Essential Elsewhere
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Marvin Gaye: Trouble Man (1972)
9 Jan 2017 | 5 min read
In the sales charts, music history throws up some wonderful anomalies, like the Beatles' innovative double A-side single Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever being kept off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck's ballad Release Me in early '67. And that Marvin Gaye's aching lament for his nation and the troubling times of the early Seventies, What's Going On, was kept off the number... > Read more
Poor Abbey Walsh
Vanessa Daou: Zipless (1994)
18 Jul 2016 | 2 min read | 2
There is sexy music and there is sex music. And there can be quite a difference between the two in execution. Prince made a lot of sex music but slightly less sexy music; Donna Summer and Jane Birkin brought orgasms to music -- and so did Yoko Ono who screamed it to the ceiling and beyond. Ono was sex, the other two sexy. Sometimes Grace Jones could be both. Sexy music -- the... > Read more
The Long Tunnel of Wanting You
Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance (2005)
11 Jul 2016 | 3 min read
The great Italian composer, arranger and conductor Ennio Morricone will be 88 later this year, but he is still as productive as ever. And in February he conducted a concert of his music at London's O2 for which he had on stage the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Csokonai National Choir, soprano Susanna Rigacci and the Kodaly Choir. Oh, and a rock band. Right there you get... > Read more
Spiriti
John Mayall with Eric Clapton; Blues Breakers (1966)
20 Jun 2016 | 3 min read | 1
For an album which is a cornerstone in any serious consideration of the British blues boom of the Sixties, the Blues Breakers record -- John Mayall with Eric Clapton -- of July '66 hardly had an auspicious gestation. In March '65 Mayall and the Blues Breakers had been dropped by their label Decca after just one album (a live outing, John Mayall Plays John Mayall) and across on the other... > Read more
All Your Love
Split Enz: Mental Notes (1975)
6 Jun 2016 | 3 min read | 1
In 2000, when Rip It Up magazine (now in the responsible hands of Simon Grigg of audioculture.co.nz) collated votes to determine the top 100 New Zealand albums in the most recent-whenever, it was inevitable Split Enz' dramatic 1975 debut Mental Notes would come out at the top. Such lists are often compiled with little sense of history beyond last year's last-thought . . . but Rip It Up's... > Read more
Stranger Than Fiction
Prince: Around the World in a Day (1985)
26 Apr 2016 | 6 min read
Even before he was cremated a few days after his death, the world was abuzz with how much previously unreleased music Prince Rogers Nelson – aka Prince – had left behind. Those who had seen it spoke of a massive vault of recordings and, tantalisingly, among them were probably the sessions he did with Miles Davis. That said, the reason they remained in Prince's vault... > Read more
Tambourine
The Dwight Twilley Band; Twilley Don't Mind (1975)
21 Mar 2016 | 2 min read | 1
The wonderful, and possibly apocryphal, story about this band is that Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour went to see the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night together in 1967 -- a bit late when you think it was released three years previous -- and immediately decided to form a band. It would be equally wonderful to report they were an overnight success, but in fact -- aside from the '75... > Read more
Dwight Twiller Band: Sleeping
Frank Sinatra: Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958)
2 Mar 2016 | 5 min read
Although neither his best known long playing record from the era (the LP format was just kicking off) nor his biggest seller of the late Fifties, Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely is an outstanding collection of themed songs. His best known albums from this period are In the Wee Small Hours from '55 (long an Essential Elsewhere album), Songs for Swinging Lovers! and Come Fly With Me... > Read more
It's a Lonesome Old Town
Keith Jarrett Trio, My Foolish Heart (2007)
1 Mar 2016 | 4 min read
Most people who know his music don't come to albums by jazz and Elsewhere pianist Keith Jarrett expecting to snap their fingers, smile at the swinging grooves and generally enjoy the good humour on display. Jarrett is usually a furrowed-brow listen, or in an instructively meditative mood. His emotionally dense, improvised solo piano work in the Seventies redefined the jazz idiom and... > Read more
Keith Jarrett Trio: Oleo
Last Exit: Iron Path (1988)
26 Jan 2015 | 4 min read | 1
When this album was recorded in the late Eighties, free jazz had been largely consigned to the "blind alley" by jazz writers. By then mainstream American jazz critics had been foolishly distracted and seduced into exercising themselves into the whole neo-con debate which Wynton Marsalis and his acolytes (remember them?) had wrought upon jazz. At the time there was one of those... > Read more
Devil's Rain
Jeff Beck: Blow by Blow (1975)
19 Jan 2015 | 1 min read
Even the guitarist's biggest fans concede Jeff Beck rarely makes a truly satisfying album, but this -- the seventh under his own name -- was the exception. In 1968 after his stint in the Yardbirds came to a natural end, he formed what in retrospect was a supergroup. It included singer Rod Stewart, bassist Ronnie Wood, and journeyman drummer Mick Waller, plus guests Jimmy Page and John... > Read more
Cause We've Ended as Lovers
Ray Charles: In Person (1959)
12 Jan 2015 | 5 min read
The legendary song-plugger, record exec, talent scout and record producer Jerry Wexler (who coined the phrase "rhythm and blues" in '49 for Billboard magazine's black music charts in place of "Race Records") said in his 1993 autobiography Rhythm and the Blues; A Life in American Music -- co-written with David Ritz -- that Ray Charles was the first and only one of three... > Read more
Drown in My Own Tears
The Mothers of Invention: Uncle Meat (1969)
9 Aug 2014 | 5 min read | 1
While it is entirely possible to live a happy and fulfilled life without hearing any music by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, there really is no need to be so deprived given the extensive re-issue programme that was undertaken after his death in 1993. And, Lord protect us, it arrived all over again in 2012. All the Zappa/Mothers albums are out there already on... > Read more
The Uncle Meat Variations
Various Artists: The Rough Guide to Indian Classical Music (2014)
14 Jul 2014 | 1 min read
Elsewhere makes judiciously considered entries under its Essential Elsewhere albums, and we avoid the obvious (no compilations, greatest hits and so on). Those are easy options and anyone with a laptop could pull together a serviceable, if only ordinary, "essential" collection. You could probably even do that for fairly obscure artists like Popul Vuh and Solomon King. But our... > Read more
Devgiri Balawarl Dhun
The Ornette Coleman Trio: At the Golden Circle, Stockholm. Vol 1 (1965)
12 May 2014 | 2 min read
As far as I can see by looking back, Ornette Coleman is the first artist to have two entries at Essential Elsewhere, he has appeared previously with The Shape of Jazz to Come. Although, to be honest, he should also be here for Virgin Beauty (1988) but the damn thing is out of print. However this classic Coleman album recorded in Sweden is not just essential, but is now readily available... > Read more
Dawn
Eric Dolphy: Out to Lunch (1964)
17 Apr 2014 | 3 min read
The sudden and unexpected death of saxophonist/flute player and clarinettist Eric Dolphy just months after these exceptional studio sessions for the Blue Note label robbed jazz of one of its most distinctive voices, and left many questions hanging about where the 36-year old might have taken his music. Already he had worked with Charles Mingus, Max Roach, George Russell and John... > Read more
Something Sweet, Something Tender
Peter Case: Peter Case (1986)
5 Sep 2013 | 2 min read | 3
For six months after its release, at least three times a week, I would play this album. Night after night. I had been given a cassette tape which I had in the kitchen and while making dinner for my kids, only stopping to hear Alistair Cooke's Letter From America on the radio, Peter Case would be on permanant repeat. One night one of my boys came in and stood listening, for what would... > Read more
Walk in the Woods
Steve Earle: Copperhead Road (1988)
3 Apr 2013 | 3 min read
Of all the artists to emerge in the past two and a half decades, you can effortlessly make the case that Steve Earle has moved the most. With confidence, and often great success, he has worked within genres we might define as country, folk-blues, alt.rock, bluegrass, country-rock . . . Earle has been a provocative political voice (pro-Kerry, anti-Bush and the wars in Iraq and... > Read more
Steve Earle: Back to the Wall
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
18 Jan 2013 | 3 min read | 1
There are some albums (such as Sgt Peppers) which so crystallise their period that you cannot imagine that era without them. Then there are others (The Velvet Underground's debut) which appear to stand so diametrically opposed to the prevailings movement of their time that it is usually only in retrospect their impact and importance can be truly appreciated. Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation of... > Read more
Sonic Youth: Silver Rocket
Small Faces: Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (1968)
26 Nov 2012 | 2 min read | 1
With Small Faces' brief catalogue of albums now remastered and reissued, their growth towards Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake -- famously in a round cover like a tobacco tin and with panels that opened out -- can now be traced to this, their finest moment. Singer/writer/guitarist Stevie Marriott was one the great British r'n'b singers and the band of singers/writers Ronnie Lane and keyboard... > Read more