Absolute Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
SPACE FARM REMEMBERED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2018): Reaching for the spiritual sky
17 Nov 2018 | 1 min read | 1
Although Harvey Mann and Glen Absolum were not alone in embracing the spiritual philosophy of Krishna consciousness which emerged in the early 1970s, they were among New Zealand’s most visible adherents to this path of spiritual enlightenment. So much so that in May 1972 the New Zealand Herald reported on the phenomenon of the chanting, shaven-head Krishnas on Auckland’s... > Read more
JIMI HENDRIX; ELECTRIC LADYLAND REMIXED AND EXPANDED (2018): Not such a slight return to the voodoo child
15 Nov 2018 | 6 min read | 1
The notion of “the group” is firmly embedded in rock culture. From the Ronettes through REM and the Ramones to Radiohead, the concept of a small coherent unit is a cornerstone, even if in some instances – as with the Rolling Stones, Motown acts and famously Menudo – the moving parts may change. Think the alphabet: Abba, Beatles, Clash, Doors . . . A few artists... > Read more
Angel Caterina (1983) demo
THE BEATLES: THE WHITE ALBUM REMASTERED AND EXPANDED (2018): You say it's its birthday?
12 Nov 2018 | 11 min read
Half a century ago when The White Album appeared, large parts of the Western world and beyond seemed to be tearing themselves apart, just six months on from the incense'n'marijuana whiff of the Summer of Love. 1968 began badly and got worse: During the Tet Offensive in January Vietcong insurgents rose up all over South Vietnam and one unit got into the grounds of the US Embassy in Saigon;... > Read more
Good Night rehearsal
STEVE KILBEY OF THE CHURCH INTERVIEWED (2018): Having to go through all these things again
11 Nov 2018 | 14 min read
Whoever first said it, someone probably centuries ago, doesn't matter because the essential truth of it holds true: Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it. In popular music the wish is often that Big Hit which can lift a band or artist from the wings and place them on centre-stage where those things they've yearned for – money, fame and acclaim – all follow.... > Read more
Reptile (from Starfish)
KIWI PSYCHE-ROCK AND POP RESURRECTED (2018): Do you think you're groovy?
11 Nov 2018 | 3 min read
Once again compilation enthusiast Grant Gillanders trawls the vaults, magazines and his very large contact book to bring another couple of installments of his usefully annotated collections of New Zealand music from a time when men's hair and collars were longer and bell-bottom trousers were de rigueur for both sexes. His on-going A Day in My Mind's Mind psychedelic rock series reaches... > Read more
LEW PRYME REMEMBERED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2018): The silver Sixties star with a secret
10 Nov 2018 | 1 min read
It’s a measure of the popularity of singer Lew Pryme in the mid 1960s that he should appear in the John O’Shea directed music/comedy movie Don’t Let It Get You alongside Howard Morrison, the young Kiri Te Kanawa, the Quin Tikis, Herma Keil and then-hot Australian singer Normie Rowe. Pryme – with his chiselled looks, wide smile and bleached-silver hair swished back... > Read more
TAMA RENATA REMEMBERED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2018): Guitar Warrior
7 Nov 2018 | 1 min read
Directed by Lee Tamahori, the opening scene of the 1994 film Once Were Warriors is among very few viscerally powerful sequences in New Zealand cinema. The camera lingers on a picturesque scene of Aotearoa New Zealand scenery of a river and mountains … then pans down to reveal it is just a power company billboard beside a motorway slicing through urban blight. As much as its visual... > Read more
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)
HORST STUNZNER OF THE SAMOAN SURF RIDERS INTERVIEWED (2018): Fresh off the boat and into the studio
14 Oct 2018 | 7 min read | 1
To hear 84-year old Horst Stunzner tell it, the recording session in 1964 took place somewhere just off Queen St in Auckland. The group was in and out quickly, he expected there might be a single come of it and as far as he remembers little if any money changed hands. “Rudolf and Hugo might have signed something,” he recalls, “but the rest of us never saw any contract, and... > Read more
Tiligiligi (Medley)
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
THE ROLLING STONES; BEGGAR'S BANQUET REISSUED AT 50 (2018): A walking clothesline of styles
3 Oct 2018 | 8 min read | 2
Half a century ago the Rolling Stones released their Beggar's Banquet album, widely considered a return-to-form after the debacle of their shapeless attempt at psychedelia on the largely unlistenable Their Satanic Majesties Request of December 1967, released some six months after the Beatles' Sgt Peppers. In a cover which referred to Pepper's glowing hippie-era colours, Satanic Majesties... > Read more
No Expectations
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 CONSIDERED (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