Absolute Elsewhere
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THE TEMPTATIONS: Creating Heaven for Motown right here on Earth
16 Apr 2009 | 1 min read
The ever-changing line-up of the legendary Motown soul group the Temptations (only two original members of the '61 founding group by the mid-Nineties when the five-disc retrospective Emperors of Soul was released) made their career a little difficult to follow. But they were one of the cornerstone acts on Motown. Even their most ardent fans might have thought the Emperors of Soul... > Read more
The Temptations: Papa Was A Rolling Stone
LIVING COLOUR: VERNON REID INTERVIEWED (1993): Black, white and everything in between
12 Apr 2009 | 10 min read | 2
It’s an old line but no less true for all that...and when you put it to Vernon Reid of Living Colour, he knows exactly what it means: “Everyone sees the world from their own disadvantage point.” It’s late at night in New York City and Reid is at home and obviously tired. But he still gets a laugh out of the quip. He knows what it means because he sees it all the... > Read more
AN EMERALD CITY INTERVIEWED (2009): The sky-high vision
5 Apr 2009 | 4 min read
To hear guitarist/keyboard player Sam Handley tell it, there was a magical moment when they knew: “That first hit on the drum, it just sounded 10 times bigger than normal”. In this suburban villa in Kingsland, Auckland there are nods of recognition from the assembled members of An Emerald City. They are talking about setting up their gear in a cave at Whatipu in January and... > Read more
An Emerald City:Moon
THE MC5, WAYNE KRAMER INTERVIEWED AND CONCERT REVIEW (2004): The politics of rock
5 Apr 2009 | 9 min read
It's fair to think most people only know the noise of the MC5 through their spiritual heirs: the garageband clatter of the Datsuns, D4, Soledad Brothers, the Black Keys and other such rowdies who have an old-school r'n'b heart and amps turned up to 11. Or maybe people know of them through the connection with their old hometown of Detroit: the Stooges, White Stripes, Dirtbombs, Eminem and... > Read more
The MC5: Ramblin' Rose (1968)
QUINCY JONES INTERVIEWED (1990): The Dude, back on the block
12 Mar 2009 | 5 min read
Quincy Jones doesn’t 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 extraordinary career in music which spans from bebop to hip-hop. This is the man who hung out with jazz artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in the early 50s, counts his Grammy nominations in the... > Read more
Quincy Jones: Perry's Theme from the movie In Cold Blood (1960)
SLIM JIM PHANTOM OF THE STRAY CATS INTERVIEWED, AND CONCERT REVIEW. (2009) Still strutting
10 Mar 2009 | 9 min read
In these days when people are losing their jobs, Stray Cats’ drummer Slim Jim Phantom seems to have more than his share: he co-owns the successful Cat Club on Sunset Strip where he usually plays Thursday nights with celebrity guests; is in The Head Cat with Lemmy from Motorhead; this year is getting together the Forgotten Saints with longtime friend Captain Sensible of the Damned... > Read more
TY INTERVIEWED (2004): British hip-hop to the people
10 Mar 2009 | 4 min read
From this distance, British hip-hop comes down to a few big names: the Streets, Dizzee Rascal and Skinnyman. It takes keen interest -- or a look at the nominees for the highly regarded Mercury Prize -- to come across rapper Ty. But he's not a new name. His debut album Awkward appeared three years ago in 2001 and the Mercury-nominated Upwards came out in 2003. He's had a run of successful... > Read more
JOSE GONZALEZ INTERVIEWED (2004): Quiet is the new loud
1 Mar 2009 | 3 min read
Jose Gonzalez is an interesting series of contradictions: his family is Argentinean but he was born and grew up in Sweden; he played in hardcore bands but has enjoyed huge success with a quiet folksy album; he makes lo-fi music yet has sprung to fame on the back of a memorable telly-ad for cutting edge technology; and he goes untroubled on the streets of his hometown Gothenburg despite being... > Read more
Jose Gonzalez: Broken Arrows
MARY WILSON OF THE SUPREMES INTERVIEWED (2009): The Dreamgirl goes on
1 Mar 2009 | 13 min read | 3
There are many things that stars of stage and screen these days seem very happy to talk about: their former or current addictions, the assault case, the booze-fuelled nights, that bitch/bastard of an ex, their fall from grace and so on. Then there is the taboo area: money. About 15 minutes in to a wide-ranging conversation with a founding member of the Supremes, Mary Wilson -- who was the... > Read more
The Supremes: Stop! In the Name of Love
GENE CLARK, THE ONCE AGAIN BYRD: A true American dreamer
1 Mar 2009 | 3 min read | 1
Former Byrd Gene Clark is so famous he's dead and people write songs about him. Well, Teenage Fanclub did on their album Thirteen album and that's a pretty creditable homage. After all, the Fanclub previously modelled themselves on Alex Chilton's cult-hero band Big Star. Gene, you wanna talk muso-cred? You got it, man. You're another dead cult figure. So wave hello and say goodbye.... > Read more
The Byrds: She Don't Care About Time
BUDDY HOLLY REMEMBERED 50 YEARS ON: His life, his wife, his legacy
19 Feb 2009 | 11 min read
It was 50 years ago, on February 3 1959, that the tail-lights of the red four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza faded into gusty winds over the airport at Mason City in Iowa. Within minutes the single-engine plane had plummeted into the snow-covered cornfields of the thinly-populated countryside. And so it was that America woke up on February 4 to the news that Buddy Holly was dead. He was 22... > Read more
Buddy Holly:Maybe Baby
IVAN NEVILLE INTERVIEWED (2005): The family that plays together . . .
18 Feb 2009 | 4 min read
More than four decades after one of the family first scored a hit, and 25 years from the first Neville Brothers album Fiyo on the Bayou, you could almost forgive the brothers Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril for slowing down a little. The oldest, keyboardist Art, is 68 and had a close call with death after back surgery in late 2001. And their last album, Valence Street in 1999, despite... > Read more
The Neville Brothers: Ball of Confusion
STARSAILOR INTERVIEWED (2001): Big, before the backlash
13 Feb 2009 | 4 min read
Even after you've taken into account his weariness from jetlag and the stress of meeting a dozen strangers important to his career in the past few hours, James Walsh strikes you as hesitant, quiet and slightly overwhelmed by all that's happening. He keeps his eyes modestly downcast and, for one who has already endured and enjoyed the attention of the Britrock media, he seems wary... > Read more
Starsailor: The Thames (from 2009)
NICK CAVE INTERVIEWED (1992): Hyena circles the corpse
10 Feb 2009 | 7 min read
"I went out walking the other day the wind hung wet around my neck my head it rung with screams and groans from the night I spent among her bones... " - Opening lines on Nick Cave’s album Henry’s Dream. If rock music has a reigning Lizard King, it’s Nick Cave. Painfully thin, black hair swept back from a severe widow’s peak, shrouded in... > Read more
Nick Cave: I Had A Dream, Joe
U2'S ZOOROPA TOUR (1993): A report from the frontline when TV comes to town
30 Jan 2009 | 10 min read
The whisper-voice and marble polish Hilton Hotel in Melbourne isn’t the sort of place you’d normally associate with rock ‘n’ roll. Suits and chic glide by, uniforms open doors and fingerprints on the gilt are removed discreetly by maids with an imperceptible swipe of a cloth. The place breathes class. Upper class. But this time last week the lobby of the... > Read more
U2: Even Better Than The Real Thing (Perfecto Mix by Paul Oakenfold)
FLEET FOXES INTERVIEWED (2008): Their remarkable year
5 Jan 2009 | 5 min read
The big music story of 2008 wasn’t Britney back on track, Axl Rose finally delivering the Chinese Democracy album or even Kanye West sidestepping the hip-hop that made his name for an album of songs and techno-blips. It was how the self-titled and self-funded debut album from a previously unknown band -- which didn’t exist outside a studio a year ago -- topped many critics polls... > Read more
Fleet Foxes: Sun It Rises
JOHN HIATT INTERVIEWED (1991): Through a glass, darkly
29 Dec 2008 | 9 min read
Thursday last week and a cool, almost chill night in Los Angeles. It’s a little after nine and John Hiatt is back in his hotel room after dinner. He came in from Nashville a few days ago to do some recording and writing with “three other guys” but is now just making a few phone calls. He flies home tomorrow in time to catch the kids off school for the spring... > Read more
John Hiatt: Riding with the King
HENRY ROLLINS INTERVIEWED (1990): Volume and vehemence
27 Dec 2008 | 9 min read
It’s the handshake which takes you aback first – a real knuckle-crushing pressure grip which Henry Rollins delivers impressively as his eyebrows level and his gaze hardens. On a first meeting, Rollins is a confrontational kind of guy. And a very heavily tattooed man. The tats snake across his taut forearms around his heavily muscled biceps and run down his legs. Across his back... > Read more
Henry Rollins: Vacation in England
ELVIS PRESLEY, THE KING RECLAIMING HIS CROWN IN 1968: Stranger in a strange land
23 Dec 2008 | 4 min read
When you look at the footage now it‘s as if you’ve been tossed down some weird time tunnel. It is 1968 and out on the explosive streets of America are assassinations (Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King), riots and demonstrations, cops wielding clubs, and teargas clouds filling the air. The soundtrack is the Stones’ Street Fighting Man and the day-glo hippie Summer of Love... > Read more
Elvis Presley: That's All Right Mama
10CC SONGWRITER/SINGER GRAHAM GOULDMAN INTERVIEWED (2007): Got hit if you want it
23 Dec 2008 | 5 min read | 2
The measure of how modest -- and successful -- Graham Gouldman has been comes when he quickly corrects the assumption he was on the British number one single Neanderthal Man by Hotlegs in 1971. “I didn’t actually play on it,” he says . . . although it was recorded in the British studio he co-owned by some other guys who he subsequently ended up working with. Who they were... > Read more