The Album Considered
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VARIOUS ARTISTS: OUT OF THE CORNERS, CONSIDERED (1982): Sisterhood was doing it for itself
7 Dec 2020 | 3 min read
When the New Zealand Herald wrote about this independent album of female artists released by the Web Women's Collective – which included the Topp Twins, Mahina Tocker, Di Cadwallader, Val Murphy and others – the article appeared on the Mainly Women page. To be fair to the Herald, it didn't have entertainment or album review pages at the time and so at least it did cover this... > Read more
VARIOUS ARTISTS; SLY AND ROBBIE PRESENT TAXI, CONSIDERED (1981): Reggae inna state of change
16 Nov 2020 | 2 min read
In the early Eighties reggae was reeling after the death of Bob Marley, the figurehead of style he popularised and, for the great middle-ground audience, was the genre's most identifiable figure. But when reggae had broken in the early Seventies on the back of Marley and the Wailers' upward trajectory, it was apparent to close observers that the tiny island of Jamaica was awash with talent:... > Read more
OLIVER LAKE and JUMP UP: PLUG IT, CONSIDERED (1983): Forget art and argument, let's dance
9 Nov 2020 | 4 min read
First of all, you have to remember the period in which this album by saxophonist Oliver Lake arrived: Wynton Marsalis was making his career run on the back of his neo-conservative stance (hailing Ellington and early Miles, dismissing post-bop, fusion and free jazz etc) and in his corner he had the bullish critic and cheerleader Stanley Crouch. Marsalis being articulate, sharp, handsome and... > Read more
THE BETA BAND: THE 3 EPs, CONSIDERED (1998): The four amigos from Glasgow
3 Nov 2020 | 2 min read
By the time Scotland's Beta Band got to their self-titled debut album in '99, many writers and fans felt they had already done their best work. It has been on three separate EPs – Champion Versions ('97), The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos (both '98) – which had enjoyed such a cult following that they were repacked as The 3 EPs which took their slacker... > Read more
Dry the Rain
RONNIE SUNDIN with WILL JESS and his JESTERS: RONNIE, CONSIDERED (1960)
19 Oct 2020 | 3 min read
Although we are right to celebrate our musical pioneers and predecessors, there is serious danger of falling into the myth of exceptionalism, the belief that New Zealand artists were all pretty great and those obscure albums being resurrected from secondhand stores are lost works of art. Well let's be frank, some artists were mediocre and very few albums from the Sixties particularly... > Read more
PAUL McCARTNEY: FLAMING PIE, CONSIDERED (1997): The man in the mirror stares himself down
12 Oct 2020 | 5 min read
The Eighties was a tough decade for many who had come to attention in the Sixties: any Best of 80s Bob Dylan compilation is scraping around; singers like Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick all but disappeared for a while; Van Morrison's album were patchy, the Stones recycled themselves to lesser effect and most people couldn't name a Kinks album in the Eighties. And what of... > Read more
THE BUCKINGHAMS: KIND OF A DRAG, CONSIDERED (1967): The British Invasion from the Windy City
5 Oct 2020 | 3 min read
With their ever-so British name, Carnaby St attire and fashionably Beatles-style hair – not to mention their upbeat pop – the Buckinghams should have been contenders in the mid-late Sixties. And in a modest way they were: they enjoyed two top 20 hits here (Kind of a Drag in '67, Susan the following year) and five in the US (those two, plus Don't You Care, Mercy Mercy Mercy and... > Read more
RHINOCEROS: SATIN CHICKENS, CONSIDERED (1969): Made like the Monkees, and not built to last
2 Oct 2020 | 6 min read
If a supergroup is made of people who have had acclaimed prior form, what do we call a group which did nothing at the time but whose members went on to bigger and better things? Is that like a preparatorygroup? We've encountered their likes before in bands such as the Funky Kings, but Rhinoceros out of LA also have an interesting second-tier backstory – a kind of... > Read more
DeBARGE: IN A SPECIAL WAY, CONSIDERED (1983): Love in the school corridors
25 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
In this on-going series of articles about albums randomly pulled off the Elsewhere shelves for consideration, they've all made sense and have a memory/backstory somewhere. Except, so far, this one. In a Special Way on Motown by the dance/disco r'n'b-cum-ballad band from Detroit is a mystery to me: I have no idea why I have it or where I got it from. It is in mint condition... > Read more
THE MERSEYBEATS: THE MERSEYBEATS, CONSIDERED (1964): Really mystified . . . and the mystifying rest of it
21 Sep 2020 | 4 min read
Across a number of illustrated articles, Elsewhere has shown how Beatles' album covers became so iconic that they would be copied, parodied and paid earnest homage to. If their debut Please Please Me caused no visual ripples at the time (although it did subsequently), With the Beatles of 1963 was a real game-changer. By this time they were Enormously Famous in Britain (America would... > Read more
ELECTRONIC ART ENSEMBLE: INQUIETUDE, CONSIDERED (1982): Electric music for the mind and boredom
18 Sep 2020 | 2 min read
In the early Eighties the great American jazz labels like Columbia/CBS and Verve were struggling: at CBS Miles Davis wasn't selling and Wynton Marsalis was only just starting his career; Verve was undergoing constant business and takeover issues to its detriment. In Europe however ECM was flourishing, recording the kind of jazz which appealed to a young, educated, white audiences and... > Read more
ELLEN FOLEY; SPIRIT OF ST LOUIS, CONSIDERED (1981): Here, there and all over the place
14 Sep 2020 | 3 min read
In the slipstream of their success with London Calling, while battling with CBS, changing managers and wresting scattershot material for what would become their triple album Sandinista!, the Clash still found time for other projects. Among them they helped out their friends Pearl Harbor and Mikey Dread on their albums, and most notably were all over Spirit of St Louis, the second album by... > Read more
STEPPENWOLF: LIVE, CONSIDERED (1970): More but not necessarily better
10 Sep 2020 | 3 min read | 2
Of the very few people I know who have Steppenwolf albums, none have any other than the three I have owned: their self-titled debut (which featured Sookie Sookie, Born to be Wild and The Pusher); The Second (which included Magic Carpet Ride) and this, their first live album, which was a double of course and had all those hits, most of them stretched out a bit. No one seemed to have their... > Read more
SPLINTER: THE PLACE I LOVE, CONSIDERED (1974): And introducing . . . Hari Georgeson
7 Sep 2020 | 4 min read | 1
As with the ill-fated Badfinger, the duo of Bill Elliott and Bobby Purvis – known as Splinter – enjoyed the patronage of various Beatles, in their case particularly George Harrison. And like Badfinger, they were spotted by Beatles factotum and friend Mal Evans who brought them to Harrison's attention in the wake of the Beatles' break-up and trouble with Apple. By the early... > Read more
BOB DYLAN/GRATEFUL DEAD: DYLAN AND THE DEAD, CONSIDERED (1989): He's got a lotta nerve . . .
31 Aug 2020 | 4 min read | 1
By critical and popular consensus, when Bob Dylan teamed up with the Grateful Dead for a tour in the late Eighties it was a terrible mismatch and out of it came the live album Dylan and the Dead, widely considered among the worst – if not the worst – album of Dylan's career. Given their collective memories of music from before rock'n'roll (country, bluegrass and so on) and a... > Read more
JOHN MAYALL: THE TURNING POINT, CONSIDERED (1969): Blues powered down
24 Aug 2020 | 3 min read | 1
One afternoon in late '69, while walking in central London, I saw a striking album cover in the window of a record shop across the road. It looked to me like Brian Jones blowing a harmonica, and for a moment I hoped it might be a posthumous blues album by the founder of the Rolling Stones. Still looks like that to me today, more than half a century on. Hard to shake first impressions.... > Read more
BILLY CHILDISH: ARCHIVE FROM 1959, CONSIDERED (2009): His rowdy and rough wayward ways . . .
21 Aug 2020 | 4 min read | 2
While it's feasible to live a happy and productive life never having heard a note of Britain's Billy Childish (b. Steven Hamper, 1954), the question is, “Why would you?” Perhaps the most off-putting reason would be, “But where would I start?" And that's fair enough because Childish has released – under his own name and that of his many bands –... > Read more
STEVE REICH: DIFFERENT TRAINS/ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT, CONSIDERED (1989): Repeat as required
10 Aug 2020 | 3 min read
The 1965 recording It's Gonna Rain by the New York composer Steve Reich was one of the most interesting, innovative and important pieces of its era. At least for Reich. In San Francisco, Reich had heard a streetcorner preacher Brother Walter in apocalyptic mode warning of another Great Flood to wipe out sinners, and Reich recorded him. As with Dylan's Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Reich... > Read more
PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA: PLAYS THE POPULAR CLASSICS, CONSIDERED (1974): So bad it's . . . just bad?
2 Aug 2020 | 3 min read
In the liner notes to this hilariously unlistenable and sometimes punishingly painful album, the producer Brian Eno notes that “it is important to stress the main characteristic of the orchestra, that all the members of the Sinfonia share the desire to play the pieces as accurately as possible”. Well, they might try. But they can't . . . and in fact their renditions of In... > Read more
TOMASZ STANKO: LONTANO, CONSIDERED (2006): Emotion from a distance
31 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
Rock audiences have a forgivable problem with jazz groups: the membership of jazz outfits can just keep changing. If you like the Arctic Monkeys chances are you can expect the line-up not to change much over the years. Rock bands -- for the most part -- have an enviable stability which they guard jealously. Consider how long it took for Rolling Stone Ron Wood to be accepted as fully-fledged... > Read more