From the Vaults

The Fall: Fiery Jack (1980)

22 Jul 2024 | <1 min read

This character-driven rant-cum-diatribe came to attention again recently on the massive post-punk Moving Away From the Pulsebeat compilation. Singer/declaimer Mark E Smith sounds a bit young to be delivering this piece from the viewpoint of a damaged, angry 45-year old who rails against the world while fighting his corner as someone under the bottle, living off lousy food but with a... > Read more

Surf Mesa: ily/I Love You Baby. (2019)

14 Jul 2024 | 1 min read

One of the reasons for joining a gym is to listen to the relentless beat-driven, repetitive banger pop they play by people you've never heard of. The musical standard is so low that anything you choose to play at home, no matter how appalling your taste, will be far superior. Most of what I hear at the gym is music where the singer finally gets the pleading faux-sensitive line right (helped... > Read more

The Beatnix: Woman (1994)

8 Jul 2024 | 1 min read

As they like to say, “there's a lot to unpack here”. At the height of Beatlemania, Lennon and McCartney were knocking off songs for others to cover – notably McCartney although Lennon is credited with saying “Let's write a swimming pool” because he saw there was money in it. McCartney was prolific and offering exceptional songs like Step Inside Love to... > Read more

Ken Nordine: Roger (1957)

1 Jul 2024 | <1 min read

Ken Nordine looked like an ad executive in the Fifties: buttoned down, horn-rimmed glasses and hair neatly bushed and oiled. Sounded like one too with a confident and stentorian baritone which was often used in radio advertisements. But something very strange ticked inside him, a weird intellect capable of surreal juxtapositions of ideas and imagery. He invented “word jazz”... > Read more

The Beatles: Can't Buy Me Love (1964)

24 Jun 2024 | 1 min read

Sixty years ago this week the Beatles were in New Zealand for their only tour. Beatlemania ensued. The story of how they came to be here and the details of that Australasian tour are told in When We Was Fab, a new and thorough book by Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong. It is more than just an eye-witness account from scores of sources but a well-illustrated social history which also goes... > Read more

Tom Waits: Mr Henry (1980)

17 Jun 2024 | <1 min read | 1

Here's a beautiful old rare one -- with surface noise included -- taken from that period when Waits was writing barfly short stories in song. This outtake from the Heartattack and Vine album of 1980 only ever appeared on an Asylum compilation Bounced Checks ('81) and that record hasn't been released on CD. This isn't on any streaming services that I can see either. So here is... > Read more

LaVern Baker: Voodoo Voodoo (1961)

10 Jun 2024 | 1 min read

The sudden revival of Wanda Jackson's career - courtesy of Jack White and the album The Party Ain't Over in early 2011 -- has singled her out as a great female rock'n'roller at a time (the late Fifties) when she was out there on her own amongst all the boys. Not exactly true. There was also -- albeit briefly -- Janis Martin (whose hit My Boy Elvis she co-wrote with Aaron Schroeder... > Read more

Eartha Kitt: The Heel (1955)

3 Jun 2024 | <1 min read

She might not have been the best Catwoman* because she was a little past her best, but the great Eartha Kitt straddled sultry pop, blues-noir and cabaret. She was also in a Faust film by Orson Welles (playing Helen of Troy), her suggestive Santa Baby became a classic (and was covered by Madonna) and in this dramatic track she imagines white powder in his drink as she, a jealous woman,... > Read more

Chris Knox: Baby You're a Rich Man (1987)

1 Jun 2024 | <1 min read

It has been 15 years since Chris Knox had that debilitating stroke, and by coincidence it is almost 60 years since one of his favourite bands toured in New Zealand. This month, this astonishing portrait of him by Dita Angeles is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Wellington. It captures the sadness and resilience of a remarkable man. As a small tribute we got this song... > Read more

Brix E. Smith and Nigel Kennedy: Hurdy Gurdy Man (1991)

27 May 2024 | 1 min read | 2

Tribute albums can be dodgy: some are fun, and the more obscure the artists the better they get. But you are wise to avoid the Joy Division tribute A Means to an End which features those household names Honeymoon Stitch, Girls Against Boys, Starchildren and godheadSILO. Or any of those to Tom Waits. But how can you resist an album of Donovan songs sung by the likes of bands with names... > Read more

Sunidhi Chauhan and Vishal: Naa Puchho (2007)

20 May 2024 | <1 min read

More scenes from the global village? While walking through Kuala Lumpur's Little India I heard this track rocking out of the speakers in a small record shop. I was transfixed: urban, English language in place, Hindi in others, samples from car horns, block rockin' beats, ellectric guitars, hip-hop in the house . . . As it turned out this was from the soundtrack to a Bollywood... > Read more

The Beatles: It Won't Be Long (1963)

12 May 2024 | 1 min read

The album With the Beatles captured the essence of Beatlemania of the period. In the US some of the tracks, along with I Want to Hold Your Hand and songs from their Please Please Me debut album in Britain, were repackaged into Meet the Beatles. And that was what Americans heard. Then there was the US Beatles' Second Album which was very rock'n'roll and a pretty good as a compilation.... > Read more

Yes: Every Little Thing (1969)

6 May 2024 | 1 min read

Recently when the Beatles' 1964 Beatles For Sale album came off the shelf for reconsideration we noted that McCartney's songs seemed lighter in the comparison with Lennon's darker songs like No Reply, Baby's in Black and I Don't Want to Spoil the Party. Among McCartney's songs was Every Little Thing (predominantly sung by Lennon however) and, of all people, the emerging prog-rock band Yes... > Read more

The Buckinghams: Foreign Policy (1969)

28 Apr 2024 | <1 min read

Very few today would even remember the MOR group the Buckinghams from the late Sixties. Their big hit was Kind of Drag ("when your baby don't love you") -- although Hey Baby ("they're playing our song") got a little radio mileage. The Chicago-based Buckinghams (and think about that location in the late Sixties) were a close-harmony group like the the Ivy League out of... > Read more

Deana Carter: Did I Shave My Legs for This? (1995)

21 Apr 2024 | 1 min read | 1

Country music most often tells character stories, and Deana Carter -- named for Dean Martin -- nailed it with this title track from her '95 debut album. And when success came it had been hard won: She'd tried her hand in music without much success, tended bar and cleaned urinals, and graduated from university in Tennessee as a rehab therapist. But her demos caught the attention of... > Read more

The Goldebriars: Sing Out Terry O'Day (1964)

14 Apr 2024 | 2 min read

One of the pleasures of digging around through old vinyl for Elsewhere's pages From the Vaults is in discovering the occasional overlooked classic, the rare or the just plain peculiar. Rummaging through discount bins takes time but there are often cheap rewards, in this case very cheap. What attracted me to this $3 album wasn't just the fact the two women were wearing kimonos and had... > Read more

Texas Jim Robertson: The Last Page of Mein Kampf (1946)

8 Apr 2024 | <1 min read

Texas-born Jim Robertson was one of those who sang about the Second World War and knew what he was talking about. No stay-at-home, when he was rejected by the army he enlisted in the marines and saw action in the Pacific then ended up in Japan after their surrender. At almost two metres tall, he'd been raised on a ranch, learned guitar and banjo from his father, and in the late Thirties... > Read more

Lee Harvey: Crawfish for Elvis (1991)

1 Apr 2024 | <1 min read

Lee Harvey was, if I am not mistaken, Chris McKibbin who was briefly on New Zealand's Flying Nun label. So briefly I believe he only did the one EP entitled Security 198 and I seem to recall he went off to Ireland at some point thereafter. The latter may not be true, but his EP was certainly a very interesting one in that it roved from fairly straight acoustic ballads to experimental... > Read more

Octopus: I Am the Walrus (1971)

25 Mar 2024 | <1 min read

Although they muck up some lyrics, this live version of John Lennon's classic – recorded at the Storthfield Country Club in Derbyshire – isn't a bad stab at a very difficult song. But it's who was in this band which had fallen under the wing of impresario Larry Page that is most interesting. The band was based around brothers Paul (vocals/guitar) and Nigel (bass). The... > Read more

The Wonders: That Thing You Do! (1996/1964)

22 Mar 2024 | 1 min read

In his Grammy-grabbing career -- between Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail and The Green Mile -- Tom Hanks did a small, cute, mostly inconsequential and slight pop movie, That Thing You Do! Clearly this story of an imaginary one-hit wonder pop group from Pennsylvania in '64 was something close to his heart. He wrote the story and directed the... > Read more