Absolute Elsewhere

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THE RETURN OF THE ROLLING STONES (2023): More diamonds than hackneyed

30 Oct 2023  |  7 min read  |  1

In the years since the Rolling Stones released A Bigger Bang in 2005 – their last album of original songs – there have been six British prime ministers, Paul McCartney has released nine albums and Taylor Swift's debut album was still a year away in 2005. Since then she's released nine studio album and re-recorded four. At the time of A Bigger Bang, Mick Jagger was a mere 62. His... > Read more

DEAN WAREHAM of LUNA, INTERVIEWED (1994): If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere

30 Oct 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

BOB DYLAN, 1960-1962 (2023): The man, the music, the myth-making and the marketing

27 Oct 2023  |  7 min read

. . "Do you think that you've played any role in the change of popular music in the last few years? "I hope not."-- Bob Dylan, interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine's Jan Wenner in 1969 THE MAN Dylan's background 1941: Born in to a middle-class Jewish family in Duluth, Minnesota. Real name Robert Zimmerman. Family moved to... > Read more

VAN, DON AND JAKE; DON, LORI, PHOEBE . . . AND TUPAC? (2023): The long and winding songline

25 Oct 2023  |  5 min read

Artists take inspiration from so many sources we might as well just say, "anywhere". But one of the most unexpected -- and it was to him -- comes from Jake Bugg who released his 2012 self-titled debut album at 18 and immediately won praise from the likes of Noel Gallagher. He was a kid from a council estate and had grown up hard but sensitive (as we shall see).... > Read more

CHUCK BERRY, THE LEGACY CONSIDERED (2023): The poet who gave us rock'n'roll music

22 Oct 2023  |  7 min read

There's a very easy case to be made that Chuck Berry – who died in 2017 at 90 – was Elvis Presley's equal in the emerging of rock'n'roll in the Fifties. And that he actually surpassed the King when it came to consolidating and embedding this exciting music in popular culture. As with Presley, Berry forged an amalgam of white country... > Read more

Big Boys

SISTERS UNDERGROUND, INTERVIEWED (1994): Takin' from the street

15 Oct 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

BARRY MARKWICK, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2023): The man who jazzed on the Bealtes

12 Oct 2023  |  1 min read

In Christchurch in 1965, years before jazz musicians came around to the Beatles’ music, a young pianist Barry Markwick – with bassist Gerald Newson and drummer Harry Voice – recorded an album of Lennon-McCartney tunes, perhaps the first full album of jazz interpretations of Beatle songs anywhere in the world. At 22, Markwick wasn’t much of a Beatles fan.... > Read more

All My Loving

THE BEAU BRUMMELS' COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1964-1970 (2023): Beat-pop out of LA, destination Nashville

9 Oct 2023  |  4 min read

Like their peers the Beat-era Buckinghams from Chicago, the Beau Brummels out of San Francisco formed in the wake of the British Invasion and adopted the look, style and a name which ensured that they would be mistaken for another great UK pop-rock band. Needless to say they would insist that much of this wasn't deliberate – yeah, like naming yourself after an English Regency dandy... > Read more

NEIL YOUNG. YET AGAIN? (2023): It's yesterday once more.

8 Oct 2023  |  2 min read  |  1

Elsewhere has been clear about what we think of the never-ending releases by Neil Young, new albums and those pulled from his archive. This slew of releases – at a guess almost a dozen studio albums and even more live sessions in the past decade – has, in the words of PR, tainted his brand and confused the market. There have been box sets and collections which have included... > Read more

THREE THE HARD WAY, INTERVIEWED (1994): Hip-hop to the top

8 Oct 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

WIRE, 1977-80, CONSIDERED (2023): The short, sharp pop of art-punk

7 Oct 2023  |  2 min read  |  4

The best thing about the punk years wasn’t punk of course. That stuff exhausted itself pretty fast. No, punk’s importance was the doors that it opened to let in the likes of the Gang of Four, This Heat, Pere Ubu and musical architects such as Wire -- whose early claim to fame was getting 21 tracks onto two sides of vinyl. Field Day for the Sundays on their ‘77 debut Pink... > Read more

Outdoor Miner (from Chairs Missing)

STING, IN CONCERT (1994): The fine art of appropriation

6 Oct 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

DAVID McCOMB OF THE TRIFFIDS, INTERVIEWED (1994): Here . . . and gone too soon

4 Oct 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

RICHARD FARIÑA REMEMBERED (2023): The man who wouldn't be king

1 Oct 2023  |  12 min read

See him there in that photo from the early Sixties, the young singer standing alongside the beautiful Baez sisters Joan and Mimi. There he is again, a key figure hanging out in the downtown New York folk scene around the Village, his original songs pulling an audience his way, their lyrics political, allegorical, metaphorical and sometimes as gentle as a butterfly alighting on a leaf.... > Read more

Michael, Andrew and James

MITSKI PROFILED (2023) Risking it on the fault-line

1 Oct 2023  |  2 min read

Recently Elsewhere wrote about artists – locals particularly – who, despite having a strong mandate from their hard-won audience, seem to be risk-averse.  You get the impression the songs have been run past and shaped by a focus group which warns the artists not to do anything different and stick to the formula of pop bangers or songs which have their Selfie Generation... > Read more

THE LAUFEY PERPLEX (2023): To jazz or not to jazz

30 Sep 2023  |  1 min read

Okay pub quiz time, but be warned this could be a track question: Who was last year's most streamed jazz artist on Spotify?Now you might reasonably go for the ever-popular Miles Davis or even the great Pharoah Sanders who underwent a rediscovery with that 2021 album Promises with Floating Points and the LSO. But actually the most streamed jazz artist on Spotify – with 425 million... > Read more

THE BIG DAY OUT (1994): The acts and a survivor's guide

23 Sep 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

NINA SIMONE, THE POLITICS AND THE PASSION (2023): From Porgy to protest

18 Sep 2023  |  4 min read

In 1964 before a predominantly white, liberal and monied audience at New York's Carnegie Hall, Nina Simone announced her song Mississippi Goddamn. It had been written quickly some weeks previous and she'd played it to a small audience in a Greenwich Village club, but here it became wide currency. She referred to it as a show tune, “but the show hasn't been written for it... > Read more

KRISTIN HERSH, INTERVIEWED (1994): One day at a time

17 Sep 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

BJORK, INTERVIEWED (1994): There's more to life than this

11 Sep 2023  |  <1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more