Other Voices, Other Rooms
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GUEST MUSICIAN SCOTTY ROCKER explains how hard rocking Kiwis are cutting it up in distant Sweden
25 May 2015 | 5 min read
In 2012 I decided it was time for a massive change. I had spent so many years playing music in New Zealand and always seemed to get to the same place. Through all the touring and traveling with past bands the one thing I heard a lot was, “I like your music but you live on the other side of the world”. That always made it hard to break through. The one thing every... > Read more
GUEST WRITER KATHRYN VAN BEEK on what’s involved in taking a creative writing course
20 May 2015 | 4 min read
Do you: · keep a journal? · have a lot of opinions? · enjoy doing activities in your spare time? · have stacks of books all over your house?... > Read more
GUEST SONGWRITER CHRIS O'FLAHERTY tells of the journey to recording his debut album at 60
27 Apr 2015 | 4 min read
My earliest music memory is preparing for the primary school end of year concert with The Holy Faith nuns teaching us When Irish Eyes are Smiling. I was confused and a little ashamed when tears welled up in my own eyes as the melody went lilting round the hall. Music, it seemed, had me at its mercy. The Marist Brothers took up my musical education as I moved into... > Read more
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER PAUL DALY offers images from his award-winning travel portfolio
24 Apr 2015 | 1 min read
Last week Christchurch-based photographer Paul Daly of Nomadic Planet won the Cathay Pacific Travel Photographer of the Year award at the annual New Zealand TravCom awards for travel writers and photographers. Daly here shares a selection of his images from his portfolio of a country much in New Zealander's minds right now. For more on Paul Daly's work see his website here, or the... > Read more
GUEST WRITER PIRIPI WHAANGA goes behind the masks of a New Orleans Mardi Gras
23 Mar 2015 | 5 min read
My wife and I flowed into New Orleans by way of a week-long stay-over in San Francisco. It was a good laxed-out hippie preparation for the weirdness of festival time around the 10th anniversary of the apocalyptic Hurricane Katrina. We arrived early February with several parades already having gone the various street routes and a parade underway. Our Somalian taxi driver was irate... > Read more
Sew-Sew-Sew
GUEST WRITER MADELINE BOCARO on twin-powered Japanese pop and Mothra movies
Madeline Bocaro | 9 Mar 2015 | 4 min read
The Peanuts were one of Japan's first pop sensations, and the first to become well known internationally. Their career lasted from 1959-1975 and the diminutive duo comprised identical twin sisters Emi and Yumi Ito, born Hideyo and Tsukiko Ito on April 1, 1941 in Aichi prefecture. The twins were discovered by music impresario, and Watanabe Pro founder, Sho Watanabe. He first saw them... > Read more
Kawaii Hana
GUEST WRITER JARED HILL on the tainted legacy of Bob Marley
2 Mar 2015 | 6 min read
Of all the many historical figures in the 20th century regarded as forbearers of cultural revolution, Bob Marley is probably the most overlooked. While his unique brand of counterculture music and philosophy is certainly not forgotten (nor shall it ever be), a different set of associations with the man have long overshadowed the crux of what he stood for. Coming from Jamaica,... > Read more
Natural Mystic
GUEST WRITER MADELINE BOCARO revisits Sparks' classic album Kimono My House on its 40th anniversary
Madeline Bocaro | 5 Feb 2015 | 9 min read
We have found the missing link between Sparks and Alvin & the Chipmunks! To some, the two groups are considered the most annoying of all time, but that’s not it. Come On-A My House was co-written by the man – and the actual voice – behind the vermin vocalists, Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville). But whereas the glamourised rats achieved vocal perfection... > Read more
Complaints
GUEST WRITERS GAVIN AND ODETTE consider the romantic young John Lennon
18 Dec 2014 | 5 min read
A Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles is a mono vision. When you put it on – while reading this article of course – make sure you put it on loud. The first thing you will realize is that John is listening to Elvis and Roy Orbison – and dreaming of writing love songs – for that is John’s greatest artistic triumph – the Libran tender pop love song... > Read more
A Hard Day's Night (early takes)
GUEST WRITER ANDREW DAWSON looks back at punk as a new way forward
Andrew Dawson | 15 Dec 2014 | 9 min read
“Texts are worldly,” the literary theorist Edward Said wrote in '83, “[they are] a part of the social world, human life, and of course the historical moments in which they are located and interpreted”. Of all modern musical genres, it's undoubtedly punk music that exemplifies Said’s thesis that texts (in the broadest definition) are produced by and engage... > Read more
The Sound of the Suburbs
GUEST MUSICIAN ADAM McGRATH OF THE EASTERN on what drives their new album, The Territory
13 Dec 2014 | 7 min read
It'd be good to know exactly where it's at. I mean the what it is, the what it was and what it shall be, are hard enough but the elusive “where it's at” creates all kinds of troubling rumbles in the back of your brain. It feels like we've been looking for the illusive 'it' since we started this long ramble we call The Eastern. Sometimes it’s... > Read more
The Territory
GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER JONATHAN GANLEY once again shoots Nick Cave
Jonathan Ganley | 7 Dec 2014 | 2 min read
Auckland photographer Jonathan Ganley first photographed Nick Cave in 1983 at Mainstreet when Cave was with The Birthday Party. On the 30th anniversary of that show Elsewhere ran a photo essay by Ganley with his own recollections and those of others involved. So it seemed only fitting he should be there for Cave's appearance at the Civic on December 6, 2014. Ganley has written on... > Read more
GUEST AUTHOR DAVID VEART argues toys are us
1 Dec 2014 | 2 min read
Although many of our toys were produced in factories, others came from the backyard shed and the kitchen table: trolleys, tin canoes, dolls' houses, dolls' clothes, soft toys, made by cash- or import-strapped parents or by children themselves. In a world where basic sewing, woodwork and metalwork skills were taught, toys could be homemade, although they were not always the wholesome... > Read more
GUEST WRITER ANDREW DAWSON considers Michael Houstoun's interpretations of Beethoven's piano sonatas
Andrew Dawson | 21 Nov 2014 | 4 min read
If Chuck Berry’s hit Roll Over Beethoven was meant to dethrone the composer from his place in Western culture, it didn’t work. In the intervening years, Beethoven’s music has featured in over 700 movies alone, not to mention a plethora of commercials and even on the ‘77 Voyager Golden Record sent out for extra-terrestrial appreciation (with Berry as a fellow... > Read more
Appasionata; Allegro assai
GUEST ARTIST ALEXA SHAW writes about photographing a Pacific nation
1 Nov 2014 | 4 min read
Niue. Have you been? It’s a beautiful, rugged, raised coral atoll in the South Pacific. It’s a place for adventure, discovery, disconnecting oneself from the ‘real world’. Our host, Graham Reid has spent a bit of time in Niue discovering the place, and, most likely, something new about himself. To find out some of his highlights and definite ‘to... > Read more
GUEST ARTIST JOSEPHINE CACHEMAILLE on her new exhibition and current practice
23 Oct 2014 | 3 min read
I am interested in making objects, paintings and installations that provoke questions about our magical thinking tendencies. Magical thinking refers to causal reasoning that looks for correlations between objects, acts and utterances, where there are no plausible correlations. Despite its proliferation amongst ‘modern’ people, magical thinking it is still commonly seen... > Read more
GUEST COMMENTATOR SIMON GRIGG on New Zealand's patchy history of political songs
8 Oct 2014 | 6 min read
The story of political song in New Zealand is a mixed one. It goes from almost nothing to a flood to a trickle. For much of the history of popular song in New Zealand we simply did not make political statements in song – with very rare and sometimes accidental exceptions. Two of those exceptions are amongst the biggest hits of their eras and one was a definite pointer towards... > Read more
Treaty
GUEST WRITER SUSAN EPSKAMP considers One Direction and the idea of the concert film
6 Oct 2014 | 4 min read
It’s official: One Direction will be seen in cinemas again. The English boy group released a video message to Digital Spy announcing their new film, featuring footage from the San Siro Stadium in Milan. In their announcement, the boys say the film – entitled Where We Are; The Concert Film – was made for the fans who missed out on tickets to see them on their... > Read more
GUEST ILLUSTRATOR SARAH RYAN analyses the interface of text and art in her current work
29 Sep 2014 | 3 min read
In my current illustration work I have been exploring the ways which a narrative can be impelled by contradicting and contrasting ideas between illustration and typography. I have been playing with the way in which the ambiguous form of both illustration and typography can blur the line between what is illustration and what is typography. Through this approach I have been testing ways... > Read more
GUEST SONGWRITER GREG FLEMING recalls making his new album Forget the Past
13 Sep 2014 | 4 min read
A Sunday morning 2012. My daughter’s waiting for her poached eggs, my fiancé is checking out travel deals on the net (a much promised, much delayed New Mexico holiday - making records ain't cheap!) and I’m sitting at the table picking on my acoustic guitar. My previous album Edge of the City with my band The Trains had been released a couple of months earlier. It was... > Read more