Writing in Elsewhere
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1950s RADIO IN COLOUR; THE LOST PHOTOGRAPHS OF DEEJAY TOMMY EDWARDS by CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY
5 Aug 2011 | 3 min read
Cleveland, Ohio has a formidable reputation as a rock'n'roll city -- today it is the home of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Museum -- but you'd have to guess there was more to it than just that old adage about "something in the water". Back in the Fifties there, as everywhere, the emerging musical culture was fed by radio, notably Alan Freed who kick-started rock'n'roll.... > Read more
Summertime Blues
TWO WALK IN EDINBURGH, photographs by Mari Mahr, poems by Gregory O'Brien. DEVONPORT: A DIARY by Bill Direen
22 Jul 2011 | 3 min read
As these two slim, hand-printed, limited edition volumes confirm, the necessaries of the poetic writer are observation and considered contemplation, and the words are vehicles which realise them. And for the photographer, close observation and an eye that edits intuitively come before the shutter opens and closes. Writer, poet and curator O'Brien has had a two decade-long association... > Read more
GREETINGS FROM ROUTE 66, edited by MICHAEL DREGNI
18 Jul 2011 | 2 min read
When, in 1946, Bobby Troup wrote what became his classic song Route 66, he could hardly have anticipated how popular it would become. After all, he'd really only written a few words and the hook (“get your kicks on Route 66”, which may have been his wife's suggestion) and after that he just filled the song up with the place names like Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff in Arizona... > Read more
Route 66
LOST IN SHANGRI-LA by MITCHELL ZUCKOFF
17 Jun 2011 | 2 min read
As with many of his generation, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt had been taken by the idea of “Shangri-La”, that tolerant refuge from a troubled world James Hilton had written about in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon and which Frank Capra had adapted four years later for his enormously popular film of the same name, released as the world was tumbling towards another great... > Read more
BLUE SMOKE: THE LOST DAWN OF NEW ZEALAND POPULAR MUSIC 1918-1964 by CHRIS BOURKE
12 Jun 2011 | 4 min read | 3
In the introduction to Stranded in Paradise, his 1987 survey of New Zealand rock'n'roll from 1955, John Dix addressed the question he had been constantly asked, “What's happening with the book, Dix?” Doubtless Chris Bourke – a former Rip It Up editor, longtime music writer and author of the Crowded House biography Something So Strong – faced the same question... > Read more
Jack Thompson with George Campbell (bass) and Alan Siddall (drums): 12th Street Rag (1960)
JIM DeROGATIS INTERVIEWED (2011): Nothing if not critical
23 May 2011 | 12 min read
Rock critic, writer and most recently university lecturer Jim DeRogatis doesn't pull his punches, but keeps a sense of humour, about his music and its stars. With Gregg Kot, he has hosted Sound Opinions on Chicago Public Radio since '99 (“the world's only rock'n'roll talk show”) and they banter about fallen heroes, overlooked albums, overrated classics and discover... > Read more
The Rolling Stones: 19th Nervous Breakdown
CUBA; THE SIGHTS, SOUNDS, FLAVORS AND FACES by PIERRE HAUSHERR AND FRANCOIS MISSEN
5 May 2011 | 2 min read
With the geriatric Fidel Castro literally shuffling off the stage leaving it to his brother Raul and a cadre of elders, these look like the end days of the Cuba which has existed in proud but imposed Leftist isolation and has stared down an American trade and cultural boycott for decades. This has come at a price for Cubans who enjoy high literacy and endure poor living standards, but also... > Read more
Emiliano Salvador: Nueva Vision
FRANK: THE VOICE by JAMES KAPLAN
29 Apr 2011 | 2 min read
When he died, Time ran an eight-page tribute and put him on the cover with a simple tag-line: “Francis Albert Sinatra 1915 – 1998”. They might have added “The Voice”, “Old Blue Eyes”, “He Did It His Way” or some other catch-phrase, but none could have encompassed the complexity of Frank Sinatra's life, to some a decadent symbol... > Read more
THE COMMONPLACE BOOK by ELIZABETH SMITHER
25 Apr 2011 | 2 min read
Some years ago I was walking down Queen St in central Auckland and stopped outside the Body Shop. There, along an exterior wall, was written one of those thought-provoking and inspirational quotes which are designed to prod the conscience, in this instance about the fragility of Mother Earth. Or maybe it wasn't a quote. It was in quotation marks, but is an unattributed quote still... > Read more
A MICRONAUT IN THE WIDE WORLD; THE IMAGINATIVE LIFE AND TIMES OF GRAHAM PERCY by GREGORY O'BRIEN
4 Apr 2011 | 2 min read
Perhaps because he is a poet and curator, Gregory O'Brien here approaches the life of the New Zealand-born artist Graham Percy with an eye for subtle (and sometimes strong) artistic connections more than strict chronology. And this is a fitting approach to an artist whose work slipped easily between many styles and practices, from typography and moody ink drawings, to bright... > Read more
I FELT LIKE A FIGHT, ALRIGHT? by RUTH CARR
14 Mar 2011 | 1 min read | 1
While it seems to be going too far to suggest, as the reviewer of Radio NZ National did, that these "one-liners, poems, lyrics and tales" are "reminiscent of Cohen's mid-career poetry and writings" they are certainly more than merely diverting. The writer -- Ruth Carr of the band Minuit -- has some snappy aphorisms, odd and dark poems and some very refined writing.... > Read more
Minuit: The Sum of Us (2004)
THE BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA by MICHAEL GRAY: More song and dance
2 Mar 2011 | 2 min read
Writer Michael Gray is not backward about coming forward: he includes an entry on himself in this massive tome published in 2006 which is alternately illuminating, absurdly amusing, opinionated or a trainspotter’s delight depending on which of the more than 2000 entries you pick. The author of the seminal Song and Dance Man study of Dylan and his lyrics published the mid 70s (updated... > Read more
LISTEN TO THIS by ALEX ROSS
21 Feb 2011 | 2 min read
One of the many funny lines in the profanity-strewn satirical film In the Loop came from the character Jamie Macdonald, the senior press officer in 10 Downing Street and the “angriest man in Scotland”. On hearing opera he bellowed, “It's just vowels! Subsidised, foreign fucking vowels!” The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross – author of the insightful... > Read more
FANTASTICA: THE WORLD OF LEO BENSEMANN by PETER SIMPSON (2011): A man apart
14 Feb 2011 | 3 min read
Shortly after Leo Bensemann's death in January 1986, Dennis Donovan wrote a tribute to him in Landfall, the magazine which the artist and graphic designer had long been associated with, and which he also edited for a period. Donovan's tribute was generous (“more than a genius – he was also a scholar, a learned man”) but focused only on Bensemann's graphic arts and his... > Read more
MORE MILES THAN MONEY: JOURNEYS THROUGH AMERICAN MUSIC by GARTH CARTWRIGHT
11 Feb 2011 | 3 min read | 2
Writing about music is a sedentary affair today: CDs are reviewed at home, and artists are interviewed by phone, in a comfortable hotel or their record company office. Latterly, to my regret, it has been like that for me -- but not so for Cartwright whose previous book Princes Amongst Men saw him on the road in some bad and strange parts of Eastern Europe on the trail of various gypsy... > Read more
Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers: She's Gone
BUPPIES, B-BOYS, BAPS AND BOHOS by NELSON GEORGE: Life on the black planet
7 Feb 2011 | 2 min read
When Time magazine declared then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani its "person of the year" for 2001 -- over Osama Bin Laden who, like it or not, appeared to have made a greater impact -- and Oprah's dubbed him "America's Mayor", you could reasonably feel the Big Apple had become the centre of the known universe. Certainly in the latter half of the past century... > Read more
RONNIE, an autobiography by RONNIE WOOD
31 Jan 2011 | 3 min read | 1
This too slight, slightly self-justifying, frequently honest and altogether typically disappointing rock autobiography has taken on much more meaning since its 2008 publication, especially with Ronnie's new solo album in late 2010. In the closing chapters here especially he spends a lot of time proffesing his love for his wife Jo, how she rescued him, is his rock, how he is content as a... > Read more
Ronnie Wood: Why You Wanna Go Do A Thing Like That For (2010)
IN THE CITY; A CELEBRATION OF LONDON MUSIC by PAUL Du NOYER
24 Jan 2011 | 2 min read
Some cities are shaped and defined by their soundtrack: Salzburg and Mozart; Liverpool and the Beatles; Seattle and Nirvana . . . But you don't envy anyone undertaking the task of writing about the music of London given the city's long musical history and its exceptional diversity. Is there a link between the barrow boys of the East End and the Small Faces, between Noel Coward and... > Read more
Noel Coward: London Pride
MICHAEL CHUGG INTERVIEWED (2011): Rock'n'roll never forgets
17 Jan 2011 | 11 min read
It would be a fair guess to say Michael Chugg has been at more shows than any musician you can name. Because when musicians take a break Chugg is at another show. Not that he actually sits down and sees them, as a promoter he's more likely to be backstage somewhere or, as at Gorillaz last year, just popping out to stand at the side of the stage for 10 minutes. Chugg –... > Read more
The Twilights: What's Wrong with the Way I Live? (1967)
JOHN LENNON, THE LIFE by PHILIP NORMAN (2008): Just gimme some truth
10 Jan 2011 | 8 min read | 1
John Lennon -- who would have been 68, had he lived, at the time of this pubication -- did not have an unexamined life. In countless hours of drugs, meditation and therapy he analysed himself. Through many thousands of interviews -- some brutally honest, others self-mythologising -- he gave others material to scrutinise his life in intimate detail. He has been central in books by his... > Read more