THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Lou Reed: Hudson River Wind Meditations (vinyl release, CD)
4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read
The title of the latest Lou Reed biography probably confirms how many see him. It is The King of New York (by Will Hermes) and immediately we picture Lou in leather on the dirty boulevard, being aggressive and cantankerous as he strides out sneering at lesser intellects, goes on about the poet Delmore Schwartz and somewhere in the background Waiting for the Man is playing... > Read more
Hudson River Wind (Blend the Ambience)
The Master Musicians of Jajouka: Brian Jones presents The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka (1971)
4 Dec 2023 | 3 min read
Some albums have auspicious beginings and a messy legacy. So it is with this album recorded in Morocco in 1968 by Brian Jones, then of the Rolling Stones. By the time the album was released Jones had been dead a year -- he drowned a year after his trip to Morocco and was no longer a Stone -- and a shadow was cast over its mesmerising music. When it was reissued in... > Read more
The Master Musicians of Jajouka: Take Me With You My Darling, Take Me With You
PRIDE OF THE SOUTH: Sometime in New York City
4 Dec 2023 | 2 min read
He was at the south-west entrance to Central Park, sitting by himself with a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag on a cool September afternoon. Pride was his name, Pride Wilson from Louisiana but mostly Kentucky. Been in New York maybe five, maybe seven years. We walked into the park where yuppies in expensive workout gear would glide by on their in-line skates, and... > Read more
Geeshie Wylie and Elvie Thomas: Last Kind Word Blues (1930)
4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read
The mysterious Geeshie Wylie has appeared previously pulled From the Vaults with Skinny Leg Blues, the B-side of Last Kind Word Blues. As we mentioned then she recorded just six songs (that we know of) and there are few confirmed photographs of her. Seemingly just two at best. It's believed that she was of the Gullah people in Georgia and South Carolina and it's... > Read more
Cat Power: Sings Dylan; The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (digital outlets)
4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read
Reports from Bob Dylan's sold out North American tour are almost unanimous in their acclaim: at 82 Dylan is in good form, sometimes speaks to the audience (rare), mixes up older songs or deep cuts with his last studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways and in many places pays tribute to a local hero by singing one of their songs: Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to The End of Love in... > Read more
WAR ON DRUGS, REVIEWED (2023): Thunder but no hurricane
3 Dec 2023 | 6 min read
If there's a recession, then no one told Auckland's “squeezed middle” out looking for entertainment this weekend. On Friday there was the Hansel and Gretel ballet at the Aotea Centre (music by Claire Cowan), the Others Way festival which took over various venues on and around K Rd, Lloyd Cole at the cathedral in Parnell and Kraftwerk at the Spark Arena.... > Read more
Bob Dylan: The Complete Budokan 1978 Live (digital outlets)
30 Nov 2023 | 2 min read
There's plenty of evidence to support the view that when Bob Dylan considers “popular music” (as opposed to pop music) he thinks of the songs before Elvis. And his idea of rock music is formed by the notion of electric country music more than Led Zeppelin. It's also noticeable that after he retreats into the past to find inspiration he re-emerges with... > Read more
THE MERSEYMEN, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2023): Well shake it up baby now . . .
30 Nov 2023 | 2 min read | 1
You probably had to be there. Because it wasn’t about the hair, the boots and the suits. And it wasn’t only about the music either, although that certainly drove everything. It was the sheer excitement of the time, the thrill of being young in the early 60s and having a music of your own which was upbeat, fresh and just kept arriving. Not just from... > Read more
GHP: Rapture Riders (2004)
27 Nov 2023 | <1 min read
One of the most famous tracks by GHP (British DJ/producer and remixer Mark Vidler), this breakthrough in mash-ups was so good it was approved by both Blondie and the Doors (whose Rapture and Riders on the Storm it pulled together). It was even included on Blondie's 2005 Greatest Hits collection. GHP (Go Home Productions) has created more than 200 mash-ups using... > Read more
A YEAR THAT WAS: Building a house, a home and a family
27 Nov 2023 | 4 min read
It is only now as I remember and write that I've realised the events here occurred half a century ago. It was a busy and strange year 1973, but it was also about endings and beginnings. I was in my final year at North Shore Teachers College but only there for a few hours a day because I was knocking off another English paper at university. Paula and I with... > Read more
Chris Stapleton: Higher
27 Nov 2023 | 1 min read
When Elsewhere profiled singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton back in mid 2016 he was already an enormously successful artist and we noted he was in the lineage of crossover country artists like Garth Brooks in the Nineties. In many ways Brooks prepared the ground for a dozen “hat act” artists and Taylor Swift to move from country into the mainstream.... > Read more
Glen Hansard: All That Was East Is West Of Me Now
27 Nov 2023 | 1 min read
For those who haven't followed the extensive solo career of Ireland's Glen Hansard, he was the barely memorable guitarist in The Commitments but better known as the one of the two central characters in the 2007 film Once where he played the aspiring singer-songwriter/busker in a rather charming love story. However he was also in bands, the Frames and Swell Season but here... > Read more
Grayson Gilmour: Holding Patterns (Flying Nun/digital outlets)
25 Nov 2023 | 2 min read
For much of its lifespan the of Flying Nun could best be described as spluttering. In the first decade it outgrew itself within a couple of years – too many artists, too much music and not enough business smarts, organisation and forward planning. As the label's great helmsman Roger Shepherd observed in his book In Love With These Times, "In the ten years... > Read more
A Crude Mechanical: Discourse (Public Witness/digital outlets)
24 Nov 2023 | 1 min read
Now this is interesting: the solo, multi-tracked guitar, instrumental debut by Shane Warbrooke which is billed as “experimental”. But that's a word which will have some hiding under the bedsheets. So let's quickly sidestep that – and his “accumulated noise” description – to pin down a couple of more appealing and appeasing... > Read more
And We Bleed Metrics
ART ON THEIR SLEEVES, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2023): Album design in the 2020s
22 Nov 2023 | 1 min read
The resurgence of vinyl albums – which outsold CDs in 2021 – has meant local artists are now seeing that having their music on record can be as important as their social media profile. The record is an artefact in a way that CDs could never be: the art in a jewel case too small to have impact, liner notes or lyrics rendered microscopic. And lets not get... > Read more
Blue Cheer: Vincebus Eruptum (1968)
20 Nov 2023 | 3 min read | 4
For many decades I kept a clipping about Blue Cheer and this particular album inside the record cover, and of course when I went to look for it recently it was gone. But the gist of it was this: Blue Cheer were the loudest band in the whole history of ever, according to the writer, and when they recorded this monster in a North Hollywood studio they blew out all the... > Read more
Summertime Blues
ADAM GRANDUCIEL of WAR ON DRUGS, INTERVIEWED (2023): On the road again
20 Nov 2023 | 5 min read
Our call finds Adam Granduciel, mainman of the American band War on Drugs, back home in Los Angeles for a couple of months with his wife Krysten and 4-year old Bruce after being on the road through Europe. He's a couple of weeks into two months of downtime with family although sometimes pops into the much-cherished home studio (“it's the greatest”), where he... > Read more
The Beatnix: Stairway to Heaven (date unknown)
20 Nov 2023 | <1 min read
There are any number of bands who can convincingly replicate the look, sound and songs of Beatles (our money always goes to excellent Bootleg Beatles). But Australia's Beatnix took a different path on their It's Four You album, a compilation which came out through Glenn A Baker's Raven reissue label in 2017. They covered very early songs that Lennon and McCartney... > Read more
Ebony Lamb: Ebony Lamb (Slow Time/digital outlets)
20 Nov 2023 | <1 min read
Elsewhere readers will be familiar with the name: Ebony Lamb was formerly of the long-running indie.folk/alt.country outfit Eb and Sparrow whose albums we have reviewed (and she answered an Elsewhere Questionnaire some while back). She was a recent long-list finalist in the Silver Scrolls – for last year’s Take My Hands at Night –and has... > Read more
UNRULY; A HISTORY OF ENGLAND'S KINGS AND QUEENS by DAVID MITCHELL
18 Nov 2023 | 5 min read
David Mitchell is an educated man, he went to a private school and read history at Cambridge University but the distraction of the theatre company meant he only graduated with slightly diminished degree. Still, a very smart man. David Mitchell is also very well known from British panel shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats and Would I Lie to You. David Mitchell is a... > Read more