often deep in shadow and wearing a head hiding hat. So for those longtime fans of his particular style of swamp rock and country-blues this album catches him much like that, just him and guitar for the most part... > Read more
Awful Dreams
Various Artists: Planet Beat; From The Shel Talmy Vaults (Big Beat/Border)
8 Oct 2018 | 2 min read
In the early Nineties there was a compilation entitled What About Us? and it collected Merseybeat bands from the Beatles era who had largely been lost to posterity or whose names – other than the Searchers and Tommy Quickly – were barely know outside of Liverpool. The title was appropriate, although it did suggest there was greatness residing within, and that... > Read more
Everybody Knows, by Sean Buckley and the Breadcrumbs (w Jimmy Page)
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
7 Oct 2018 | 4 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. . Alejandro Escovedo with Don Antonio: The Crossing (Yep Roc/Southbound) The great... > Read more
John Scofield: Combo 66 (digital outlets)
7 Oct 2018 | 1 min read
It must be strange to one day be a hot young guitarist and then a mere four decades on from your debut wake up and find yourself age 66. John Scofield (just “Sco” to everyone it seems) has filled in those decades with some exceptional work and played alongside many of the greats (Miles Davis, Joe Lovano, Charlie Haden among dozens) and recorded for Enja,... > Read more
I'm Sleeping In
Loudon Wainwright III: Years in the Making (Storysound/Southbound)
6 Oct 2018 | 2 min read
Even longtime fans of this enormously prolific songwriter – who has often performed open-heart surgery on his failed relationships, family, psyche, politics and every damn thing – find it hard to explain him to outsiders. He's almost a documentarian – he appeared on MASH as a singing soldier, did weekly political songs on NPR – but also comedic... > Read more