Art by Elsewhere
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Elsewhere Art . . . Dave Brubeck
4 Apr 2022 | 1 min read
When I first thought of doing a collage to accompany a piece on Dave Brubeck this idea was almost too obvious: in his younger days he had been on the cover of Time, and his most popular album was Time Out which included the memorable Take Five. It was that Time Out album (the original of which I still have) which attuned me to jazz in the years before the Beatles. I have told some of that... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Fatima al Qadiri
28 Mar 2022 | <1 min read
When I first heard Fatima al Qadiri in 2017 I was thinking of how the music industry (or at least the PR arm of it) tries to get cut-through into the increasingly short-term atention span of the media ... and maybe by extension the people who actually might listen and buy the "product". Especially in the category of "world music". This woman -- born in Senegal,... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Charlie Hunter
21 Mar 2022 | <1 min read | 1
Although I interviewed Charlie Hunter before a concert here I think this image of the jazz guitarist actually accompanied an article in Real Groove magazine. The year when that might have happened is lost to me. But Charlie was a big deal with a new generation because in addition to great jazz chops he covered contemporary material, among them Nirvana's Come As You Are . . .... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Charles Lloyd
14 Mar 2022 | <1 min read
Given that the Charles Lloyd album this was created for is a quiet affair, some explanation is needed of this chaotic looking collage. The album was Lift Every Voice and it has been a longtime Essential Elsewhere Album. But the art refers to the time of its creation, not the resulting music. The great saxophonist -- who had been acclaimed by the hippie/Age of Aquarius generation for... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Amiri Baraka
7 Mar 2022 | <1 min read
I'm pretty sure the late Amiri Baraka (born LeRoi Jones in 1934, died 2014) wouldn't have like me. It might not have been personal, but as white writer sometimes passing an opinion on black jazz and blues I would have no place in his worldview. A poet and playright, social critic, advocate for black militancy and arts, essayist and much more, Baraka could be uncompromisingly blunt but... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Lee Hazlewood
28 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
At the end of the Sixties during which he had become a household name for his duets with Nancy Sinatra, the singer-songwriter-producer Lee Hazlewood seemed to disappear. He went to Sweden where he continued to run his own LHI label, embarked on a number of duets with Swedish singers, recorded the albums Cowboy in Sweden and themed Trouble is a Lonesome Town, and more. Not much of which... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Richard Fariña
14 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
The New York-based folk singer Richard Fariña was an interesting figure: right up until he got on a motorcycle in '66 and crashed. He'd been around the boho folk scene with the Baez sister Joan and Mimi (he married Mimi when she was 17, Thomas Pynchon was his best man) and released a couple of very decent albums and a fanciful autobiography. Joan Baez described him as... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Mills and McCartney
14 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Another example of "if the album doesn't exist, then let's make it". Both characters are real and were actually around Abbey Road studios at the same time. And McCartney being fond of banging the ol' johanna on pub songs, then why might he not hook up with the popular and populist Mrs. Mills? The coincidence of McCartney having been married to Heather Mills later in life... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Victor Young and Thom Yorke
31 Jan 2022 | <1 min read
When Thom Yorke of Radiohead released his soundtrack to the new version of the old horror Italian film Suspiria, it was an opportunity to think about how soundtracks had changed over the decades. And Yorke's mate in Radiohead Jonny Greenwood had also written acclaimed soundtracks, so there were some interesting points of comparision and difference. None more so than thinking about... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Neil Young
24 Jan 2022 | <1 min read
An image not as successful as I would have liked at the time (I was in a rush) but afterwards I warmed to the fact that it slightly more dislocated and dislocating than I had intended. That aspect suited the idea of Neil Young to me. As even the most casual rock listeners must know, for the past couple of decades Young has been releasing numerous albums out of his archives (live... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Leo Ferre
17 Jan 2022 | <1 min read
When I wrote a column Five French Albums I'm Surprised I Own I could just have easily made it 10, 20 or 30 albums. Or a few dozen singles, 10'' or EPs. As I mentioned, the School of Music library at the University of Auckland was downsizing and putting out boxes, literally dozens of albums at a time, of records it no longer needed. Free to a good home. My home as it turned out... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Vini Reilly of Durutti Column
10 Jan 2022 | <1 min read
A few years ago I spent a lot of time listening through to new material and especially reissues by Durutti Column, the UK band lead by singer-guitarist Vini Reilly. I'd heard some of their late Seventies/early Eighties albums at the time but a reissue of them prompted me to go back again. Then not long after, by sheer chance, another Durutti Column album came to hand at random for... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Rod Stewart
5 Dec 2021 | <1 min read
Can't remember which Rod Stewart album prompted this, but when you write a jazz column you look for anything which will hook in passers-by who might otherwise recoil from the J-word. And Rod's album had a track titled Charlie Parker Loves Me . . . so Rod kickstarted a piece about Parker. By this time Rod had separated from his Kiwi-born wife Rachel Hunter so the idea of hauling her... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . the Pipkins
29 Nov 2021 | 1 min read
After a lifetime listening to what Noel Coward dismissively called “cheap music”, Elsewhere is in no doubt about the reductive nature of pop music. But sometimes that's part of its charm. We hold some affection for Herman's Hermits' version of the old music hall song I'm Henry The Eight just for the sheer silliness of it (“second verse, same as the first”).... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Eden Ahbez
22 Nov 2021 | <1 min read
Singer-songwriter Eden Ahbez was a hippie two decades before hippies came to attention. In 1948 Life magazine profiled him -- on the strength of his song Nature Boy which had quickly become a standard after Nat King Cole covered it -- and found him to be a bearded vegetarian longhair into yoga. Elsewhere was drawn to write about him in our on-going column WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT because a... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Ringo Starr
12 Nov 2021 | <1 min read
It seems harmless fun to make up things like Beatles albums or post parodies of academic articles about pop music. But every now and again people take something at Absurd Elsewhere seriously, and yet all the clues that these are parodies, satire or utter nonsense are scattered about. Ringo as a sexually confused young man? I Wanna Be Your Man originally written by some old blues guy?... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Lloyd McNeil
1 Nov 2021 | <1 min read
Lloyd McNeil is a pretty obscure character. First of all he's a jazz musician and that's a minority music, and he played jazz flute, an instrument which hasn't been in the frontline for many decades. And the album this collage was to illustrate was recorded in '69 and only given a run of about 1000 copies. All pretty obscure, right? The album was Asha and it was given a... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . free jazz #2
25 Oct 2021 | <1 min read
This deliberately fractured and crowded collage was created to accompany a piece entitled 10 Rare Free Jazz Albums I'm Proud To Own, one my many recent columns where I look at what is on the shelves and -- sometimes with shame -- decide to write about them as a block. And try to explain why I have them, and sometimes why I shouldn't. As I recall most of the rare free jazz albums... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Sun Ra
18 Oct 2021 | <1 min read
The article this collage accompanied was about a Sun Ra album which ran counter to how many had heard and embraced him, as the spaced out jazz musician heading off to the stars and beyond. Sun Ra had also lead big bands and knew how to write charts which were blues-based and swinging. In that, he was closer to Ellington (hence his cameo here) than some prog-rock band. The album in... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Jeff Healey
11 Oct 2021 | <1 min read
Blues singer- guitarist Jeff Healey -- who died in 2008 -- was a great collector of 78rpm records. When Elsewhere interviewed him in the early 2000s he spoke about the 11,000 he had at home (he'd just bought another 30 or 40 in a nearby store) and so evoking that old time music and look just seemed a bit obvious for this collage. He also loved Dixieland and so there had to be a... > Read more