Art by Elsewhere

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Elsewhere Art . . . Blue Note reissues

10 Oct 2022  |  <1 min read

This photocopy manipulation may have been because there was a reissue of a bunch of Blue Note jazz albums, or perhaps related to some Blue Note sample/remix albums. Maybe this column? Can't remember. What I do recall was just how long it took to get an image which I thought worked by allowing the separate album covers and artists to be discerned if you spent a few seconds looking... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . David S Ware

3 Oct 2022  |  <1 min read

This scattergun Pollock-like piece was done for Real Groove magazine to illustrate an article about the American free jazz musician David S Ware, who pointed out free jazz ain't free, it comes with a high price for the artist. The article started by noting how the dogmatic neo-con movement steered by Wynton Marsalis and others had further marginalised free jazz as a form of expression, yet... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Robert Graettinger

28 Sep 2022  |  <1 min read

Our on-going WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . pages allows us to introduce unusual artists or albums, and sometimes another view of a familiar name. There are some pretty oddball characters covered there, and one is this fellow, Robert Graettinger. The heading on my piece was The Ghoul of Third Stream because he was a two-metre tall musician/composer described by Art Pepper as looking... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Ray Cathode

18 Sep 2022  |  <1 min read

Most people looking at this simple collage would see immediately that it isn't someone called Ray Cathode but in fact is famed Beatles' (and others) producer George Martin. But before the Beatles and fame came calling he was a jobbing producer doing comedy albums and also having a bit of fun himself, as in this instance when he recorded an electronic-cum-jazz-cum-MOR single as Ray Cathode.... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Douglas Lilburn

5 Sep 2022  |  <1 min read

The remarkable Douglas Lilburn has appeared a couple of times at Elsewhere because of his musical curiousity and willingness to move from fairly traditional classical music through a specifically nationalistic conception of New Zealand music and then making a massive break with the traditions by embarking on electronic music and the use of tape machines. His latter work rarely gets played... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Bert Jansch

29 Aug 2022  |  <1 min read  |  1

As we've noted somewhere at Elsewhere, about every eight years some well-intentioned British rock magazine like Mojo or Uncut will deliver a huge article about Nick Drake as a great artist in the hope of ressurecting his short career for a new audience. At any given moment since his death in 1974, there have probably been almost exactly the same number of people who know and love his work.... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . militant free jazz

15 Aug 2022  |  <1 min read

As Elsewhere has noted a few times when dealing with the albums and the topic, most of the militant black free jazz albms of the late Sixties/early Seventies came out on small independent labels with limited runs. As a consequence many of these albums have disappeared although if you were lucky enough (as Elsewhere was) you could sometimes find them in secondhand record shops. So when... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . The Jazz Butcher

8 Aug 2022  |  1 min read

The British post-punk band The Jazz Butcher lead by Pat Fish (who died at age 64 in October 2021) were not widely known in New Zealand, but when a swag of their albums were reissued in a box set in 2017 (The Wasted Years) it was time to acknowldge them. They were different, fun, challenging and popped out shouldabeen hits with alarming frequency. And when the reissues kept coming... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . ugly humanity, never to be forgotten

1 Aug 2022  |  1 min read

Few people would want to write about, or hear about, the worst aspects of humanity. But if we didn't then, as the philosopher said, if we don't learn from history then we're condemned to repeat it. Tragically, we don't learn and we repeat: everywhere from the India/Pakistan partition and Northern Ireland to Biafra, Cambodia, Israel/Palestine, the various -stans of that interminable warzone... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Courtney Pine

25 Jul 2022  |  <1 min read

As mentioned previously, some of the collages appearing here were for the magazine Real Groove which was mostly read by people into pop, rock, hip-hop and alt.country etc. I wrote about jazz (and elsewhere)! Always a hard sell. For the life of me I can't remember why Bob Marley should have been here but Pine said he was influenced by reggae (and recorded a reggae album just to... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Diana Krall, Karrin Allyson

18 Jul 2022  |  <1 min read

This collage was done for Real Groove, a magazine whose audience was predominantly into rock, pop, hip-hop and Americana etc. I had a jazz column and that is always a hard sell, so I tried to make art which caught people's attention. I seem to recall I was writing about these two artists who had released albums of jazz ballads . . . but maybe neither had done Misty? That would... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Skeptics

14 Jul 2022  |  1 min read

Anyone who encountered the New Zealand band Skeptics would get this deliberately confontational image which is an implosion of Munch, a meatworks (where animals are slaughtered) and the scouring effect of a needle cutting into  . . . vinyl/the brain? Skeptics were not what anyone might call an easy proposition and regrettably their astonishing and loudly direct career was cut short by... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . John Scofield

11 Jul 2022  |  <1 min read

American John Scofield has long been one of Elsewhere's favourite jazz guitarists . . . and not just for his playing. His song titles -- chosen by his wife he told me once -- can be pretty damn funny: Big Fan, Go Blow, The Guinness Spot, The Beatles and The Stones, I Brake 4 Monster Booty . . . My recollection is he first came to New Zealand in the early Eighties (for a festival Rodger... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Kenny Barron

12 Jun 2022  |  <1 min read

Jazz pianist Kenny Barron was coming to New Zealand in 2017 and who wouldn't want to intervew him? He'd played with Dizzy, Getz, Charlie Haden, founded the group Sphere to keep the music of Thelonious Monk alive and . . . So much more. He was a fascinating guy to speak with but when it came to creating a college for the article I realised he was not "a face" to anyone outside... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . The Beatles' Whiter Album

15 May 2022  |  <1 min read

As regular followers of Elsewhere's shamlessly stupid Absurd Elsewhere pages will know, sometimes for my own amusement I just make stuff up, like newly discovered albums, lost Beatle releases, academic articles full of pompus nonsense and so on. This image was one I prepared to accompany an article about an anniversary reissue of the Beatles' White Album but as a remix by George Martin's... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Frank Zappa

15 May 2022  |  <1 min read

I have done a few collages of Frank Zappa (one of Frank as the Mona Lisa) because his distinctive appearance lent itself to a kind of cut-up and refracted image . . . which I felt also reflected his very diverse music. As with the albums where you listen to one and think you've figured him out then another one is so different it changes your persective, I hoped this kind of image would have... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . the Beatles

25 Apr 2022  |  1 min read

Because there is a finite number of studio recordings by the Beatles, just for my amusement I sometimes make up my own and write about them under the Absurd Elsewhere page. Given the title of that page and the uttery improbable albums I invent (not all by the Beatles as you may see if you look: Taylor Swift, Lorde and Jimi Hendrix are not immune) it always surprises me how many people take... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Japanese ambient artists

25 Apr 2022  |  <1 min read

When the very beautiful collection Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental and New Age Music 1980-1990 arrived in 2019 it was so seductive and engrossing that it was quite transporting. Not to the busy Japan of streets and markets or the oppressive highrises that are so familiar, but the quieter interior spaces in offices and homes and temples. This collage was an attempt to... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . the Modern Jazz Quartet

18 Apr 2022  |  <1 min read

This art was just absurd . . . as absurd in a way as the fact the buttoned-down, besuited and ineffably cool Modern Jazz Quartet would briefly appear on the Beatles' Apple label for two albums in the late Sixties. The American group seemed incongruous on a label launched the wake of Sgt Pepper and which was scooping up oddballs or releasing Lennon and Harrison's vanity projects. But... > Read more

Elsewhere Art . . . Chet Baker

11 Apr 2022  |  1 min read

Chet Baker was -- like Dean Martin -- a man whose gifts came so easily he took them for granted and was casually dismissive of them. Dean would walk into a recording studio or onto a film set, do what was required with the minimum of effort and then head for the golf course or, later in life, to the same restaurant. The gift was just there to to be rolled out when required and then he could... > Read more