Absolute Elsewhere
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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
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)
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