Essential Elsewhere
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This Heat: This Heat (1979)
29 Apr 2012 | 4 min read
Understandably, many hail the Sixties as the greatest ever decade for popular music: the undeniable brilliance of the Beatles and what they spawned on both sides of the Atlantic, not to mention globally; the whole shift from pop to rock, and from singles to albums, which freed minds and arses that followed; the innovations of Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd; Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa; the... > Read more
This Heat: The Fall of Saigon
Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost (1975)
25 Feb 2012 | 2 min read | 1
In Ted Bafaloukos' '78 film Rockers -- a lightweight comedy but excellent quasi-doco about the world of Jamaican music with a stunning cast of reggae luminaries -- there are any number of remarkable scenes: the lead character is a drummer (played by Leroy "Horsemouth" Brown) who puts a down-payment on a motorbike with the idea of selling cheap records into shops all over the island.... > Read more
Burning Spear: Slavery Days
Nick Lowe: Dig My Mood (1998)
16 Jan 2012 | 3 min read
It is coming up close to two decades since Nick Lowe -- once a laddish and witty figure in British rock in the immediate post-punk days -- decided to take the long view on his career and reposition himself. As he told Elsewhere late last year, “Back when I first got noticed in the Seventies it was for being rather irreverent and popping bubbles, and I was a bit cheeky. A certain... > Read more
You Inspire Me
Paul Revere and the Raiders: Greatest Hits (1967)
8 Nov 2011 | 4 min read
Yes, a greatest hits collection does look a bit like cheating for an Essential Elsewhere album. But wait, there’s a good reason. Back in the mid-Sixties after the Beatles breakthrough when groups were popping up everywhere from Seattle to Sheffield, few record companies -- let alone the bands themselves -- expected they might make more than a single. So if a band cracked a hit it... > Read more
Paul Revere and the Raiders: Just Like Me (1965)
Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel (1980)
15 Aug 2011 | 6 min read
When Peter Gabriel released his third solo album -- the third to simply be entitled "Peter Gabriel" although widely known as Melt after its Hipgnosis-designed cover image -- it was met with almost unanimous and unequivocal approval. Even the notoriously hard to please punk and raw rock advocate Nick Kent, writing in NME, hailed "the sheer ferocious power of conceit, vision... > Read more
And Through the Wire
Various: Get a Haircut compilation (2007)
7 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
Back in the mid Sixties Auckland’s Fair Sect Plus One -- originally an all-girl band called the Fair Sect who adopted the new name with the arrival of their male drummer -- released a terrific single with a raging bagpipe solo. At least I think it was terrific, I can’t say for certain. I only heard it once -- on a transistor radio in Allan Parson’s car while careering... > Read more
Social End Product
Magazine: Real Life (1978)
1 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
If there was a godfather of the Manchester scene in the Eighties there's a good case to be made that it wasn't Tony Wilson (who founded the Hacienda and Factory Records) but that it was Howard Devoto, singer and songwriter for Magazine, the band he formed in 1977. In that crucial year Devoto promoted the two local concerts by the Sex Pistols (poorly attended but hugely influential) and had... > Read more
Shot by Both Sides (single version)
Can, Tago Mago (1971)
2 Jul 2011 | 3 min read | 2
Only a rare band could count among its admirers and proselytisers the young Johnny Rotten, David Bowie and Brian Eno, eccentric UK rocker Julian Cope, and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream. Oh, and various contemporary classical composers, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and post-hippie rock fans. But then, Can from Germany were a rare band indeed. Because the albums recorded in... > Read more
Oh Yeah
Ken Emerson: Slack and Steel Kaua'i Style (2007)
21 Jun 2011 | 3 min read | 2
A few years ago when I was on the island of Kaua'i in the Hawaiian chain I went into a CD store in the pretty town of Hanalei on the north east coast. I was looking for some compilations of classic Hawaiian musicians such as Sol Hoopi whose music I recall from 78rpm discs my dad had. The otherwise excellent shop didn't have any, but my wife picked up a disc and said, "This looks... > Read more
Ken Emerson (steel guitar) and Pancho Graham (bass, slack key guitar): Sleepwalk
Various Artists: Delta Swamp Rock (2011)
16 May 2011 | 4 min read | 3
Anyone who has traveled extensively in the United States would tell you that the South is different. Certainly Boston, Omaha and Portland are different. But the South is different different. And even though there are -isms and schisms in the broad church that is "the South" and it is impossible to define what that distinction is, you know it, sense it, feel it -- and... > Read more
Out in the Woods (1972)
Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (2011 reissue)
8 May 2011 | 8 min read | 7
Those who were there say everything changed when he walked in the room and started to play. He’d been away a long time -- learning guitar was what they said -- but the last time anyone had seen him he was an uppity kid and not that good. You can imagine how it must have been that Saturday night in a small run-down club in Banks, Mississippi. The old guys are hanging out and this slim... > Read more
Hellhound on my Tail
Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygene (1977)
8 May 2011 | 4 min read | 2
Sometimes in history there comes that rare conjunction of the artist, the time and the art. In the case of Jean Michel Jarre it seemed they were all out of alignment. He could not have chosen a more inhospitable climate into which release his work. Jarre's album Oxygene came out in France in 1976 but wasn't given release in Britain until the following year.It was the height of... > Read more
Oxygene Pt 4
The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms (1980)
20 Apr 2011 | 6 min read
Pub quiz time and your starter for 10 points: Who was the drummer in Talking Heads? “Okay there was David Byrne and . . . Tina Weymouth on bass and . . . Any of you guys know?” “Jerry . . . Harrison? Yeah, Jerry Harrison was the guitarist and the drummer was . . . . . .” Okay, let’s flip all the cards and remind you that the drummer in Talking Heads was... > Read more
Forces at Work
B.B. King, Live at the Regal (1965)
11 Apr 2011 | 3 min read | 1
With his royal surname, a 60-year career which has earned him Godfather status, a sophisticated demeanour and dapper suits, and his own chain of nightclubs it is hard to see BB King as an earthy and edgy blueman: the guy who used to play 300 nights a year, who has fathered at least a dozen children to as many different women, the one who grew up on a plantation in Mississippi and... > Read more
BB King: Sweet Little Angel
The Scavengers; The Scavengers (2003 vinyl issue of '78 sessions)
4 Apr 2011 | 2 min read
We all have musical moments written into our autobiographies. The emblems afterwards -- the album, concert ticket or scar beneath the eye -- are inadequate to convey the emotion you experienced, whether it was when Tina Turner belted out your favourite-ever song to you personally (and 35,000 others), or when you got nailed at Zwines in Auckland by some pogo-ing punk back in the late... > Read more
The Scavengers: Money in the Bank
dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip: Angles (2008)
27 Mar 2011 | 2 min read
Hip-hop's global reach was achieved well over two decades ago now, and because "the word" is the most important medium for a message in any culture it's no surprise that just about anywhere on the planet where there are words, so too there are rappers. In a decade -- from the early Eighties -- rap went from an inner-city movement by the disenfranchised (party music a lot of it) to... > Read more
Magician's Assistant
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (1968)
21 Mar 2011 | 3 min read
By the latter part of the Sixties there was a clear difference between how American and British "hippies" perceived "the psychedelic era". If it's true that no music movement comes without its own new set of clothes then the difference was visible on the streets. In the US where ponchos, fringed-jackets, tie-dye t-shirts and buckskin boots were the style of the day the... > Read more
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown: Come and Buy
Harry Nilsson, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971)
28 Feb 2011 | 6 min read | 2
The too-short life of the greatly under-appreciated singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson (1941-94) was full of bitter ironies: not the least was that this gifted songwriter's biggest hits were written by others. His memorable Without You was penned by Pete Ham and Tom Evans from the Beatles-blessed power poppers, Badfinger; and although Nilsson's beautiful original song I Guess the Lord... > Read more
Harry Nilsson: The Moonbeam Song
Elvis Costello: Imperial Bedroom (1982)
19 Feb 2011 | 2 min read
By the time Elvis Costello got to this remarkable, emotionally dense and astonishingly concise album (so many moods, styles and emotions in 50 minutes) he had become well separated from his post-punk peers. By '82 -- and he had appeared just five years previous -- he had skirted off from punk-fuelled rock through country music and had flirted with jazz as well as classic r'n'b . . . He was... > Read more
Elvis Costello: Little Savage
The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East (1971)
6 Feb 2011 | 3 min read
When the mobile recording studio was parked outside the Fillmore on New York's 2nd Avenue in March 1971 to record this double vinyl Allman Brothers Band album it was both a beginning and an ending: it was last concert at Bill Graham's Fillmore East (also on the bill were Albert King and the J Geils Band) but also the start of the Allman's ascent into becoming a legendary band . . . which ended... > Read more