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. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
TEEKS, REVIEWED (2021): Soul to soul, heart to heart
6 Jun 2021 | 4 min read
Sometimes when we're on a long journey we can be so distracted by what is around us that we forget to look back and see how far we have come. So it might be said of this sold-out concert by Teeks at Auckland's Civic Theatre which drew an enormously wide demographic from young Maori and Pasifika to middle-aged, and even older, Pakeha. Some in that latter group could... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . the Beatles
6 Jun 2021 | 1 min read
Because there is a finite number of studio recordings by the Beatles, just for my amusement I sometimes make up my own and write about them under the Absurd Elsewhere page. Given the title of that page and the uttery improbable albums I invent (not all by the Beatles as you may see if you look: Taylor Swift, Lorde and Jimi Hendrix are nt immune) it always surprises me... > Read more
GERRY MULLIGAN. IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM, CONSIDERED (1965): Through the smoke rings of his mind . . .
5 Jun 2021 | 3 min read
When the much respected jazz writer Gene Lees asked the great baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan if he had any comments he'd like to make for the liner notes to this album Mulligan said, “No. I don't think so”. “I said what I have to say in the music. All I can tell you is to have fun writing [the liner notes]. “We sure had fun... > Read more
ROBERT FINLEY, INTRODUCED (2012): The hope and the homecoming
4 Jun 2021 | 4 min read
A decade or so ago the soulful blues singer Robert Finley might have appeared on the Fat Possum label out of Mississippi. As a venerable and seasoned figure who had toured with gospel groups and played Southern blues, Finley was certainly the kind of authentic artist the label had specialised in. But Fat Possum was getting out of the Southern soul-blues game (as we... > Read more
Dalvanius: Chudka Popoy Ugh Cha Cha (1993)
4 Jun 2021 | 1 min read
Here is further proof – if any more were needed – of what a musical genius Dalvanius Prime was. Perhaps best (and only known?) by hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders for Poi E by Patea Maori Club, there was so much more to the man, not the least his Sydney-based showband Dalvanius and the Fascinations. And by chance this 12” single was pulled... > Read more
BOB DYLAN: THE STORIES BEHIND THE CLASSIC SONGS 1962-69 by ANDY GILL
1 Jun 2021 | 1 min read
With Bob Dylan's 80thbirthday recently we could have anticipated the slew of books which is just starting to arrive, many of them academic and full of discourse, interrogations and other such high-falutin' words. This book however comes with a usefully narrow focus: from just before the debut album up to Nashville Skyline, that decade of change . . and the decade which... > Read more
TONY JOE WHITE and BLACK KEYS: (2021): Swamp smoke and black blues
31 May 2021 | 2 min read
Much like Jack White – the former White Stripe who has his Third Man label headquarters in Nashville -- the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach also has a label/studio, Easy Eye Sound, in Tennessee's capital. Between them, White and Auerbach have brought diverse and divergent sounds out of this hub of country music. Easy Eye's small but impressive... > Read more
THE BEATLES. LIVE AT THE STAR-CLUB, HAMBURG, GERMANY 1962, CONSIDERED (1977): Twist and shout, shimmy and shake
31 May 2021 | 4 min read | 2
The recording is of ridiculously low quality – just a reel-to-reel tape set up on table in a club with a single microphone pointed at the stage – and there has always been some debate about whether it was legal to release it given the band onstage was already signed to a British label. But Ted “King Size” Taylor – who made the... > Read more
Elsewhere Art. . . . Jay McShann
31 May 2021 | <1 min read
The thing you learn about jazz is that if you write about it most people aren't interested. Aside from jazz aficionados who will be quick to point out how wrong you are, which album is better, why you should have written about someone else instead . . . So when I was writing about jazz (and very Elsewhere music) for certain magazines directed at a more... > Read more
Richard X Bennett: RXB3 (Ubuntu Music/digital outlets)
31 May 2021 | 1 min read
New York-based pianist Richard X Bennett has appeared previously at Elsewhere (and was the subject of some Elsewhere Art) because he has been very different, right from our first hearing of his album New York City Swara in 2013 on which he played Indian ragas. No mean feat! There were subsequent albums which we wrote about and even had him answer a... > Read more
Genya Ravan: Junkman (1979)
31 May 2021 | 1 min read
By the time New York singer Ravan got to her album And I Mean It, from which this track is taken, she'd already had a few careers: she'd been the singer in the Escorts in the early Sixties (the line-up included soon-to-be-producer Richard Perry); she was Goldie of Goldie and The Gingerbreads who scored a top 10 UK single with Can't You Hear My Heartbeat (produced by Alan... > Read more
Various Artists: The Kiwi Music Scene 1965 (Frenzy)
31 May 2021 | 2 min read
What a remarkable year 1965 was in popular music. The Beatles gave us Ticket to Ride, Help!, Yesterday, the Rubber Soul album and more; Bob Dylan changed everything with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; Jagger-Richards stepped up for the Stones as distinctive songwriters with The Last Time, Satisfaction and Get Off Of My Cloud; the British Invasion... > Read more
Little Girl, by the La De Da's
Olivier Holland: Olivier Holland's GJAZZ 5 (Time Zone/digital outlets)
30 May 2021 | 1 min read
The provenance of this shape-shifting and often ultra-cool post-bop double album is interesting of itself. German-born and internationally acclaimed bassist/composer Olivier Holland is in the very successful jazz department in the School of Music at the University of Auckland where one of the featured saxophonists here, Roger Manins, also teaches. (Holland and Manins are... > Read more
Paul Weller: Fat Pop, Vol. 1 (Universal/digital outlets)
24 May 2021 | 1 min read
One of the best albums of 2020 was Paul Weller's expansive On Sunset, a collection so consistent (aside from one misstep) we recommended it on the double vinyl version to get the full arc. And we might point you to the remixes which are also on Spotify (one by our favourite Jane Weaver). On Sunset confirmed that of all those who emerged out of post-punk Britain... > Read more
BOB DYLAN AT 80 (2021): In this head the all-baffling brain . . .
24 May 2021 | 7 min read | 1
In the many decades before he appropriated the line from Walt Whitman for his 2020 album Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan lived out the idea and possibilities of “I contain multitudes”. In 2004 at age 65 he reflectively told Robert Hilburn, “There are many sides to us. And I wanted to follow them all.” Bob Dylan – the man who contains... > Read more
Jim Reeves: He'll Have To Go (1960)
24 May 2021 | 1 min read
One of the saddest songs ever penned, He'll Have to Go became a signature ballad for the man they called Gentleman Jim Reeves. Reeves (1923-64) had the vocal ease of Bing Crosby but with less of the Crosby's lower register scuff: if Bing was brown, Jim was tan. And there was something about his slow aching honesty that made him the perfect voice for songs about a man in... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Joe Meek
24 May 2021 | <1 min read
The temptation when thinking about the collage for an article on Joe Meek's sci-fi pop album I Hear a New World would be to go the whole spaced-out look. After all, that was the theme of the album, and of course he had recorded the exceptional instrumental Telstar for the Tornados which evoked the space-race of the early Sixties. But the tragedy of Meek's life meant... > Read more
Tazman Jack: Eyes Closed (digital outlets)
24 May 2021 | 1 min read
Tazman Jack is certainly talented. For this six-song debut (and the remix of Deeper) he played just about everything (his acoustic guitar playing is sensitive and impressive) and in terms of lyrical content he makes all the moves that so many young New Zelanders like: he comes off as a sensitive guy (Show Me Love); is supportive of mental health issues (Better Than Me with a... > Read more
THE FINALISTS, JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR (2021): Here they come again . . .
23 May 2021 | 1 min read
It's that time again when Recorded Music New Zealand Te Kaipuoro Tautito Toa/Best Jazz Artist and the APRA award for Best Jazz Composition. Elsewhere has written about many of these artists so the intralink will take you to our original reviews or interviews where relevant. Meantime we congratulate The Jac who have been performing original music since 2011, including... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
RECOMMENDED VINYL: Dianne Swann: The War on Peace of Mind ( /digital outlets)
23 May 2021 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one . . . . Because we have recently published an extensive interview with Dianne Swann about this album (and much else besides), let's just cut to the chase. Here are eight, discrete originals across two tight sides of vinyl which... > Read more