Absolute Elsewhere

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TODD RUNDGREN INTERVIEWED (2010): Getting out his Johnson for you

19 Sep 2010  |  14 min read  |  1

Todd Rundgren laughs as he predicts the end the current model of on-line music sales which will disappear like the Sony Walkman and vinyl singles: “Because some songs are priceless, some songs are worthless . . . and some songs are worth exactly 99 cents”. He should know. In a 40-plus year career he's made songs, and whole albums, in each category. However although he... > Read more

Todd Rundgren: Hellhound on my Trail (from Johnson)

THE NEO-FOLKIE BOHOS OF THE NINETIES: Talking New York City

13 Sep 2010  |  5 min read

In the early Nineties – three decades after the original urban folk movement in Downtown – there was a whole new neo-boho scene in New York. Michelle Shocked was just the first and copped the publicity but behind here were Kirk Kelly, Roger Manning and Cindy Lee Berryhill - all of whom dressed like fashionable alternative-Eighties types (black jeans), played like early Bob... > Read more

Cindy Lee Berryhill: Damn, I Wish I Were A Man

IAN McLAGAN INTERVIEWED (1999): Face, the music

13 Sep 2010  |  5 min read  |  1

Ian McLagan bangs away at the hotel piano and, without missing a beat, offers an unpublishable aside. Politely translated, the music business being what it was then, he wasn’t financially rewarded for his tenure in the Small Faces, one of the classic British bands of the Sixties. The Small Faces enjoyed a string of hits and, in January 1968, endured a notorious tour of... > Read more

Ian McLagan and the Bump Band: Hello Old Friend

LIKE, OMIGOD! THE 80'S POP CULTURE BOX (TOTALLY) (Rhino box set)

12 Sep 2010  |  2 min read

The Eighties was probably no more different or diverse than any other decade, but it does seem weird on reflection: Ronald Reagan and the Rubik Cube; the arrival of CDs, CNN and MTV; personal computers and ghetto blasters; Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta; Ozzy eating a bat and suave Duran Duran; cocaine and Jane Fonda's workout videos; Thriller; the departure of John Lennon, Bob Marley,... > Read more

The Dream Academy: Life in a Northern Town

JAMES McMURTRY INTERVIEWED (1990): In from the wasteland

6 Sep 2010  |  9 min read

The literary landscape of the American south sets it apart from that of the rest of the country. The hard indifference of William Faulkner’s world is reflected in his lean poetic writing; the inhospitable, suspicious small towns and brooding menace stand stark in Eudora Welty’s stories, and crippling heat brings sweat and malice from every pore in Tennessee... > Read more

James McMurtry: I'm Not From Here

MEAT PUPPETS INTERVIEWED (1989): Disney avant-metal rock

5 Sep 2010  |  7 min read

It's an old truism and therefore probably quite false, but it goes like this; ask musicians their influences and you can pick their sound. It certainly doesn't hold up when you speak to Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets from Arizona. After he’s ticked off The Beatles, Joe Walsh, Yes (!), and Black Sabbath, he then confuses things further by adding in the free-jazz group The... > Read more

Meat Puppets: Sexy Music

LOU REED'S BETWEEN THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION: Boxed for you in '92

30 Aug 2010  |  3 min read

Blame Dylan for box sets. It was his Biograph in November ’85 (16 unreleased tracks among the 53 spread across five albums, later three CDs) which began things by reaching 33 on the American charts. Sure, there had been box sets before – but mostly for dead guys. Dylan and CDs together proved there was money in this market. Then his spectacular Bootleg Series in 91 set... > Read more

R.E.M.; THE EARLY YEARS: Mumbling into the future

19 Aug 2010  |  3 min read

When R.E.M sneaked up in the early 80s with their debut album Murmur, few could have anticipated what the band meant – and would become. Just as Talking Heads had become the banner-waver for emotionally distant New York art-rock a few years previous, R.E.M were the band which announced college rock radio could be as influential as mainstream stations. And that “alternative... > Read more

MEAT PUPPETS 1982-88: Acid rock baked by desert grunge

16 Aug 2010  |  4 min read  |  1

In the more strange corners of the Eighties on the SST label there were -- between the dreadful Zappa-clown Zoogz Rift and solo projects by various Violent Femmes – thrilling bands like firehose, Black Flag and Husker Du. And the very wonderful Meat Puppets, a trio out of Phoenix, whose brains seemed completely fried by drugs, comics and the desert sun. And in that post-punk,... > Read more

Meat Puppets: No Longer Gone (from Forbidden Places)

BURT BACHARACH IN 1995: The slow rehabilitation

16 Aug 2010  |  3 min read

Mainstream pop culture has witnessed some peculiar pairings, none more so than when Noel Gallagher, mastermind and songwriter behind the Britrock band Oasis, climbed on stage in London recently to perform with Burt Bacharach. Gallagher, a 29-year-old mouthy wide boy from Manchester, would seem to have nothing in common with the urbane, tanned 67-year-old Bacharach, the elder statesman... > Read more

Gene Pitney: Only Love Can Break A Heart

MICHAEL JACKSON; LIVE IN '96: The man who fell to Earth

12 Aug 2010  |  6 min read

Somewhere around the midpoint of his often exceptional but undeniably messianic concert in Amsterdam 10 days ago, Michael Jackson fell to his knees and appeared to weep uncontrollably. Jackson -- whose stage craft was impeccable and dancing as exciting as expected -- remained hunched over and apparently sobbing on the enormous stage for what seemed a remarkably long time. But it... > Read more

PAUL JONES PROFILED: Can sing, can act . . . can do

10 Aug 2010  |  4 min read

Paul Jones has enjoyed a remarkable career in and – most rewardingly -- out of pop music. After only three and a half years with the Sixties band Manfred Mann, during which he sang their chart hits, Do Wah Diddy, If You Gotta Go and Pretty Flamingo, Jones walked away and into a solo career (hits High Time, I've Been a Bad Boy (which was used in the film Privilege in which he... > Read more

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AT 60: Still running through America

9 Aug 2010  |  2 min read  |  2

Sometimes we forget just how huge Bruce Springsteen has been: between '75 and '85 alone he sold in excess of 50 million albums (one of them, The River, was a double) and although he deliberately turned from mainstream success with low-key albums like Nebraska (in '82) and The Ghost of Tom Joad ('95) that has hardly stopped his juggernaut. His Greatest Hits released in '95 notched up a... > Read more

Bruce Springsteen: You're Missing (from The Rising)

DEAN HAPETA'S 2002 UPPER HUTT POSSE REMIXES: Say The Word, and you'll be freed

2 Aug 2010  |  2 min read

Dean Hapeta was the mainman in the Upper Hutt Posse (which also included singer-songwriter Emma Paki), the group which recorded the first New Zealand rap single E Tu in 1988. It was a powerful (if thin-sounding) statement of Maori anger and unashamedly used te reo (the Maori language) to strident effect. See lyrics below. Hapeta - as Te Kupu/The Word - has since carved a distinctive... > Read more

BLAIR JOLLANDS INTERVIEWED (2004): Kiwi expat under a watchful eye

2 Aug 2010  |  4 min read

The Cafe Bangla restaurant in London's Brick Lane isn't too difficult to find - and it's worth the effort. It's a couple of doors along from the one with Prince Charles' photo in the window. Which is ironic because the chief feature of Cafe Bangla - aside from reasonably priced and generously sized Indian meals - is a mural of the face of Lady Di hovering over a landscape. It is... > Read more

Blair Jollands/El Hula: When the Devil Arrives at My Door

THE GRATEFUL DEAD: The Dead rise again

28 Jul 2010  |  4 min read

There are some pretty odd tribute albums out there lately - and they seem to be getting stranger by the day. A couple of years ago it was all sensible kind of stuff, artists getting together to play Byrds songs or salute Neil Young. That’s cool. These days, however, we are getting albums like the Manson Family Sings the Songs of Charles Manson(previously unreleased 1970... > Read more

Cowboy Junkies: To Lay Me Down

WAI INTERVIEWED (2000): One hundred percent te reo to the future

27 Jul 2010  |  3 min read

Maaka McGregor has had a good day. In Auckland for a week from his home in Titahi Bay and talking up the Wai 100% album he has recorded with his partner Wai (aka Mina) Ripia, he's just come from Mai FM. His pitch met with a positive, if unpublishably enthusiastic, response from programme director Manu Taylor. A good day. McGregor is under no illusions how difficult it will be to... > Read more

ROGER GUINN, BACK FROM RIO (1991): The return flyte

19 Jul 2010  |  2 min read

When Jim McGuinn changed his name to Roger in ’67 during a period of chaos without and within for The Byrds, there were those who thought it was an elaborate hoax. Jim had taken off to Rio and been replaced by his lookalike brother, said Paul-is-Dead paranoids and conspiracy theorists. Hence the wry in-joke title on his album Back From Rio in 1990, McGuinn’s first solo... > Read more

Roger McGuinn: Someone to Love

QUINCY JONES INTERVIEWED (1990): The boss back on the block

19 Jul 2010  |  6 min read

Quincy Jones does quite put it this way, but he knows that with great power comes great responsibility. And Jones has great power because of a financial empire founded on an extra ordinary career in music which spans from be-bop to hip-hop. This is the man who hung out with jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the early Fifties, counts his Grammy nominations in the... > Read more

Quincy Jones, Ice T, Tevin Campbell, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and others: Back on the Block medl

WANDA JACKSON INTERVIEWED (2010): The 72-year old teenager

14 Jul 2010  |  9 min read

As a teenager barely out of school, Wanda Jackson – “the sweet girl with the nasty voice” as she became known – toured with and dated Elvis Presley; scored minor hits with Mean Mean Man, Fujiyama Mama (big in Japan in '58) and her signature song, the larynx-tearing invitation Let's Have a Party in 1960. Let's Have a Party – which Presley had... > Read more