Interviews, overviews, critical essays and extended music reviews

LIKE, OMIGOD! THE 80'S POP CULTURE BOX (TOTALLY) (Rhino box set)

1 Sep 2025 | 2 min read

The Eighties was probably no more different or diverse than any other decade, but it does seem weird on reflection: Ronald Reagan and the Rubik Cube; the arrival of CDs, CNN and MTV; personal computers and ghetto blasters; Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta; Ozzy eating a bat and suave Duran Duran; cocaine and Jane Fonda's workout videos; Thriller; the departure of John Lennon, Bob Marley,... > Read more

Life in a Northern Town, by The Dream Academy.

HEADLESS CHICKENS, INTERVIEWED (1988): After the money, the pay-off album Stunt Clown

27 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

When the Auckland band Headless Chickens won the cash-carrying Rheineck Rock Award in 1988, the knives came out from conservative radio programmers, critics and those people standing next to you in a bar when you mentioned the band's name. On the one side was a small number of fans who'd actually seen the band and fellow travellers in the Indi.rock world, and on the other side was . . .... > Read more

LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING; SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970: Flowers and freak outs

26 Aug 2025 | 2 min read

Any box set or collection which tries to mop up an era, genre or decade is probably doomed to failure, not from lack of genuine effort but because some artists (the big ones) don't want to be included. So you can get a multiple disc, very inclusive set of the Eighties for example and it doesn't have anything by Madonna, Prince, Springsteen and Michael Jackson. That the Rhino label did... > Read more

Think Twice, by Salvation

BEATLES FOR SALE, YET AGAIN? (2025): The way things are going, they're going to crucify me.

25 Aug 2025 | 2 min read | 2

That's it. It ends here. I think my passion, fascination and perhaps even obsession with the Beatles is over. It's a sad farewell and feels a bit tainted. Let me just say that I'm a fan, have been since I was about 12 when I first heard Please Please Me. I'd missed Love Me Do (and frankly never much rated it) but suddenly there they were: on the radio, in photos from Jackie and Rave... > Read more

The Palace of the King of the Birds (Beatles bootleg)

HOW THE BEATLES CREATED AND KILLED NEW ZEALAND POP MUSIC: One, two, toru, wha . . .

17 Aug 2025 | 8 min read

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!" . That was William Wordsworth talking about the early days and hopes of French Revolution, but it might well apply to the Beatlemania era. The Beatles generated such worldwide fervour that New Zealand couldn't help but be caught up in it, and quite early because we were a... > Read more

THE MOVE: ALWAYS AND FOREVER; BELATEDLY (2025): Classic pop, great rock then forgot

11 Aug 2025 | 8 min read | 5

Anyone dumb enough to rely on an encyclopedia of rock or -- worse -- that self-described disgrace which is "Classic Hits" radio, would be forgiven for not knowing that the Move ever existed. Those DJs at "classic rock" certainly would have no clue . . . but we expect them to be clueless, I suppose. Shame on them. It seems the Move -- despite their... > Read more

Fire Brigade

THE BRUTHERS, DISCOVERED (2025): Sixties none-hit wunders

4 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

Someone out there in Pearl River, New York will know of the four-pice Bruthers who released one single, Bad Way To Go, in 1966 for RCA. But given that single all but disappeared (collectors like to say “ultra-rare”), those who remember the Bruthers are probably just the Delia brothers themselves or close family members. We can't tell you much more than we already have except... > Read more

Wake Me, Shake Me

WHEN POP PLUGGED IN (2025): Synth-pop from the junkshops

4 Aug 2025 | 3 min read

More often than not, music captures spirit of the age: Post-war bebop tuned in to the tough urban world and ran parallel to Jack Kerouac's freewheeling prose and the physicality of Jackson Pollock's art; the Beatles and beat-pop arrived alongside Carnaby Street fashion and the hairstyling of Vidal Sassoon; British punk surging on the phlegm and fury of a young generation failed by institutions... > Read more

ROCK'N'ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN? Where classical music enters pop

28 Jul 2025 | 3 min read

Although most pop and rock listeners might not think it so, many songwriters have drawn on classical music . . . and not just for inspiration, but sometimes quite directly grabbing at the melodies. We're not talking about Deodata offering his electro-treatment of Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Love Sculpture's flat-tack guitar workout on Sabre Dance (by Khachaturian), or... > Read more

Goodbye Cruel World, by James Darren

IT'S A HARD, HARD RAIN AGAIN (2025): And the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’

17 Jul 2025 | 2 min read | 1

On August 5 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the world's first atomic bomb used in a military context. Three days later Nagasaki was hit. The Manhattan Project had become an awful reality, at the cost of over 200,000 lives in an instant, mostly civilians. It was a “lest we forget” moment for the planet. But some did forget. Immediately. The... > Read more

FRANCOISE HARDY RECALLED (2025): Les chansons pour les jeunesse

14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read | 1

Sometimes music just comes into your life and you can never remember exactly how or why it arrived. So it is with the debut album by French singer Francoise Hardy which came out in her motherland in late '62, a copy of which came into my possession somehow shortly thereafter. I seem to recall it being around at the same time as I was pinning up Beatles posters and images of... > Read more

Les temps de l'amour

THE RETURN AGAIN OF TAMI NEILSON (2025): Even cowgirls get the blues

14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read

In the past few years Tami Neilson must have wondered frequently what gods she had offended. She had moved to New Zealand from Canada (although her natural musical home was the America of Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and country music). She'd been part of the touring family band in the US but here started at ground zero in her career and rebuilt from modest beginnings. Over time and superb... > Read more

You're Gonna Fall

MICHAEL DeGREVE AND L.A. SOFT ROCK (2025): Echoes of the Canyon

14 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Just two decades late, in 1989 Los Angeles' Michael DeGreve recorded his album Gypsy's Lament with a crew of supportive stars: David Lindley, Graham Nash, Randy Meisner, famed session musician Leland Sklar and more. Largely out of place in the late Eighties, his breezy singer-songwriter style was closer to the soft rock of 1969 and the likes of John Denver's summershine optimism.... > Read more

Daughter of the Wind

LORDE'S ALBUM, VIRGIN (2025): Released, reviled, revered

9 Jul 2025 | 2 min read

Anyone looking for this country's dark underbelly need only consider social media comments about Lorde's new album. Some are vile, many simply stupid (“she's a wacko”), others shameful and a few telling: “I would rather listen to my 60's music.” From the tenor of many, a significant number of women among them, in the absence of former PM Jacinda Ardern, Lorde –... > Read more

Shapeshifter

THE SYRIAN CASSETTE ARCHIVE (2022): Taped and bound

7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Despite the conspiracy idiots, people posting photos of dinner or their dog and the usual “me living my best life” photos, Facebook is useful for some things. A couple of years ago someone posted a link to the Syrian Cassette Archive which is a project to preserve to music of that beleaguered nation which had appeared on cassette in the years before we associated the country with... > Read more

JULIAN REID: SOUNDS AND VISION (2025): The album as travelogue

1 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Expat songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Julian Reid has lived in Britain for more than two decades but in the past five years his work has taken him to through Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Pakistan and India, Canada and the United States. And elsewhere for holiday downtime. He has become a well-known photographer but he has always written music. We have featured one self-titled... > Read more

Raised

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, TRACKED DOWN AGAIN (2025): The Boss gets synthy and loopy

30 Jun 2025 | 4 min read

When Bob Dylan released the 1985 Biograph box set -- where he mixed alternative versions, rarities, unreleased songs and live material -- he stuck a marker in the ground which dared others to do the same. Most artists, even of his age at the time, wouldn't have quite that much material available, and not of that quality. Six years later he changed the game again with his Bootleg Series... > Read more

Blind Spot

MID-YEAR REPORT: THE TOP 25 OF '25 (2025): Lend me your ears . . .

30 Jun 2025 | 5 min read | 1

It's the middle of the year and progress cards are being sent out. Here Elsewhere singles out excellence from the many dozens of albums we have written about so far this year. But note, these are only chosen from what we have actually reviewed: we heard more but didn't write about them. And we also didn't hear albums which are doubtless your favourites from the past six months.... > Read more

THE NEO-FOLKIE BOHOS OF THE NINETIES: Talking New York City

30 Jun 2025 | 5 min read

In the early Nineties – three decades after the original urban folk movement in Downtown – there was a whole new neo-boho scene in New York. Michelle Shocked was just the first and copped the publicity but behind here were Kirk Kelly, Roger Manning and Cindy Lee Berryhill -- all of whom dressed like fashionable alternative-Eighties types (black jeans), played like early Bob... > Read more

Cindy Lee Berryhill: Damn, I Wish I Were A Man

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' (2025): Goodbye to Brian and Sly

29 Jun 2025 | 2 min read

As news helicopters swirled overhead, demonstrators and troops faced off and smoke rose over Los Angeles, California became the focus of world attention last week. It seemed bleakly ironic that two musicians who helped define the promise and dream of the Golden State should die within days of each other. In very different ways Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, both 82, had shaped popular... > Read more

Wide angle reviews, interviews and opinion
on music, travel and the arts by writer Graham Reid

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