Absolute Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
EVAN DANDO OF THE LEMONHEADS INTERVIEWED (2004): Learning to crawl
1 Feb 2010 | 7 min read
You know how the arc of fame moves in the States: you have a minor career in rock, hip-hop or the movies so you take to drink, drugs or become addicted to pain-killers. (Who knew there was that much lower back pain in success?) Then you spin out of control. You do silly things such as marrying in Las Vegas to someone you just met, date transvestites or punch a photographer. Then you get... > Read more
Evan Dando: Frying Pan
JEFF KELLY AND THE GREEN PAJAMAS: The other sound of Seattle
29 Jan 2010 | 3 min read | 1
One day, just before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I had lunch with a friend. When I told him I was going to Seattle he said, "Are you going to see Green Pajamas?" I had no idea what he was talking about, I thought he meant some stage play.At this point my friend -- who has a big-time job in a major record company -- regailed me with enthusiasm about the genius of Jeff... > Read more
Green Pajamas: The White Witch
PET ROCKS AND PUNK ROCK: Have A Nice Decade; The '70s Pop Culture Box considered
17 Jan 2010 | 2 min read
It might have been famously "the decade that taste forgot", but the Seventies has spawned an interesting nostalgia for smiley faces (on e-mails!), terrific films such as Dazed and Confused . . . and this extraordinary box set of seven CDs which unflinchingly collects up the great (James Brown's The Payback, Freda Payne's Band of Gold and Gladys Knight and the Pips' Midnight Train to... > Read more
Paper Lace: The Night Chicago Died
MOTOWN, THE FIRST TWO DECADES: There's a place in the sun
11 Jan 2010 | 3 min read
In 2009, Motown celebrated its 50th anniversary. Not that there was much to celebrate in 2009. The golden years for this classic and culture-shifting label had started to wither some three decades previous and it was notable that when it released compilation albums to cash in on this anniversary they were shoddy and sorry affairs, woeful in their tracklisting, and elevated Michael Jackson.... > Read more
Marvin Gaye: I Heard It Through the Grapevine
MAURICE GREER INTERVIEWED (2002): A stand-up guy
9 Jan 2010 | 3 min read
Yes, it would be at least 30 years since they'd last played together, says Maurice Greer sounding as if the enormity of that chasm in time had just hit him. "Gee, it must have been about the end of 1970, because we'd done the Pins In It album and we'd gone to Australia and Billy had stayed there and I came back and we had a keyboard player ... We've got a family tree made up and... > Read more
MARIANNE DISSARD INTERVIEWED (2009): The Tucson chanteuse
7 Jan 2010 | 11 min read
Marianne Dissard is a woman whose music confounds expectations, yet there is an impeccable logic to it: she is French but lives in Tucson, so there is an almost inevitable marriage of chanson and Americana on her album L’entredeux which was produced by Joey Burns of Calexico, who also wrote the music which envelops and supports Dissard’s poetic lyrics. She in fact has also been... > Read more
Marianne Dissard: L'embellie
NU METAL IN 2001: Look at the nu boss, same as the old boss
1 Jan 2010 | 6 min read
Heavy metal is for young men without a war of their own, wrote a wag in Creem magazine some time in the early Seventies. At the time Led Zeppelin were stomping across the planet delivering their stolen blues and post-pop at ear-shattering volume. You can catch it in their concert film The Song Remains the Same -- and they look like a bunch of pussies. Metal these days is a much more... > Read more
THE ROLLING STONES' GET YER YA-YA'S OUT! (2009): The '69 Garden party
13 Dec 2009 | 4 min read | 1
The live album -- or double live as was standard in the days of vinyl -- has had a chequered history in rock: some live albums defined an artists career (Frampton Comes Alive, Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous) and others added little to the sum of our knowledge (most of Dylan's). Some artists regularly drop live albums (Paul McCartney, who has a huge backlog of songs to draw from) and others... > Read more
The Rolling Stones: Love in Vain
JOHN BOUTTE INTERVIEWED (2002): Easy out of the Big Easy
27 Nov 2009 | 4 min read | 1
If you could distil the history of New Orleans down to a few litres of blood, they'd probably be pumping around John Boutte's body. Listen to this. "The European side of my family has been here since 1760. There were two brothers Boutte, Pierre and Hillary, who was an architect who built what is now the oldest theatre in New Orleans. It was originally the Spanish governor's... > Read more
John Boutte with Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt: Make a Better World (from the album Slide to Freedom 2)
LONG JOHN BALDRY INTERVIEWED (2002): What becomes a legend most.
16 Nov 2009 | 4 min read
They didn't call him Long John for nothing. Standing more than 2m tall, John Baldry was a towering figure in British r'n'b during the 60s. Alongside John Mayall, Long John Baldry was a kingmaker whose various groups included the young Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, later of the Rolling Stones, and the 16-year-old Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin). Rod Stewart, whom Baldry spotted playing... > Read more
GWEN STEFANI of NO DOUBT INTERVIEWED (2001): Style and substance
15 Nov 2009 | 8 min read
The fact is, Gwen Stefani of No Doubt looks even more gorgeous lounging casually on the couch opposite than she does in her carefully styled photo shoots. While her magazine image is often that of a distant, pouting, sexually empowered ice-queen -- "Glamazon" is the new description -- in real life she glows naturally, laughs unselfconsciously, radiates curiosity and furrows... > Read more
No Doubt: Hey Baby
THE DECEMBERISTS’ JOHN MOEN INTERVIEWED (2009): Marching to his own drum
10 Nov 2009 | 11 min read
With all due respect to their craft, drummers aren’t usually the people you want to interview in a band. As saxophonist Branford Marsalis -- who played in Sting’s band -- recently noted, the audience’s attention is on the singer and the guitarist, “the rest of us are just background.” And the drummer -- who doesn’t write or sing the songs -- is maybe the... > Read more
The Decemberists: Won't Want for Love
THE POSIES, KEN STRINGFELLOW INTERVIEWED (2006): Power pop to the top
26 Oct 2009 | 4 min read | 1
For a man about to go on stage in Holland, Ken Stringfellow sounds as if he’s got his feet on the desk and thinking about getting home for a night in front of the tele. The relaxed Stringfellow has spent a large part of the past 25 years facing audiences: with the neo-psychedelic outfit Sky Cries Mary out of Seattle in the late 80s; in the past decade as a member of REM’s... > Read more
The Posies: Conversations (from the album Every Kind of Light, 2005)
LLOYD COLE INTERVIEWED (2000): This changing man
23 Oct 2009 | 4 min read
Lloyd Cole, the Derbyshire-born pop singer-songwriter who sprang to attention in the mid-80s for his introspective literate lyrics with his band the Commotions, quit Britain for New York in 1988 for six months - and has now stayed for 12 years. With his American wife and two children, he lives in the wilderness three hours north of New York and two hours west of Boston. He has a... > Read more
LLoyd Cole: Are You Ready to be Heartbroken? (from Rattlesnakes)
JORDAN REYNE INTERVIEWED (2009): Tales from the dark side
22 Oct 2009 | 11 min read
Jordan Reyne is one of New Zealand’s most challenging and innovative songwriters. Whether it be on albums under her own name or as Dr Kervorkian and the Suicide Machine, Reyne has pushed sonic and lyrical boundaries, pulled together electronica and acoustic instruments, explored noir-narratives and personal emotional states . . . and largely gone without an audience. Which might... > Read more
Jordan Reyne: Passenger (from the album Passenger, 2004)
JUDEE SILL (1944-79): The disappearing crayon angel
18 Oct 2009 | 4 min read | 1
There seem an alarming number of women musicians written out of popular culture: Doris Troy, Minnie Ripperton, Laura Nyro, Judy Henske, Mireille Mathieu, folk-rocker Cindy Lee Berryhill . . . And who these days even cites Janis Joplin either as an influence, or simply as someone worthy of serious critical or popular attention? These (and dozens of others) were all women who made, if not... > Read more
Nicolai Dunger: Soldier of the Heart
THE FLAMING LIPS' WAYNE COYNE INTERVIEWED (2004): In search of the miraculous
17 Oct 2009 | 8 min read
Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips is in his kitchen in Oklahoma City saying he likes that rock'n'roll is a broad church. It allows alternative music to co-exist with MTV and pop radio. "I don't want the world to be just made up of music like the Flaming Lips, White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I like that rock'n'roll is an uncontrollable beast throwing away great artists and celebrating... > Read more
The Flaming Lips: All We Have is Now (from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots)
GREG JOHNSON INTERVIEWED (2009): The song, not the singer
16 Oct 2009 | 6 min read
The first call catches Greg Johnson and his wife Kelli somewhere in the empty landscape of Texas heading for Shreveport, Louisiana with a fuel gauge hovering near “Empty”. “We’re looking for gas at the moment,” he says slightly anxiously, and there follows a brief and fraught discussion in the front seat. They are turning back rather than run out of petrol.... > Read more
Greg Johnson: You Stay Out of Your Life
BIG STAR REISSUED AND REVERED (1992): The Great Lost American Pop Band - found!
13 Oct 2009 | 4 min read
The reputation and influence of some artists far outstrips their sales figures. Dylan – even at his various peaks – was hardly shipping out albums by the crate load and Van Morrison’s seminal/essential/classic (pick your own adjective) Astral Weeks clocked up sales of only a quarter of a million copies in the States. The trickle-down of the Sex Pistols and Velvet... > Read more
Big Star: Thirteen
LOU BARLOW INTERVIEWED (2003): Dinosaur walking again
12 Oct 2009 | 5 min read
As a cruel ploy it was also kind of funny. When guitarist J. Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow in Dinosaur Jr got to the point that they couldn't even talk to each other, the end was inevitable. They'd had a good few years, but in 1989 Mascis told Barlow he was breaking up the band. The following day he reformed it -- without Barlow. Barlow was miffed, to put it mildly (his song The Freed... > Read more