Absolute Elsewhere
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SHARON O'NEILL ACKNOWLEDGED (2017): This heart, this song, this legend
18 Nov 2017 | 4 min read | 1
Sharon O'Neill – this year's inductee into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards – is a singular talent. And in the late Seventies and early Eighties she was an artist at the top of her game unlike any other: Three times best female vocalist at the New Zealand Music Awards ('78, '79, '80, the only person to win in three consecutive... > Read more
Danced in the Fire
HEATHER LEIGH PROFILED (2017): A very different kinda coal miner's daughter
14 Nov 2017 | 4 min read
Anyone who had the gut strength and emotional resilience to undertake German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann's astonishing, heroic, muscular and often sensitive solo performance in Auckland a few years ago (see a review here) will be thrillingly fearful in knowing this giant of free jazz -- and an utterly singular performer -- is returning for another short tour. But this time he brings... > Read more
All That Heaven Allows (Heather Leigh solo)
RICHARD X BENNETT REVISITED (2017): Halves of a whole full of spirit'n'soul
6 Nov 2017 | 3 min read
Four years ago Elsewhere received – possibly unsolicited – an album by New York-based pianist Richard Bennett . . . . Well, New York-based when he wasn't in Mumbai or Japan. That New York City Swara album immediately got Elsewhere's attention, not just for Toronto-raised Bennett's admirably unusual globe-trotting but for its rare co-joining of jazz... > Read more
The Camel, from the album What Is Now
THE UNDISPUTED TRUTH CONSIDERED (2017): Truth or consequences?
23 Oct 2017 | 5 min read | 2
Unlike so many of their soul peers out of Motown like the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Supremes and many others, the Undisputed Truth never quite made the splash they perhaps should have. Or more correctly could have, if the planets had aligned differently. Very few of their songs were played on New Zealand radio, which was certainly keen on Motown and... > Read more
Law of the Land (1973 single version)
10 UNUSUAL 10 INCH RECORDS I'M SURPRISED I OWN: What's smaller than an album but bigger than an EP?
16 Oct 2017 | 8 min read | 1
In the past Elsewhere has indulged itself with a column entitled promisingly 10 Shameful Record Covers I'm Proud to Own (and the there was 10 More and another 10 More and Another 10). Then there was 10 Shameful Records I'm Embarrassed to Own as well as 10 Album Cover Parodies and 10 Good Albums in Bad Covers. Oh, and 10 Odd Unplayed Albums in My Collection (and inevitably... > Read more
THE VODAFONE NEW ZEALAND MUSIC AWARDS 2017: But before we open the envelopes . . .
6 Oct 2017 | 7 min read
There were a few interesting things to observe about the recent APRA Silver Scrolls held in Dunedin. First they were in Dunedin and it seems a good thing to spread the ceremony around . . . although the sound on the broadcast suggested some people down south need to up their game for the demands and expectations of a 21st century audience. It allowed big city folk to say,... > Read more
SHEL TALMY CONSIDERED (2017): He really got them, oh yeah
2 Oct 2017 | 5 min read
Some record producers have a sound so distinctive that – like the names of John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the marquee outside the cinema – they are the drawcard in themselves. Few but the most diligent rock scholars could name the various Checkmates, Shirelles or Ronettes, but everyone can recognise they were produced by Phil Spector. His “wall of... > Read more
Drowning in My Own Despair, by Oliver Norman (1967)
THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE TRUTHS OF CHUCK AND BOB (2017): Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan as others did them
2 Oct 2017 | 4 min read
Everywhere you turn these days someone is telling you that something is counter-intuitive; that the opposite of what you expect is actually what works or is true . . . Something like that. Now, it isn't really counter-intuitive to say that other people actually did the songs of Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan better than the songwriters themselves . . . but two albums... > Read more
JAY FARRAR/SON VOLT CONSIDERED (2017): The compass and the course
1 Oct 2017 | 3 min read
Back at the dawn of the Nineties critical consensus and discerning listeners were drawn towards the emerging alt.country/American sound coming out of the US. It wasn't new, it drew from old styles of country but placed them within a post-Band/ contemporary punk rock ethic. And one band became emblematic of the style: Uncle Tupelo out of Illinois. Their excellent if small-selling... > Read more
THE QUIET DRAMA OF BARK PSYCHOSIS (2017): The spell and the curse of the Hex
11 Sep 2017 | 4 min read | 1
Most dictionaries will tell you that a “hex” can be a benign spell at one end of the description but a curse at the other. It can also be a verb and a noun, so you can hex someone with a hex. And that makes “Hex” an appropriate title for the sole album by the British band Bark Psychosis. (An aside here, no dictionary will have an entry for “bark... > Read more
The Loom
REB FOUNTAIN CONSIDERED (2017): Arrows from and to the heart
5 Sep 2017 | 4 min read | 2
Although this essay is about New Zealand singer-songwriter Reb Fountain, we need to start by acknowledging her friend Sam Prebble who died with tragic suddenness in 2014. Prebble was a gifted songwriter, an intelligent and likeable man. And, for me, that genuine rarity: a gentleman. Elsewhere had frequently praised his work when he appeared and recorded... > Read more
Annie V (from Little Arrows)
RATTLE RECORDS' RECENT RELEASES (2017): And the hits just keep coming
28 Aug 2017 | 5 min read
The Auckland-based Rattle label has now passed 25 years of recording cutting edge contemporary classical music, magisterial projects such as Michael Houstoun's Beethoven complete piano sonatas, albums featuring taonga puoro, commissions for New Zealand classical performers, electronica-influenced studio works, an imprint of Rattle Jazz and so much more. The rewards have been in the... > Read more
YOKO ONO REISSUED (2017): Back on plastic, Ono bands
25 Aug 2017 | 4 min read
In an off-the-record aside back in 94, the producer Bill Laswell – who recorded Yoko Ono's album Starpeace of '85 said to me she “sang in the key of flat”. He also admitted he'd only done the album for the experience and to see inside the Lennon-Ono Dakota apartment, and that he wouldn't comment on the album musically. Fair enough. Despite decent... > Read more
ELVIS PRESLEY REVISITED (2017): The kid who became King
31 Jul 2017 | 3 min read
The further we get away from Elvis Presley – he came to fame 60 years ago and has been dead for 40 – the harder he is to see. His career was, by current standards, quite short. Those who came to attention in the UK punk explosion around the time of his death have had careers twice as long. And immediately after his death at just 42 his legacy fell prey to... > Read more
Maybellene
STEVE HACKETT INTERVIEWED (2017): From Genesis to self-revelation
17 Jul 2017 | 9 min read | 3
When rock encyclopedias describe Steve Hackett along the lines of “former guitarist with the British progressive rock band Genesis” they do him a disservice. Yes, Hackett was an integral member of the band between the Nursery Cryme album in '71 and Seconds Out ('77), the Peter Gabriel-into-Phil Collins years which most consider the band's finest period. But look at... > Read more
STEVE GUNN INTERVIEWED (2017): Know the past to know your future
19 Jun 2017 | 7 min read
Steve Gunn is a very nice guy to talk to . . . but he's a helluva hard guy to talk to. For the first five minutes of our scheduled conversation to him at home in New York, the Skype connection keeps dropping out. For all that time we get no further than, “Hi Steve and thanks for taking the time to . . .”. “Steve, I can't hear you and . .... > Read more
Full Moon Tide
CHUCK BERRY CONSIDERED (2017): He gave us that rock'n'roll music
16 Jun 2017 | 6 min read
There's a very easy case to be made that Chuck Berry – who died earlier this year 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 music and... > Read more
Big Boys
MALCOLM BRUCE INTERVIEWED (2017): Another spoonful of classic Cream
30 May 2017 | 7 min read
Malcolm Bruce is very much the son of his father the late Jack Bruce, best known as the bassist/singer and songwriter in Cream alongside drummer Ginger Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton. That late Sixties supergroup, whose members came together with impeccable blues and jazz pedigrees, may have been short-lived – just a little over two years... > Read more
EVAN DANDO REVISITED (2017): It's a shame about Evan being bored with himself
29 May 2017 | 5 min read | 2
When Evan Dando emerged on the cusp of the late Eighties/early Nineties in the Lemonheads he was the gift to the grunge era. He was very good looking, part slacker but undeniably smart, had impeccable taste in covers (on the Lemonheads ’90 EP Favourite Spanish Dishes he covered Mike Nesmith’s Different Drum, Glenn Danzig’s Skulls, the New Kids on the Block’s... > Read more
Sucker Punch
THE BEATLES . SGT PEPPER RECONSIDERED (2017): One more time with . . . remixing?
26 May 2017 | 12 min read | 1
With the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and its inevitable reissue, the headlines are writing themselves: “We hope you have enjoyed the show”; “It was 50 years ago today”; “They loved to turn you on” . . . and any other variant of lyrics from that seminal and singular album.... > Read more