Absolute Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
PEARL JAM CONSIDERED (2013): Coming on like a lightning bolt
10 Oct 2013 | 2 min read | 1
If you don't rate Pearl Jam and have a particular dislike of Eddie Vedder for whatever reason, stop reading now. Because some years ago in Seattle I met them in their rundown rehearsal room and had a long chat with Eddie. They were very friendly and self-effacing people, and Eddie even insisted we get a Polaroid taken of he and I together. I kept it on my desk but the thing faded over... > Read more
Sirens
HANK MARVIN INTERVIEWED (2013): Living in and out of the Shadows
9 Oct 2013 | 14 min read | 2
The first British guitar hero – Hank Marvin of the Shadows – is in the studio again in his adopted home of Perth, West Australia. When we call for a chat in advance of a New Zealand tour (dates below) he's contributing to an album by his old Shadows bandmate Brian Bennett, a tribute to the composer John Barry. Others also involved are Peter Frampton and Mark Knopfler he says,... > Read more
Swingtime in Springtime
PETER GABRIEL CONSIDERED (2013): Having others blow his horn
7 Oct 2013 | 2 min read
Things always seemed unusual – and unusually fraught sometimes – in Peter Gabriel's world. In Genesis he attempted to expand the parameters of popular music through increasingly ambitious albums, notably The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in '74, a double which not only came with a metaphorical storyline but a lyric sheet and a separate parallel narrative inside the gatefold... > Read more
Solsbury Hill
GRAEME GASH OF WAVES INTERVIEWED (2013): On the crest of new Waves
4 Oct 2013 | 8 min read | 2
Back in February 2012, I pulled the sole album by New Zealand's Waves from off my shelf and posted the track Arrow as a From the Vaults entry. At the time I said this innovative self-titled album from 1975 by a close harmony, acoustic quartet (with some plugged-in guests) was long overdue for a reissue and noted because their quietly considered sound stood at odds with the prevailing... > Read more
Schooners
OVER THE RHINE INTERVIEWED (2013): At home in a place called Nowhere
30 Sep 2013 | 8 min read
The phonecall catches Linford Detweiler of the American band Over the Rhine in the lobby of a hotel in Iowa City, kids are screaming in the background and when he ambles outside to try and find the tour bus the air is pierced by sirens. “Wow,” he laughs, “maybe Iowa City is pretty interesting after all.” With his other half in Over the Rhine, Karin... > Read more
Highland County
WILLIS EARL BEAL INTERVIEWED (2013): The reluctant Nobody who knows
27 Sep 2013 | 12 min read | 1
In that broad spectrum of characters, craziness and genius in popular culture – from Mormon rockers to gun-carrying hip-hoppers – Willis Earl Beal is unique. And it's not for his backstory which involves medical discharge from the military, itinerancy and a period of homelessness, recording dozens of songs cheaply and giving them away before being discovered by Found... > Read more
ROKY ERICKSON AGAIN (2013): After getting off the elevator
23 Sep 2013 | 4 min read | 2
The pleasure of seeing Roky Erickson when he came to New Zealand is 2012 was that he was Roky Erickson, and he was in New Zealand. Just a few years before, given Erickson's damaged mental state, few would have counted on that happening. As a friend said a week out from the show, "I'll buy a ticket when I know he's on the plane". Having just interviewed Erickson I said,... > Read more
I Have Always Been Here Before
ELVIS COSTELLO INTERVIEWED (2013): And he's differently the same
20 Sep 2013 | 14 min read | 1
Although Elvis Costello will tell me “I haven't accrued a massive fortune but am well off and have a degree of freedom of movement”, you suspect he quite likes upsetting whatever preconceptions people bring to his albums. So when it was revealed his new one Wise Up Ghost would find him working with the American instrumental hip-hop group the Roots, he guessed what people... > Read more
Stick Out Your Tongue
TAMA WAIPARA INTERVIEWED (2013): Hope you like my new direction
16 Sep 2013 | 8 min read
About 10 minutes into a wide-ranging conversation with Tama Waipara – genial, self-effacing without false humility, and a ferociously gifted musician – we finally get around to talking specifically about his new album Fill Up the Silence. I compliment him on making “an album” (reviewed here) and define my terms: a series of distinctive and separate songs that... > Read more
Pasifika
BOB DYLAN: ANOTHER SELF PORTRAIT, THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 10 (2013): More back pages
2 Sep 2013 | 4 min read | 1
For most people, Bob Dylan arrived as fast as lightning and with the power of a hurricane. Fifty years ago last week – fewer than 18 months after his largely ignored debut album – Bob Dylan was at Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington. King delivered his famous “I have a dream speech” and Dylan sang When the Ship Comes In (with Joan Baez) and a solo... > Read more
Went to See the Gypsy
GARETH LIDDIARD OF THE DRONES INTERVIEWED (2013): Existential and everyday horrors
2 Sep 2013 | 10 min read | 1
Australia's outsider rock band The Drones – essentially a vehicle for singer-songwriter Gareth Liddiard aka Gaza – have survived against the odds. They've been through changes of physical location (founded in Perth, ended up in Melbourne), litigation which saw their album Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By in 2010 held up for a year, a... > Read more
Nine Eyes
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN CONSIDERED (2013): A journey of light and shade
30 Aug 2013 | 3 min read
In a world awash with attention-demanding acts like Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Queens of the Stone Age and so on, it's inevitable that many artists – the more discreet ones usually – go right past most people, even if they've had long and creditable careers. One such band is Glasgow's delightful Belle and Sebastian whose thoughtful albums – eight studio releases, a live... > Read more
Your Secrets
SNEAKY FEELINGS CONSIDERED (2013): The Nuns that really flew
23 Aug 2013 | 3 min read
Although Flying Nun was renowned as a label for indie bands (“college rock” as they were known in the States in the Eighties), there were always those on the roster who had a pure pop heart beating: none more so than Sneaky Feelings (1980-89). Along with Martin Phillipps in the Chills and Andrew Brough who brought gorgeous melodies into the early Straitjacket Fits, Matthew... > Read more
LEE HAZLEWOOD REVISITED (2013): Whisky and honey
19 Aug 2013 | 4 min read | 1
When the producer/songwriter and distinctive singer Lee Hazlewood relocated to Sweden at the end of the Sixties -- he said so his son wouldn't get drafted and end up in Vietnam -- it marked the close of a remarkable decade, and perhaps the last most people heard of that oak-barrel baritone which he used on duets with Nancy Sinatra, for whom he wrote her massive seller These Boots Are Made for... > Read more
The Girl on Death Row
ELVIS PRESLEY (2013): The King is gone but he's not forgotten
16 Aug 2013 | 4 min read
When John Lennon was told in August 1977 that Elvis Presley had died, he apparently said, “Elvis died when he went into the army”. That comment is glib, dismissive and inaccurate. But we know what he means. Elvis the rebel rock figure who shook up popular music in the mid Fifties with That's All Right Mama, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede... > Read more
It's Different Now (rehearsal)
JAMES BROWN REVISITED (2013): The Godfather, Parts I, II and III
9 Aug 2013 | 2 min read
If you never saw him at his peak, it's hard to imagine how exciting the late James Brown must have been in concert. I saw him twice when he was past his best, although that first time . . . It was New York in the early 90s and he was at the NBC Radio City Theatre and – having spent the previous day ambling around the famous Apollo Theatre – I couldn't believe my luck at... > Read more
I'll Go Crazy
THE LATE GREAT TOWNES VAN ZANDT, AGAIN (2013): The troubled and troubling troubadour
31 Jul 2013 | 3 min read
When I interviewed Townes Van Zandt in 1988, I had to ask him about his '73 album, The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, the title of which was written in a stark Gothic typeface above a black'n'white photo of him at some emotional and physical distance. He looked a remote figure hunched awkwardly in a corner. It seemed a typically mordant move on his behalf, a man whose lyrics were steeped... > Read more
Snow Don't Fall
THE CLEAN, VEHICLE (2013): Running again at 33 1/3rpm
30 Jul 2013 | 3 min read
By the closing years of the Eighties, Flying Nun -- which had got off to such a brilliant start -- was in trouble, businesswise. The little label that flew had -- like Icarus -- gone too high too fast and had had its wings burned. It was just putting out too many records too quickly and couldn't keep up with demand, had a cash-flow problem and distribution issues (overseas you couldn't get... > Read more
Diamond Shine
SHADOW MORTON (1941-2013): Who knows? The Shadow knows
29 Jul 2013 | 3 min read
Only a fiction writer could make up the life of New York's George Morton, the man who got his nickname "Shadow" because he would simply disappear from work for days at time and whose private life few knew anything of. He was a diligent alcoholic (until hitting a Betty Ford Clinic in the Eighties) and doubtless that explained some of the disappearances. But it was when he was... > Read more
Remember (Walking in the Sand)
WINGS OVER AMERICA (2013): Flying again, but with excess baggage
20 Jul 2013 | 3 min read | 1
When Paul McCartney was approached by Bob Geldof to appear at Live Aid in 1985 he was understandably nervous. He not only didn't have a band – and he'd always been in bands – but he hadn't played live in six years after breaking up Wings which he felt had run its course. It's easy to make jokes about Wings (as Allan Partridge famously did) but rather harder to ignore just... > Read more