Absolute Elsewhere
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EDDIE HINTON CONSIDERED (2019): The rainbow writer behind the cloud
25 Jun 2019 | 3 min read | 1
There's one particular annoyance when talking about music in a general conversation with people who aren't argumentative nitpickers and know the name of the second engineer on a Dylan album from the late Eighties no one cares about. It comes in mixed company over dinner or at a function when you suggest a particular artist is “little known”. Then some middle-aged man (it's... > Read more
Standing on the Mountain, by Percy Sledge
MICKIE MOST CONSIDERED (2019): Pop music all present and correct, Sir. Future predicted . . .
20 Jun 2019 | 5 min read
You may not care much – or indeed, at all – for the populist music Mickie Most produced, but you can't deny his gift when it came to picking and creating chart hits. It's quite some musical, generational and genre distance between Donovan's tripped out Mellow Yellow and Sunshine Superman then Kim Wilde's Kids in America, Jeff Beck's singular Ho-Ho Silver Lining . . . .... > Read more
Sunshine Superman (extended mono mix), by Donovan
SCOTT MANNION INTERVIEWED (2019): El grand jefe of Lil' Chief
7 Jun 2019 | 5 min read
It's a Sunday night in the mountain village of Chelva, about an hour from Valencia on Spain's Mediterranean coast. And Scott Mannion has spent some time today in the garden. “Yeah, some music today but also that. Julie's away for the weekend and I was left in charge of weeding which is usually her thing,” he laughs, referring to his wife, the Greek artist Julie... > Read more
DAVID BOWIE: LODGER, CONSIDERED AT 40 (2019): The fantastic voyage into the familiarly unfamiliar
16 May 2019 | 4 min read
Although accepted as the final installment of David Bowie's “Berlin Trilogy” which started with Low and "Heroes", the Lodger album – released 40 years ago in May 1979 – never felt, or even looked, part of the set. Where the covers of its predecessors offered a more muted experience – on Low we see Bowie in profile, kind of low profile as it were... > Read more
Look Back in Anger (1979)
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VANILLA FUDGE: THE BEAT GOES ON, CONSIDERED (2019): The most pointless album of the rock era?
13 May 2019 | 4 min read
When Vanilla Fudge released their Shadow Morton-produced album The Beat Goes On in 1968 the times and drugs were different. Rock musicians were reaching, and often over-reaching, the idea of a “concept” album had become embedded after Sgt Pepper, singles were being sneered at and albums – often with pretensions to classical influences – were where you could make Your... > Read more
THE NEW ORLEANS JAZZ AND HERITAGE FESTIVAL (2019): Celebrating 50 years of itself in a big box set
10 May 2019 | 3 min read
Things are strange when this year Fleetwood Mac headlined one night at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, standing in for the Stones because Mick Jagger was having heart surgery. Yes, the Macband used to play the blues, but that was many decades ago and you wouldn't have thought they'd have much, if anything, to do with the “jazz” and “heritage”... > Read more
Big Chief, Professor Longhair
DUANE AND GREGG ALLMAN, THEIR SHUFFLED-UP DEBUT RECONSIDERED (2019): Southern rock'n'soul brothers
6 May 2019 | 3 min read | 2
Although the Allman name was carried by brother Gregg for decades after the death of Duane, it was that classic Allman Brothers Band which many today default to. After Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident in '71 – leaving behind just three ABB studio albums with him (their self-titled debut in '69, Idlewild South the following year and the posthumous East a Peach in '72) and... > Read more
BANDSTAND, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): Kiwi musicians on Australian screens
30 Apr 2019 | 1 min read
Video may have killed the radio star for the MTV generation, but during the 1960s in Australia, radio stars became household faces when they appeared on the small screen. In New Zealand the 1960s pop programmes In the Groove, Let’s Go, C’mon and Happen Inn(then Free Ride in the early 70s) by producer Kevan Moore – appointment viewing for a young audience wanting to see... > Read more
DENNY LAINE RECONSIDERED (2019): It wasn't much of a holly day
22 Apr 2019 | 4 min read
When he parted company with Paul McCartney at the dawn of the Eighties, Denny Laine had been the former Beatles loyal lieutenant for a difficult decade as McCartney falteringly launched a solo career then steadily soared upwards on the success of Wings. Denny Laine – born Brian Hines, he took Laine in tribute to singers Cleo Laine and Frankie Laine – was there for the first... > Read more
JAN HELLRIEGEL: SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR (book+CD/Seahorse Swim)
21 Apr 2019 | 2 min read | 3
There is an interesting dichotomy in this book-album project by Auckland singer-songwriter Jan Hellriegel: In her prose she has an easy, anecdotal and conversational tone but the published words of the new songs on the tie-in CD are refined, poetic and precise. It is the difference between the artist and the art; and the vicissitudes and joys of the life that informs these penetrating... > Read more
Ice IV
MOANA MANIAPOTO PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): Taking tikanga and politics to the world
13 Apr 2019 | 1 min read
One of the most powerful and politically pointed performances at the 2014 Womad festival in New Plymouth came from Moana and the Tribe who – to thumping beats and a thrilling meltdown of dub, rock, reggae, funk and waiata – delivered a set which surpassed that of the internationals on that same main stage. Among the new songs she delivered – they would appear on... > Read more
SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES, REVISITED (2019): The sources, the song and the trickle-down
5 Apr 2019 | 5 min read | 1
In 1965 Bob Dylan wrote Subterranean Homesick Blues and its innovative video (actually a film, this was before video clips) was much imitated (look down the bottom of this link to just how many!) In subsequent decades some claimed it as the first rap song (it's not, but you can see the argument) and many many times this spoken word/rant style was much copied. It appeared as... > Read more
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S NEBRASKA (2019): The idea for the song from the film of the true story
23 Mar 2019 | 2 min read
It has been more than 35 years since Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, an album that many fans – and Springsteen himself – consider pivotal in his career and an artistic breakthrough into new and rewarding territory beyond rock'n'soul. After the sometimes bombastic heroics and escapism of Born to Run, it's more muted and humane Darkness on the Edge of Town and the double album The... > Read more
JULIA JACKLIN INTERVIEWED (2019): It's life Julia, but not as you knew it
25 Feb 2019 | 17 min read
Yes, Leonard Cohen makes sense . . . but Doris Day and the Andrews Sisters? “Oh, I love the Andrews Sisters,” says Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin of the famous close-harmony Forties and Fifties trio. Jacklin is back in New Zealand for a day to talk about her new album Crushing and to play a brief showcase before a flight back to... > Read more
Head Alone
RICHARD FARIÑA REMEMBERED (2019): The man who wouldn't be king
21 Feb 2019 | 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
DENNIS CASEY OF FLOGGING MOLLY INTERVIEWED (2019): Taking Irish back to the Irish
18 Feb 2019 | 7 min read
Guitarist/singer Dennis Casey may boast a resonantly Irish surname and play in one of the most widely-acclaimed punk-influenced Irish folk-rock bands Flogging Molly, but the phone call catches him at home in Rochester, New York where he lives with wife and four children. And where he was brought up. With a laugh he's prepared to admit that Irish music didn't come to him until... > Read more
JAPANESE AMBIENT MUSIC OF THE EIGHTIES CONSIDERED (2019): The sound of very little, but beautiful
12 Feb 2019 | 5 min read
Someone very famous – who doesn't turn up on a Google search – once quipped “money follows intellect”. You'd like to think it was more true than it is, but it is certainly verifiable when you see Big Money (usually in the form of advertisers) paying top dollar to use the work of creative people. (And I don't mean “creatives” in ad agencies, I mean... > Read more
BILL FAIRS' ROCK'N'ROLL PHOTOS, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): History in the lens . . .
12 Feb 2019 | <1 min read
Many bands have an in-house archivist, the member (or proud parent) who keeps posters, tickets, clippings, photos and such. Such people are invaluable to researchers, historians and the curious. The early New Zealand pop and rock scene from the late 1950s to the early 70s was lucky enough to have saxophonist Bill Fairs, who kept dozens of photos. These charted his career from the school... > Read more
THE PICTONES PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): Hashish in the provinces, or maybe not
11 Feb 2019 | 1 min read
In an odd coincidence, around the same time as the young Beatles went into a studio in Germany in 1961 and backed the singer Tony Sheridan on a rock'n'roll version the old While that uniquely European amalgam out of Hamburg featured a vocalist, the version from the band out of Palmerston North was a Shadows-styled instrumental, and a pretty good one at that. It was on the flipside of... > Read more
PETER POSA INTERVIEWED (2012): Pulling a hit out of the hat
4 Feb 2019 | 9 min read | 3
Half a century ago, in that monochrome world before the Beatles – before even Coronation Street screened on New Zealand television -- guitarist Peter Posa from Henderson rode a wave of local popularity with his single Wheels. As was the custom of the day, he'd adapted an already established hit – by the String-A-Longs out of Texas – and radio picked up his version.... > Read more