Absolute Elsewhere
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BETH HART INTERVIEWED (2000): Stories to sell and tell
18 Feb 2000 | 3 min read
On what felt like one of Auckland's most humid days of the year, Los Angeles-based singer Beth Hart was coiled on a couch in the lobby of the Sheraton, swathed in an enormous black woollen coat. Gaunt and sporting a massive shoulder tat, the anorexically thin serial smoker cut a striking figure. But up close it was her eyes -- penetrating, impossibly clear, unwavering and betraying... > Read more
LA Story
St GERMAIN, INTERVIEWED (2000): The global tourist seeing very little
8 Feb 2000 | 4 min read
Ludovic Navarre shakes his head, mystified when I mention the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. This French DJ, musician and producer who currently goes under the nom de disque St Germain has just come from Japan and I have second- guessed he might have raided record shops in fashionably hip Shinjuku as he has during his two-day stop in Auckland.But no. Just saw the hotel in Japan, one interview... > Read more
PAUL McLANEY, INTERVIEWED (2001): Permanence . . . but always moving
8 Feb 2000 | 5 min read
To see Paul McLaney perform is to be in the presence of a commanding voice. To hear his quiet conversation is to eavesdrop on music history as he effortlessly namechecks Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, British folk-jazz players Nick Drake and John Martyn, and the 70s Indo-jazz fusion outfit Shakti.Within a free-ranging half-hour he also quotes Noel Gallagher and knowledgeably mentions PJ... > Read more
ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, INTERVIEWED (2000): Talkin' 'bout a revolution?
7 Jan 2000 | 4 min read
Today the sound of the coming anarchist revolution gets an airing at the Big Day Out, courtesy of Germany's Atari Teenage Riot.These self-avowed anarchists whose industrial strength implosion of punk, thrash, samples and air-punching sloganeering makes for an explosive noise, are on the barricades - or at least standing on the stage monitors - haranguing capitalism and its evil works.The... > Read more
OZZY OSBOURNE INTERVIEWED (1997): Free range expletive man
3 Jan 2000 | 3 min read
Bat-biting, dove-decapitating, parent-baiting, C-of-E, heavy metal man . . . and a thoroughly nice bloke with a personal best of four unpublishable obscenities in a mere 10 seconds. Then again, he was talking about the royal family and, although he concedes he’s “not a royalty person,” saying that Princess Diana “Wasn't a Royal person. She was like a regular... > Read more
RANDY CRAWFORD, INTERVIEWED (1999): And the hits just kept not coming
8 Sep 1999 | 3 min read
On the line from her management office in Los Angeles this week, pop-soul chanteuse Randy Crawford laughs about the earthquake which recently shook the city and popped a train off its tracks in the nearby Mohave Desert."Just another day in LA," she chuckles, saying that yeah, she woke in the night and thought uh-huh ...However, quite what her days and nights usually hold is more... > Read more
GUITAR WOLF, INTERVIEWED (1999): Japan's Joan Jett generator
2 Sep 1999 | 4 min read
It's not so much a language barrier as a kind of vocabulary sieve which comes between a well-intentioned English-language interviewer and Japan's semi-legendary Guitar Wolf.The words go back and forth down an international phone line but only a few either way are mutually decipherable. Words like "rock'n'roll," "Joan Jett," "yeah, rock, yeah" and "punk... > Read more
DAVID BOWIE INTERVIEWED (1999): Man of the new millennium
2 Jun 1999 | 6 min read
There's something irritatingly enjoyable about an audience with David Bowie. It's in the jocular familiarity he readily adopts with a stranger, the easy self-deprecating humour, the unforced elegance with which he pronounces "homm-aaage" where you or I might say homage ... Here's a man who can even make his enormous wealth - estimated around $US1.5 billion ($2.8 billion)... > Read more
STUART BRAITHWAITE OF MOGWAI, INTERVIEWED (1999): Highly predictable unpredictability
6 May 1999 | 3 min read
For a man whose most famous published statement is, "We hate everyone," Stuart Braithwaite of the Glaswegian band Mogwai is a remarkably friendly guy.On the phone from Melbourne earlier this week, he chatted easily about the touring life, the band's wish that audiences would just shut up and listen to the music, and how much he likes the mood of Nick Drake's classic folk album Pink... > Read more
ANI DiFRANCO, INTERVIEWED (1999): The righteous babe
27 Apr 1999 | 5 min read
Some people - even when separated by the distance of a phone line spanning an ocean and across a continent - you just like immediately.Maybe it's because she laughs often at herself, but Ani DiFranco is someone you warm to quickly.First up she asks if it's a decent hour in New Zealand for me to be talking to her and seems genuinely relieved when I reassure her. And you, Ani?"Oh yeah, fine.... > Read more
DEE-JAY PUNK-ROC, INTERVIEWED (1999): Pay atteeeeeen-shun!
7 Jan 1999 | 3 min read
Being disciplined and focused, that's what it's all about, says British-based, Brooklyn-raised Dee-Jay Punk-Roc.It's a refrain you hear often enough from the hip-hop community but 27-year-old Charles Gettis is talking about the United States Army, in which he spent five years."Yeah, it cleans you up, puts you in the right direction and it's about purpose and discipline," he says of... > Read more
BOB DYLAN: LIVE 1966; THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 4 (1998): Cheers and jeers
1 Nov 1998 | 1 min read | 1
Appropriately on the Columbia Legacy label, this double disc (Volume 4 in the on-going Bootleg Series) contains the whole of the famous "Royal Albert Hall" concert -- actually at the Manchester Free Trade Hall -- where a voice from the darkness yelled, "Judas." This is the stuff of legend, and the accusation from some aggrieved folkie that Dylan was betraying his... > Read more
BRUCE RUSSELL OF THE DEAD C, INTERVIEWED (1998): Rock on a budget
6 Sep 1998 | 3 min read
There have been few reasons to record anything off music television lately, but an opportunity comes tomorrow night in, of all places, the relentlessly sponsored Ground Zero.Somewhere between product placements, the Dead C will play live - and for those who haven't followed the footnotes of New Zealand rock, that's a rarity. Rare to the point of being a first.After 12 years the three-piece out... > Read more
PAULA COLE, INTERVIEWED (1999): Arm-en to that
8 Feb 1998 | 3 min read
You'd have to concede one thing about Paula Cole. She's candid.In a 20-minute phone interview, the former Peter Gabriel backup singer - best known for her solo hits Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? and I Don't Want to Wait, the theme for telly's Dawson's Creek - admits her new album hasn't done the business she hoped for.And she's felt increasingly uncomfortable with her high profile since... > Read more
THE NEW LOUNGEHEAD, INTERVIEWED (1997): Something weirdly good this way comes
18 Sep 1997 | 3 min read
“It’s hard to say you’ve got a jazz background in New Zealand,” says Dan Sperber, guitarist and founder member of the New Loungehead, “because it’s very small and inbred. “And the young people involved wear suits and are under pressure to conform to older guys’ notions of jazz, playing those old tunes again and again. That music has got... > Read more
SULATA, INTERVIEWED (1997): From school to stardom
28 Feb 1997 | 6 min read
Sulata sits in the large, empty conference room at Festival Records and awaits callers. She’s misplaced her schedule, has already done a few face-to-face interviews and later in the day there are phoners to various radio stations around the country. That’s what happens when you put an album out. Her heart, naturally enough, isn’t here. It’s at home with her two-month... > Read more
UNITONE HiFi INTERVIEWED (1996): Did you pack the bag yourself, sir?
5 Dec 1996 | 3 min read
It's all very well touring the provinces but increasingly New Zealand musicians are making the big leap direct into the world. Stinky Jim – one third of dubble your sound, double your pleasure outfit Unitone HiFi – is telling of an experience in a small mediaeval town in France The question was simple: when Unitone took off on a month-long tour of Europe recently was there a... > Read more
PHIL FUEMANA INTERVIEWED (1994): Talking loud and standing Proud
25 Mar 1994 | 6 min read
Phillip Fuemana, tour manager for the big Proud show which arrives at the Powerstation for an all-ages event tonight, speaks of the learning curve some of the acts have negotiated as the month-long tour has wound its way around the country. Not only have the performers learned how to live with each other and the etiquette of motel living (“for some of these guys it’s their first... > Read more