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
THE LEGACY OF CHUCK BERRY, CONSIDERED ONCE MORE: The first poet of rock'n'roll
30 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
With only one notable exception – his godawful '72 hit My Ding-A-Ling – nearly all of Chuck Berry's best known songs came in a rush on the Chess label in a five year period from August '55 when he released Maybellene. Berry was one of the greatest and most important figures in the development of rock'n'roll and popular music for many reasons: he brought... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Cameron McCurdy aka LEIGH
28 Jul 2025 | 11 min read
Elsewhere recently received an email from a former music student who invited us to have a listen to their debut album. It is titled Empathy for my Future Self and we reviewed it very favourably. It was released under the name LEIGH because Cameron (now she/her) had undergone the transition and the album addressed that. But, as we noted, “While many trans... > Read more
He's Giving
Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (digital outlets)
28 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
The country-rockin' Tyler Childers is one of those artists who seems to have gone past most people. He has six albums behind him and at 34 sounds like he's reached a peak on this willfully wayward album of psychedelic country, narrative country-folk and more, produced by Rick Rubin. And we should mention he's become engaged by the Krishnas so there's some spiritual... > Read more
Dirty Ought Trill
Tom Lehrer; An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer
28 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
In one of the university courses I took, I spent a couple of hours on a lecture under the title -- lifted from Frank Zappa -- "Does Humour Belong in Music?" The general point is that most contemporary musicians take themselves so seriously that we can barely imagine them cracking a smile let alone writing a funny song. Talking to you Chris Martin et al. Yet... > Read more
Oedipus Rex
ROCK'N'ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN? Where classical music enters pop
28 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
Although most pop and rock listeners might not think it so, many songwriters have drawn on classical music . . . and not just for inspiration, but sometimes quite directly grabbing at the melodies. We're not talking about Deodata offering his electro-treatment of Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Love Sculpture's flat-tack guitar workout on Sabre Dance (by... > Read more
Goodbye Cruel World, by James Darren
The Clear Path Ensemble: Black Sand (digital outlets)
28 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
On recent releases we've seen local jazz musicians pull from the spiritual quests of people like John and Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders (Lucien Johnson's highly recommended Wax///Wane and Ancient Relics albums) and those leaning towards the Latin American direction (Julien Dyne and Cameron Allen's on-going Circling Sun project). There have been those around... > Read more
Temple Block Sustain
STEVIE WONDER: THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, CONSIDERED (1979): Trimming and pruning required
28 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
Every now and again a book comes along and captures the imagination of many. Recently there has been the Oprah-approved The Secret and Eat Pray Love (“Now a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts!”). The late Sixties and Seventies seemed awash with popular books passed hand-to-hand: anything by Carlos Castaneda (drugs and enlightenment, man),... > Read more
The First Garden
Bruce Springsteen: Fugitive's Dream (1983)
28 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Not really pulled from our vaults because this was only recently pulled from Springsteen's. It has been released on the box set Tracks II: The Lost Albums. That sequel to the 1998 box set Tracks collects seven unreleased and complete albums (more correctly six discrete albums and one collection of sessions). It is like a slightly alternative journey through... > Read more
Fugitive's Dream, version 1
LIONEL HAMPTON WITH ILLINOIS JACQUET: Tenor taking flight in '42
21 Jul 2025 | 2 min read
Most rock and pop biographies follow a very standard pattern: a little about the artists' background and home life, meeting fellow travellers, early struggles, career taking off, troubles and travails and . . . However that story ends: drugs, death, rehab or second coming etc. Jazz biographies however, because of the very nature of the music and its creation,... > Read more
Flying Home (1942)
Half Japanese: Adventure (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere's long-term affair with Half Japanese has been something of a hiding to nowhere: I doubt we would have convinced a single reader to dive into the albums we have reviewed. But we persist because they are quirky and a little bonkers but, slowly over the past decade or so, have moved more towards an audience than an audience has moved towards them. The... > Read more
Lemonade Sunset
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL: COLLISION COURSE, CONSIDERED (1978): Sage and silly songs from sagebrush territories
21 Jul 2025 | 2 min read
Ray Benson seems an unlikely character to have created the soulful Western Swing outfit Asleep at the Wheel, a band which took its lead from the sound of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys as well as sweet Southern soul. Singer-guitarist Philadelphia-raised Benson – now 74 -- is Jewish and founded Asleep at the Wheel more than half a century ago in West Virginia with... > Read more
Louisiana 1927
Ringlets: The Lord is My German Shepherd (Time For Walkies): (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
When I reviewed Ringlets' single I Was on That Roof Once released in advance of this album I quoted what I thought were the lyrics to point out the surreal nature of their imagery. I heard “like the sea I am burning from the algae of tsunamis”. I was corrected, it was “I am foaming from the algae that's inhabited my gob”. I was close, but... > Read more
Posh Girl Holds a Whip
THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE: Money into the box
21 Jul 2025 | 2 min read
Today at the entrance to our local supermarket there was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, standing outside selling chocolate bars from a box. He looked nervous as he asked people if they'd like to buy one and, as I could see as I approached, most people just walked by him. But one guy stopped, a big and handsome man – a Pakeha perhaps in his 40s – and engaged the... > Read more
There But For Fortune, by Joan Baez
Various Artists: A Day in My Mind's Mind: The Kiwi Psychedelic Scene (Frenzy)
21 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
We have passed this way a few times over the years but the CDs in this Mind's Mind series – up to volume five now – disappear from shelves quickly. So it is sensible to get this 30 song collection out there. It appeared as a limited edition double album at the time when Real Groovy celebrated it 33 1/3 birthday 2014 and we pointed to it then. But this is... > Read more
Nirvana, by 40 Watt Banana
The Ugly's: Wake Up My Mind (1965)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Among the many unusual things about the story of the Ugly's is why a band (with an unnecessary apostrophe?) from Birmingham should have enjoyed a huge hit in Australia and New Zealand with this song, and not made a ripple back home. The Ugly's had emerged from the Dominettes which had been caught up in the skiffle boom of the late Fifties. But as they embraced r'n'b and... > Read more
Polar Extremes: Strange Visions (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Okay, this is just odd fun . . . with a sense of smarts and cultural history behind it. And although it came out in 2019, it disappeared and has only now gone back up on digital platforms. so . . . Not too many locals might even recognise the horse-flesh resonance of the opening title, Racing This Time (did the great commentator Reg Clapp coin that... > Read more
Captain Zodiac's Dictionary
IT'S A HARD, HARD RAIN AGAIN (2025): And the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
17 Jul 2025 | 2 min read | 1
On August 5 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the world's first atomic bomb used in a military context. Three days later Nagasaki was hit. The Manhattan Project had become an awful reality, at the cost of over 200,000 lives in an instant, mostly civilians. It was a “lest we forget” moment for the planet. But some did forget.... > Read more
Jay Epae: The Mercury/Capitol/Viking Recordings (Frenzy)
16 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
The archivist and avid compiler of New Zealand artists' recordings Grant Gillanders has written an excellent and assiduously researched article at audioculture about the remarkable life and career of singer/songwriter Jay Epae, a lightly edited version reproduced as the extensive liner notes for this thorough 29 song (and some soundbite promo pieces) collection. Epae... > Read more
I'll Cry Tomorrow
FRANCOISE HARDY RECALLED (2025): Les chansons pour les jeunesse
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read | 1
Sometimes music just comes into your life and you can never remember exactly how or why it arrived. So it is with the debut album by French singer Francoise Hardy which came out in her motherland in late '62, a copy of which came into my possession somehow shortly thereafter. I seem to recall it being around at the same time as I was pinning up Beatles posters... > Read more
Les temps de l'amour
ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO, a doco by KEVIN McDONALD and SAM RICE-EDWARDS
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
There have been a few voices raised against this documentary which nominally features John Lennon's performance (with Yoko Ono and the Elephant's Memory Band) in New York's Madison Square Garden in August 1972. The complaints are that the live performance – Lennon's only full concert performance after the break-up of the Beatles – is fragmented by intrusive... > Read more