Absolute Elsewhere
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BOB DYLAN: MORE BLOOD, MORE TRACKS, THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 14 (2018): Songs blowing around his skull
5 Nov 2018 | 7 min read | 1
When David called Kevin on a freezing night in Minneapolis just after Christmas 1974 he had an unusual request. He was looking for a small-bodied Martin acoustic guitar and he thought Kevin, a brakeman on the railroad and part-time musician, may be able to help. Kevin, a guitarist, called his friend Chris who had a guitar shop in the northern district of Dinkytown and, even though he... > Read more
You're A Big Girl Now (take 2)
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 largely went... > Read more
Beechwood Park
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 Brazier, both now... > Read more
Luxury Cargo
BOB DYLAN. BY WAY OF EXPLANATION? (2018): Another chapter in the convoluted story
11 Sep 2018 | 5 min read
A funny and cynical friend recently said if Paul McCartney dies we're left with Ringo to explain the Beatles to our grandchildren. He's a great drummer, beyond question. But the fourth best singer in the band, who wrote no songs of any consequence? And whose most abiding contribution to the legacy was a children's song, Yellow Submarine? Hmm. Might be hard to get the young... > Read more
MARTIN PHILLIPPS INTERVIEWED (2018): A lone guide cutting through snow
10 Sep 2018 | 12 min read | 1
Martin Phillipps takes the guitar off his knee so he can talk about, among many other things, the Chills' new album Snow Bound. But he immediately admits that he can leave such instruments around gathering dust. He can be “lazy” and “gave up on being a technically proficient musician a long time ago,” says the man who wrote sublime songs like Heavenly Pop Hit.... > Read more
Time to Atone
BOB DYLAN: A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO . . . (2018): The man in the irony mask
27 Aug 2018 | 5 min read
Given that his singles rarely troubled the charts, one of his few videos which gets any airtime these days is 35 years old (Jokerman) and his albums have long since ceased to appeal to a younger demographic, how might you explain Bob Dylan to anyone under 30, someone who might have only become aware of him in the 21stcentury when he was already in his 60s? Maybe you can't but you could try... > Read more
HA THE UNCLEAR; A VIDEO ESSAY (2018): Somewhere inside the outside in
1 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
With their new album Invisible Lines due out on Friday (August 3) we thought it timely to flick through the backpages of Ha the Unclear's videos just to offer a reminder of what was and what they are now. And the conclusion is that -- then and now -- they are a quirky, melodically powerful, lyrically interesting and utterly fascinating pop-rock band with their own take on . . . well,... > Read more
PHIL SEYMOUR REMEMBERED (2018): Here then and gone yesterday . . .
18 Jun 2018 | 6 min read
If Phil Seymour – who came of age with the Beatles and the British Invasion – has been watching carefully enough he might have read the signs: the Spencer Davis Group, The Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann . . . The clues were all there. These were Sixties bands which took their name from someone other than the singer/frontman. Spencer Davis... > Read more
Precious To Me
TAMI NEILSON, A VIDEO ESSAY (2018): Putting on the style
25 May 2018 | 1 min read
With the release of a sixth album under own name – Sassafrass! – attention once again turns to the award-winning Tami Neilson who has redefined country, brassy soul, rockabilly and rock'n'roll gospel into an amalgam which is distinct and her own. Her story has been well-canvased in the past, how the Canadian-born singer was part of their traveling family band (sharing bills with... > Read more
NEIL YOUNG CONSIDERED (2018): Every Now, and Then
14 May 2018 | 3 min read
For a long time – perhaps from even as far back as '75 – Neil Young earned the right to do exactly what he wants . . . because he just does exactly what he wants. By '75 he has moved from folk-rock to folk and rock as distinct genres as well as finding a place (sometimes very briefly) in Crosby Stills And Nash's close harmonies or going straight down to the darkest reaches with... > Read more
BOB DYLAN: THE RETURN OF THE TROUBADOUR (2018): Still on the road, heading for another joint . . .
14 May 2018 | 2 min read
Without even bothering to do a fact-check it's a safe bet that Bob Dylan's last album would have been one of the poorest-selling of his long career: It was Triplicate, a three album set of him singing standards and followed two prior single albums along the same lines, the wonderful Shadows in the Night and the somewhat lesser Fallen Angels. Even the most patient fans who accepted Shadows... > Read more
THE DURUTTI COLUMN, REISSUED (2018): Not exactly living the life of Reilly
30 Apr 2018 | 8 min read
For most people the punk period of the late Seventies in Britain was an exciting – but short – time. As Mark E Smith of the Fall put it bluntly in his memoir-cum-rant Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith in 2008: “I've never aligned myself to the whole punk thing. To me, punk is and was a quick statement. That's why most of the main players couldn't handle the... > Read more
Messidor (from LC, 1981)
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, A VIDEO ESSAY (2018): Of speed, in space and under the ground
18 Apr 2018 | 2 min read
Over three albums, a batch of EPs, impressive videos and exciting live shows, Britain's Public Service Broadcasting have created a niche for themselves between the worlds of dance, electronica, rock, art music and audio-visual spectacular. New Zealand audiences caught them at a Womad in 2015 but each of their albums -- and the attendant videos -- are mesmersing home-play delights.... > Read more
HAMMOND GAMBLE INTERVIEWED (2018): Of another career in the same town
16 Apr 2018 | 10 min read | 2
Trees are down, power is out everywhere, the temperature has dropped and our house is freezing. So when a conversation with Hammond Gamble is relocated to the warmth of Galbraith's Ale House in Eden Terrace it's very welcome. The purpose of meeting Gamble – one of this country's finest blues-rock guitarists, an earthy singer and a much underrated and Silver Scroll-winning songwriter... > Read more
EILEN JEWELL INTERVIEWED (2018): Got them weird, oldtime blues again
13 Apr 2018 | 6 min read
The weather’s often like this at this time, raining and cold,”says Eilen Jewell from her hometown of Boise, Idaho. “It’s the only time of year that it rains, because of the desert here, and most of that rain happens during this month.” Not that she, her drummer/husband Jason Beek, their young daughter Mavis and bandmates Jerry Miller (guitar) and bassist... > Read more
You'll Be Mine
PERE UBU REISSUED, PART FOUR (2018): The long and grinding road
6 Apr 2018 | 4 min read
Facts first: This final installment of the vinyl reissue of the singular Pere Ubu's extensive catalogue in four-album box sets comes under the title Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales 1987-1991. And it is somewhat chronologically confusing for fan-followers, because this record collection lies between two of the earlier reissue sets: The Architecture of Language 1979-1982 and Drive, He Said... > Read more
Mirror Man (from Worlds in Collision)
HEADLESS CHICKENS: STUNT CLOWN, CONSIDERED (2018): And fly they did
4 Apr 2018 | 4 min read | 1
In my collection at home I have a white label test pressing of the debut album by Headless Chickens, the wonderful and challenging Stunt Clown which came out in 1988, the year after they had won the Rheineck Rock Award of a whopping $60,000 which allowed them to record it. I guess I have it – and the hand written track listing in Flying Nun boss Roger Shepherd's distinctive style... > Read more
Expecting to Fly
JIMI HENDRIX, A SLIGHT RETURN (2018): Here's that train a comin'. Again
12 Mar 2018 | 4 min read
In a brief prologue to his hilarious and fictionalised war memoir Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall, Spike Milligan made reference to his previous book Puckoon. He wrote, “After Puckoon I swore I'd never write another novel. This is it . . .” A few years ago on the release of the Jimi Hendrix album People, Hell and Angels, longtime Hendrix engineer and reissue man... > Read more
Jungle
THE JAZZ BUTCHER REVISITED, PART II (2018): Fish there at the dawn of Creation
9 Mar 2018 | 3 min read
The Jazz Butcher, the quirky and sometimes eccentric project of singer-writer Pat Fish, delivered interesting and increasingly crafted albums in the early Eighties. But by the time they arrived on Creation Record in '88 (alongside My Bloody Valentine) Fish had refined his sometimes wayward songs into crafted (but still quirky) pop confections and had a whole new band of jangling... > Read more
Girls Say Yes, from the album Condition Blue
FELT REISSUED (2018): Sometimes bathing in a golden glow
23 Feb 2018 | 6 min read
It is embarrassing when you have an album in your collection which is a famous cult item by a famous cult band and you famously have never bothered to listen to it. Elsewhere revealed that oversight regarding the album The Splendour of Fear by Felt in a column entitled 10 Odd Unplayed Albums in My Collection. That this album from '84 by British band Felt had languished unloved and... > Read more