Writing in Elsewhere

Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.

CULTURE IN A SMALL COUNTRY, by ROGER HORROCKS, REVIEWED (2022): The tyrannies of scale and isolation

29 Aug 2022  |  1 min read

In some small way, Nick Bollinger had it easy for his current and excellent Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand. His subject was defined by what it wasn't. Auckland academic/writer/critic Roger Horrocks has it tougher with Culture in a Small Country: The Arts in New Zealand because his premise is so loaded and subjective it can be deployed into... > Read more

JUMPING SUNDAYS; THE RISE AND FALL OF THE COUNTERCULTURE IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND (extract) by NICK BOLLINGER

26 Aug 2022  |  4 min read

Award-winning Wellington author, broadcaster, critic and the incoming Lilburn Research Fellowship scholar for 2023 Nick Bollinger has written an excellent book about a seemingly inchoate area in our recent history. It is Jumping Sundays: The Rise and the Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been reviewed by Graham Reid at Kete Books here, but we are pleased to be... > Read more

Gimme Shelter

TRAITOR KING; THE SCANDALOUS EXILE OF THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF WINDSOR by ANDREW LOWNIE

12 Aug 2022  |  2 min read

While there is understandable interest in the fame and foibles of the self-exiled Meghan and Harry couple, nothing they have done comes even close to the appalling former Edward VIII (who had been the British monarch for less a year when he abdicated, known to most as David) and Wallis Simpson, his new wife. As the Duke of Windsor, he chose her over royal duties but – as is clear in... > Read more

LENNON, THE MOBSTER AND THE LAWYER: THE UNTOLD STORY by JAY BERGEN

20 Jun 2022  |  2 min read

Although the author seems to possess that uncanny and unlikely ability to recall and quote lengthy conversations many decades after the events, this is still a fascinating account of the courtroom showdown between John Lennon and the old-school, Mob-connected record company grifter Morris Levy who ripped off artists, put his name on songs to get publishing credit and used the threat of... > Read more

SEASONS, by WILLIAM DIREEN

2 Jun 2022  |  2 min read  |  1

One of Elsewhere favourite writers is the American poet, essayist and translator Gary Snyder, who is still with us at 92. Although sometimes considered a Beat Poet, Snyder always had a quieter and more reflective mind, much influenced by Buddhism and specifically the Zen poets and philosophers. He appeared as Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac's barely disguised autobiographical novel The... > Read more

MIKE McCARTNEY, PHOTOGRAPHER (2022): Pop history in the lens

24 May 2022  |  2 min read

Before he was Mike McCartney he was Mike McGear. But before that he was Mike McCartney. That brief interval when he went by the name McGear was when the band his older brother Paul was in started to get big. Very big. Wanting to separate himself from the light cast by Paul and the Beatles, and to stake his own claim, he was Mike McGear in the Liverpool group the Scaffold whose style was... > Read more

COVER STORY: 100 BEAUTIFUL, STRANGE AND FRANKLY INCREDIBLE NEW ZEALAND LP COVERS. VOL. ONE by STEVE BRAUNIAS

3 Jan 2022  |  4 min read

In this informative album-sized collection of local record covers, writer Steve Braunias wisely doesn't try to make the case for much of the music wrapped in the covers he has chosen. Far too frequently writers, critics and commentators fall for the myth of Kiwi exceptionalism, that what we do is the equal if not better than others. But Braunias' wry eye and sharp humour – often... > Read more

THE MEDITATIVE ADVENTURES SONGBOOK (2016-2021) by Dr NOEMIE M NOURS (2021): Bear with us, this is fascinating

18 Dec 2021  |  2 min read

One of the most interesting and some might say unusual, interviews Elsewhere published this past year was with musician/artist and translator Noemie M Nours  from Sweden, also known as Noemie Dal and who releases albums as noemienours. We came across her on her fourth album Tardigrade Bounding which remains strange, charming, fascinating and . . . different. She described her... > Read more

Tidal Molt, from Tardigrade Bounding

JUST LIKE THAT: NEW POEMS by KEVIN IRELAND

4 Dec 2021  |  4 min read

One of the many advantages of the literary life is that it can continue into what we charitably call “advanced years”. When many retire from employment they are obliged to find things to fill their waking hours: petanque, U3A, gardening, even more golf, a book club . . . Writers are their own book club. And for those once again taking their thoughts to the keyboard, the... > Read more

PAUL McCARTNEY; THE LYRICS by PAUL McCARTNEY. Ed by PAUL MULDOON (2021)

20 Nov 2021  |  6 min read  |  1

When it came to promoting his albums, Paul McCartney – after a bad start – became more canny. The grave misstep came when he wrote his own Q&A to go out with his solo debut McCartney in 1970. By saying he couldn't foresee a time when he'd write with Lennon and had no plans to work with the Beatles again, he was immediately cast as the one who walked away. That all three... > Read more

Paperback Writer

THE GOSDEN YEARS by BILL GOSDEN. Ed. GAYLENE PRESTON and TIM WONG

20 Nov 2021  |  4 min read

When Bill Gosden received a cancer diagnosis in June 2017 he was encouraged by friends and colleagues to write a memoir about his remarkable career. Gosden – who had been at the helm of New Zealand film festivals for almost 40 years, astutely picking what went on cinema screens – chose not to. He used his time to travel and reconnect with friends overseas. But Wellington's... > Read more

WORDS SUNG AND STORIES TOLD (2021): A scholarly but readable look at Poetic Song Verse

15 Nov 2021  |  6 min read

At the end of his Nobel Lecture when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Bob Dylan said, “Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. “The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on the page”. And he... > Read more

ARTIST, AUTHOR AND CAKE-MAKER ROSS MURRAY INTERVIEWED (2021): Muki, Pickles and an upside-down cake

18 Sep 2021  |  4 min read

Mt Maunganui's Ross Murray is one of Elsewhere's favourite illustrators and artists whose work has reached far beyond these shores. His clients have included Lonely Planet, NASA, Disney, Rolling Stone Magazine and The Washington Post, and among many at home, Garage Project. His distinctive graphic work evokes the landscapes and cultural life of Aotearoa New Zealand, his graphic episodic... > Read more

LAST CHANCE TEXACO by RICKIE LEE JONES

6 Aug 2021  |  3 min read  |  1

Most rock biographies and autobiographies conform to a familiar template: a bit about growing up, the musical epiphany (Elvis/Beatles/Stooges/Clash/name your moment); starting out; fame arrives; the struggle and usually the redemption (clean/sober/happy etc). Perhaps because Rickie Lee Jones is not a rock musician but – as with Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Bjork, Kate Bush and many... > Read more

GHoSTYhead (from the GHoSTYhead album, 1997)

GEORGE HARRISON: BE HERE NOW photographs by BARRY FEINSTEIN

28 Jun 2021  |  1 min read

Anyone coming to this book – as this writer did – for a glimpse inside the late George Harrison's eccentric Friar Park home will be disappointed. Despite billed as American photographer “Feinstein captured George Harrison at home, in his garden, onstage, and in the studio” and that “nearly all the images are previously unpublished”, most of the home shots... > Read more

BOB DYLAN: THE STORIES BEHIND THE CLASSIC SONGS 1962-69 by ANDY GILL

1 Jun 2021  |  1 min read

With Bob Dylan's 80thbirthday recently we could have anticipated the slew of books which is just starting to arrive, many of them academic and full of discourse, interrogations and other such high-falutin' words. This book however comes with a usefully narrow focus: from just before the debut album up to Nashville Skyline, that decade of change . . and the decade which Dylan changed.... > Read more

WHO ARE THE PLASTIC ONO BAND? edited by SIMON HILTON

19 Mar 2021  |  4 min read

In 1970, John Lennon and Yoko Ono simultaneously released albums which were defining in their careers and, in deliberately similar covers, both appeared as Plastic Ono Band albums. Lennon's Imagine of the following year may have sold a lot more – spurred on by the single – but no other album in his life was as coherent and as courageous as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The... > Read more

ONE TWO THREE FOUR: THE BEATLES IN TIME by CRAIG BROWN

3 Feb 2021  |  3 min read

In 1963 when she was 14, Melanie Coe from Stamford Hill in London won a dance competition in a television studio. One of the members of the band in a nearby studio presented her with a copy of the group's new album, Please Please Me. Three years later, pregnant and restless in the rapidly changing times, she abruptly ran away from home and the story of her disappearance appeared in the... > Read more

PAUL DIBBLE, X: A DECADE OF SCULPTURE 2010-2020 by FRAN DIBBLE

18 Nov 2020  |  1 min read

This large format paperback with short explanatory text by the famed sculptor's artist wife and sometime collaborator is largely a photo collection of Paul Dibble at work in the studio and his often striking pieces shown in situ. After a short introductory chapter the publication is divided into prominent themes: abstraction and rather stunning figurative pieces of standing figures;... > Read more

BILLY APPLEⓇLIFE/WORK by CHRISTINA BARTON

17 Nov 2020  |  4 min read

Although a jury of art critics and curators might reach a favourable consensus about Billy AppleⓇ's 1974 exhibition From Barrie Bates to Billy AppleⓇ1960-1974 – which occupied the Serpentine Gallery in London -- we can guess how the hoi polloi would have dismissed with disbelief and possibly anger. If they'd bothered to see it. This was an entirely self-centred... > Read more