THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JOHN FRED: Soulman in disguise (with Beat pop)
11 Apr 2025 | 4 min read
During the height of Beatlemania (1963-65) there were numerous tribute songs, parodies and humorous copies in the Beatles' style. Not to mention hundreds of artists covering the Lennon-McCartney originals. Among the many tributes were the 18-year old Cher (as Bonnie Jo Mason) weighing in with Ringo I Love You, on the New Zealand homefront Rochelle Vincen covered Donna... > Read more
Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)
Haiku Redo: Disco Summer (Failsafe/digital outlets)
11 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Up there in Japan, Rob Mayes of the Failsafe label goes through the dozens of recordings and albums he made with various bands, many from Christchurch during the Eighties, Nineties and some even beyond the label's heyday. It's a rewarding labour love because here was a label on which was the alternative to the alternative (Flying Nun, Xpressway etc) and mostly held the... > Read more
It's Just Too Long
STEVE REICH: DIFFERENT TRAINS/ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT, CONSIDERED (1989): Repeat as required
7 Apr 2025 | 3 min read
The 1965 recording It's Gonna Rain by the New York composer Steve Reich was one of the most interesting, innovative and important pieces of its era. At least for Reich. In San Francisco, Reich had heard a streetcorner preacher Brother Walter in apocalyptic mode warning of another Great Flood to wipe out sinners, and Reich recorded him. As with Dylan's Hard Rain's... > Read more
Alien Weaponry: Te Rā (digital outlets)
7 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Lest we forget – and perhaps some never knew – Jamaican reggae was originally a rebel music giving voice to cultural outsiders like Rastafarians and Nyabinghi followers, the marginalised and dispossessed. And those who rejected society. It was adopted as such in this country by bands like Herbs, Aotearoa, Dread Beat and Blood, Unity Pacific and others because... > Read more
Crown
Ma Rainey: Toad Frog Blues (1924)
7 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Few would have described Ma Rainey (1886 - 1939) as one of God's finest creations. Her pianist Thomas A. Dorsey said charitably, "I couldn't say that she was a good looking woman". In Francis Davis' The History of the Blues; the Roots, the Music, the People from Charlie Patton to Robert Cray he writes, "everyone else who knew Ma Rainey described her as pug... > Read more
Womb: One is Always Heading Somewhere (digital outlets)
7 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
Despite these songs having been gathered over the years and in different locations, Womb have such a discreet signature sound it binds their more dream-pop material (the gentle drone of the acoustic-framed Take with Ben Woods) to almost tactile, personal pieces like the mysterious and desperate Sometimes. As much a cohesive mood piece for quiet consideration as an... > Read more
Just Like Waves
A TALK ABOUT TRAVEL WRITING by GRAHAM REID
6 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
Some months ago I spoke to a group of writers about travel writing (having done a lot myself, including two award-wining books) and it was not just enjoyable but obviously informative . . . because I have been invited to do something similar (not the same) at the Whangaparaoa Library this coming Saturday at 1.30pm. I look forward to seeing you there if you can make it.... > Read more
YOKO, A BIOGRAPHY by DAVID SHEFF
6 Apr 2025 | 5 min read | 2
There’s a well-known quote by John Lennon about his wife Yoko Ono, reproduced in the inner sleeve of this new biography: “Everyone knows her name, but no one knows what she does.” It’s pithy and pointed . . . but not entirely true. A lot of people did know what Yoko did, they just didn’t like it. To be fair,... > Read more
Hell in Paradise
Tony Scott: Music for Zen Meditation (1964)
4 Apr 2025 | 3 min read
Vangelis had a pointed comment about the vacuous New Age music which emerged in the late Seventies and reached epidemic proportions in the Eighties. He said it “gave the opportunity for untalented people to make very boring music”. Many people said much worse about it because this was music which was often mere sound designed not to be listened to but... > Read more
A Quivering Leaf, Ask the Winds
ROUGH TRADE CELEBRATES A SAPPHIRE JUBILEE (2025): Eight indies inna box
3 Apr 2025 | 2 min read
Okay we don't usually fall for press releases and we admit this one is about something rather specialised, but here goes . . . because we are excited even if it is capitalism capitalising on nostalgia. The influential British record label Rough Trade Records is going to release limited edition seven-inch singles boxsets to celebrate the label's 25 years in the game.... > Read more
Alternative Ulster, by Stiff Little Fingers
CHARLOTTE YATES, ACKNOWLEDGED (2025): Doing it for herself this time
3 Apr 2025 | 2 min read
Singer-songwriter Charlotte Yates is possibly better known for what she has done for others than on her own account. She was the prime mover behind four important albums, Baxter, Tuwhare, Ihimaera and Mansfield for which the writings of those towering figures (James, Hone, Witi and Katherine) were set to music by stellar casts of contemporary musicians, among them Don... > Read more
The Water's Edge
UNRELEASED HENDRIX STUDIO SESSIONS DISCOVERED: Young man blowing his horn
1 Apr 2025 | 4 min read
When Jimi Hendrix confidante and studio engineer Eddie Kramer told Elsewhere back in 2013 that there were no more studio sessions by Hendrix to be released what he really meant to say was, actually there were more to be released. The new collection Both Sides of the Sky apparently completes the posthumous trilogy started by Valleys of Neptune and People Hell And... > Read more
Kazoo, by stoned Jim and the Funky Monkeys
Koh Samet, Thailand: Lonely days
31 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
Greg would have been hard to miss in most places, but on the small beach at the southern end of Koh Samet -- a tiny teardrop-shaped island off to the east of Bangkok -- he was impossible to overlook. It wasn't just that he was, shall we say, a large man. Or that he was conspicuously gay. And it wasn't even that he carried the pampered Miss Spitty, a white Pomeranian,... > Read more
LUCINDA WILLIAMS, VIC CHESTNUTT AND BUTTERCUP (2025): Anger and tone revisited
31 Mar 2025 | 3 min read
Vic Chestnutt was a gifted singer-songwriter who was much admired by his peers. He had been in a car crash at 18 and was effectively a quadrapilegic although had some small movement in his hands so he could still play simple chords on guitar. His first two albums were produced by Michael Stipe of REM and a fund-raising album for him had his songs covered by Smashing... > Read more
Van Morrison: On Hyndford Street (1991)
31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
By the time Van Morrison released his double album Hymns to the Silence in '91, many of his longtime followers had moved on -- some disappointed by so many uneven albums, some just having enough Van in their lives. Over two discs, Hymns to the Silence was just too much Van, and even the most generous reviewers had to note many songs were not a patch on the Celtic soul he... > Read more
Japanese Breakfast: For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women): (digital outlets)
31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Korea-born, Oregon-raised 35-year old Michelle Zauner is one of those artists who has something to say and more than one way of saying it. She may be the singer-songwriter of the band Japanese Breakfast but her life was of such interest that her 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart spent more than a year on The New York Times best-seller list. It explored, sometimes... > Read more
Winter in LA
D'Animal: Hedonistic Pillow (Thokei Tapes/digital outlets)
31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has sometimes had an affection for amusing band names and album titles like this one, a play on Jefferson Airplanes' Surrealistic Pillow. It may be irrational but it can lead you to an artist you might otherwise gone past or not even heard of. That explains an album by Manchester's Jefferson Airhead in our collection. In this case after the amused smile... > Read more
Hollywood Moment
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Circuit des Yeux: Halo on the Inside (digital outlets)
31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere came across Circuit des Yeux – 37-year old Chicago-based electro-rock practitioner and multimedia artist Haley Fohr – purely by chance about seven years ago. She was, as we noted in our review of her album Reaching for Indigo, one of the artists featured on a cover-mount CD which came with an issue of Uncut. We rarely listen to such albums... > Read more
Truth
Jay Clarkson and the Containers: Falling Through (Zelle/digital outlets)
30 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Christchurch's Jay Clarkson has had a music career which dates back more than four decades, but it has been intermittent as she juggled other interests: a personal life, a literary career as a poetry and fiction writer, writing her memoir, ill-health . . . With her band of excellent and well-known musicians – keyboard player Alan Haig, drummer Mike Dooley and... > Read more
1000 Hours
Jeff Henderson: The Garrulous Sax (iii/digital outlets)
29 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
The title here might be a bit dismissive of this work from the enormously productive saxophonist Henderson: there's nothing trivial or long-winded about his music, certainly not on something as powerful as these solo pieces on various vintage saxophones recorded live in the Stella Maris Chapel in Wellington in May 2021. The location may have inspired a kind of exorcism... > Read more