Absolute Elsewhere
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FIFTIES ROCK'N'ROLL; LOUD, FAST AND OUT OF CONTROL: Rock 101, The Originators
14 Jul 2010 | 5 min read
Billy Joel isn't usually cited in the Elsewhere world as an insightful reference, but his feisty We Didn't Start the Fire of the mid-Nineties was a brisk, rocking historical synopsis of our time (JFK, Chernobyl etc) which was referenced a little in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues chant-poem of three decades previous. However, by starting his countdown of great events from the... > Read more
Wanda Jackson: Let's Have A Party (1958)
GUY CLARK INTERVIEWED (1989): Close to the chest and heart
12 Jul 2010 | 4 min read
In a way it almost doesn’t matter if you don’t know who Guy Clark is -- Bono and the rest of U2 do. Not only do they attend his concerts (and a month ago, when Clark was in Dublin for a television show, they dropped by there too), but the Irish stadium rockers have signed this quiet singer/songwriter from Nashville to a distribution deal with their newly established Mother... > Read more
BILL LASWELL INTERVIEWED (1994): In the den of the alchemist
28 Jun 2010 | 13 min read
The apartment seven floors up on Park Ave South, just around the corner from the exclusive Gramercy Park area of New York, is much as you might expect. Albums and CDs line the walls. Over there the new Last Poets 12-inch single leans against the wall, on that shelf there the Yoko Ono CD box set sits alongside books by Carlos Castenada. Photographs of William Burroughs and Lee Scratch... > Read more
Material: Black Light (from Hallucination Engine, 1994)
CHRIS BAILEY, THE SAINTS, INTERVIEWED (1994): From Saint to Pope
21 Jun 2010 | 7 min read | 1
There were always a couple of good reasons for liking the Saints, Brisbane’s punk-to-pop finest who were fronted by sole constant Chris Bailey. The first was Bailey running intellectual rings around rock show host Dick Driver on national television. The other was a great song. What that song was came down to taste. Maybe it was their first hit from ’77, a piece of... > Read more
Chris Bailey: On the Avenue (from 54 Days at Sea, 1994)
THE CHURCH INTERVIEWED (1994): Men keeping the faith
21 Jun 2010 | 9 min read
Fourteen years after springing their classic paisley-pop hit An Unguarded Moment, six years on from picking up an American gold disc for their album Starfish and looking at a back-catalogue of releases that reaches dangerously close to double figures, the Church -- now trimmed back to founder members Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper after the departure of bassist Peter Koppes - are... > Read more
The Church: Day of the Dead (from Sometime Anytime, 1994)
ROSANNE CASH INTERVIEWED (2004): The road less travelled
21 Jun 2010 | 6 min read
When Rosanne Cash crashed into the country music scene in the late 80s she was, as the Americans say, a real piece of work. With purple hair, a drug problem and a brusque manner, she arrived in Nashville from California and immediately alienated the country music establishment. Despite her high irritant factor, Cash - daughter of Johnny and born the same month in '55 that her dad... > Read more
Rosanne Cash: Western Wall
NEIL FINN AND CROWDED HOUSE (2010): The returning son
14 Jun 2010 | 2 min read
Many, many years ago Neil Finn told me he believed bands, and he was referring to Split Enz at the time, had a natural lifespan. Some years after that – in 2001 when he was well into a solo career with the album One Nil – I asked him the question again, and specifically if he felt that about Crowded House. His answer was the same. Yes, bands did have a natural lifespan... > Read more
Crowded House: Archers Arrows
BILLY BRAGG INTERVIEWED ABOUT WOODY GUTHRIE (1998): Woody'n'Wilco and rude'n'boozy songs
14 Jun 2010 | 5 min read
From the rollicking singalong which opens the new Mermaid Avenue album by Billy Bragg, you know something is different. There’s Bragg and the American band Wilco in a swaggering tale of looking for booze and, to put it delicately, female companionship. From there on it’s a strange trip with Bragg and the band: an old man’s teenage reminiscences of taking a girl’s... > Read more
Jeff Tweedy and Billy Bragg: California Stars
ANTON FIER PROFILED (1988): A new career in a new town
7 Jun 2010 | 5 min read
Anton Fier was, until recently, a star without a bank account -- or manager come to that -- and yet at the nucleus of the hippest collection of New York’s avant-garde ever to hit vinyl. When Fier gets going, the going gets fearful as left-field jazz players, peripheral rockists and unusual combinations of singers,squawkers and shapers come together under the banner of his band,... > Read more
Golden Palominos: Omaha (1985)
TURIN BRAKES INTERVIEWED (2004): Something in the ether
5 Jun 2010 | 6 min read
So you're travelling to the States soon and wondering about that new fingerprinting and high-security thing at the airport on arrival? Tell it to Gale Paridjanian of Turin Brakes. He's been down that path repeatedly, the first time almost a year ago. "I was born in Iran," says the quietly spoken Londoner, who first sang with bandmate Olly Knights in the church choir at age seven .... > Read more
THE WHITE STRIPES INTERVIEWED (2003): The Elephant in the room
1 Jun 2010 | 8 min read | 1
Jack and Meg White are easily spotted in the large lounge of Sydney's swanky new W Hotel on a converted wharf in Woolloomoloo. But they were always going to be. The Detroit duo who are The White Stripes - formerly said to be brother and sister, but now we know are ex-husband and wife - always wear a combo of red and white, and occasionally black. On this day Jack sports a red shirt, black... > Read more
The White Stripes: I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself
CLIMIE FISHER INTERVIEWED (1988): Studio changes everything
1 Jun 2010 | 6 min read
The rock music thing used to be quite straightforward. A few people got together, practiced a few covers, wrote some original material and the band honed its act in pubs and clubs and on the road. Somewhere down the line a record company appeared and the band made records. These days that process can be reversed. Noel Crombie of Schnell Fenster talks of journalists being flown... > Read more
CHRIS WHITLEY INTERVIEWED (1991): The Law man living with the lore
24 May 2010 | 7 min read | 2
Sometimes you can just get too much too soon - and the wrong kind of attention. Take American singer Chris Whitley, whose debut album Living with the Law has been picking up praise by the bucketload. Sure it’s a great album; Rolling Stone called it “riveting and original” before acclaiming Whitley as “a visionary who trades on archetypal symbols and classic... > Read more
Chris Whitley: Big Sky Country
SAM COOKE, GOSPEL INTO POP: The change was always gonna come
24 May 2010 | 4 min read
At this distance, we can’t be expected to understand what the death of Sam Cooke in the sleazy Hacienda Motel in ’64 meant to black Americans. The former gospel singer was found slumped against a wall – naked except for an overcoat and one shoe, gunned down by the motel owner after a woman he’d picked up in a bar had fled his room claiming he attempted to rape... > Read more
Sam Cooke: Somewhere There's a Girl (1961)
THE VERLAINES; REISSUED AND RECONSIDERED (2010): Listened to Mahler, look over my shoulder . . .
17 May 2010 | 5 min read
Quite why anyone thought there ever was a "Dunedin sound" is bewildering -- without even hearing a note of the music all you had to do was look at the cover of the famous "Dunedin double" album of mid '82 to see how each of the four bands -- the Stones, the Chills, Sneaky Feelings and the Verlaines -- thought of themselves and wanted to portray that to the world. On... > Read more
The Verlaines: Doomsday
GRAEME DOWNES OF THE VERLAINES INTERVIEWED (2003): Such brave, flawed diamonds
17 May 2010 | 8 min read
If there were awards in local rock for candour beyond the call of duty, then Graeme Downes, linchpin of the formative and formidable Flying Nun band the Verlaines (1981-97), would be saying “Thank you” at the podium more than most. Always a straight shooter, Downes settles over lunch to chat about the long overdue Verlaines’ compilation - the 19-track You re Just Too... > Read more
The Verlaines: Anniversary (from Some Disenchanted Evening, 1990)
UTE LEMPER INTERVIEWED (2010): The fearless angel comes treading
15 May 2010 | 4 min read
Ute Lemper – the foremost interpreter of Weimar cabaret songs and the music of Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill and Edith Piaf – doesn't pull her punches. With no prompting at all after she mentions one of her most recent projects has been creating a multi-media theatrical setting for the poetry of barfly Charles Bukowski, she notes the production is better received in Europe... > Read more
BAND OF HORSES, TYLER RAMSEY AUDIO INTERVIEW (2010)
15 May 2010 | 1 min read
Originally out of Seattle, Band of Horses have had one of those constantly evolving line-ups that makes for a confusing family tree. Three-quarters of those on the first album quit before the second album leaving founder Brad Bridwell to not only rebuild the band but relocate to South Carolina where he came from. Others made guest appearances live and on record but didn't seem to be... > Read more
OCEAN COLOUR SCENE INTERVIEWED (1996): Take it to the top
15 May 2010 | 7 min read
From the outside – even on the rather mundane inside -- the Irish Centre on Birmingham's dreary, windswept Digbeth High St doesn't look like the city’s premier rock’n’roll venue. And it’s probably not, but . . . “Yeah, the history’s here though,” says Ocean Colour Scene’s lanky frontman Simon Fowler as he sits in a cramped room... > Read more
Ocean Colour Scene: The Riverboat Song (from Moseley Shoals)
GORDON RAPHAEL, PRODUCER OF THE STROKES, INTERVIEWED (2004): The sky cries wary
12 May 2010 | 9 min read
Gordon Raphael’s small and shabby studio rooms near London’s classy Docklands have all the obligatory paraphernalia of most recording studios: a deceased lava lamp, Iggy Pop and Hendrix albums stacked up, and Houses of the Holy on a battered turntable. One wall is covered by a swathe of material with an eye-abusing design located somewhere between early Sixties pop art and... > Read more