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This column generally focuses on local music. However, as I sit freezing my fingers off and spring blossoms prematurely attempt to brighten the overcast day, there does presently seem to be something of a lull. All good. A certain amount of musical hibernation occurs in winter.
It’s a chance to glance further afield; there’s interesting news from three of the 20th Century’s heaviest-hitters.
But first...
There are still bands on the road, one being Auckland’s Where’s Jai. They’ve just released their first album, ‘Fresh Out Of Air’ and are letting the North Island know.
Where's Jai. Photo / Isabella Rose Young
It would be reductive to say that there’s a hunt to find the next Beths, but Where’s Jai, with their excitable guitar-led melodic power pop and two female lead singers, Grace Allis and Leigh Edmeades, rather fit the bill.
The band has released music since 2022 and the new album is very impressive indeed, flicking easily between introspection, grooving, and occasionally the grandiose, not bad for musicians who’ve just turned 18. And, like The Beths, they sound like a real band not a collection of manipulated electronica. They’re playing at The Jam Factory on Saturday, August 16.
Moving along, musical history is added to constantly.
There’s a new release from Woody Guthrie, arguably the greatest of all folk singers, the man who inspired a young Bob Dylan – as seen in ‘No Direction Home’ – and wrote more than 3000 songs including ‘This Land Is Your Land’. He recorded more than 700.
Woody Guthrie. Photo / Supplied
Extra verses
Woody’s final years were very sad. Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, his publisher gave him a reel-to-reel recorder to document songs, allowing others to record them and Woody to earn royalties. These “new” home recordings are from 1951 and 1952, before being hospitalised with the Huntington’s disease that killed him in 1967 aged 55.
He’s a diminished man, but among the songs are extra verses for ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and an original Woody recording of his famous ‘Deportees’, an eerily prescient song.
Woody Guthrie. Photo / Supplied
One of many who has sung that song is Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen’s latest music dump is only rivalled by Dylan’s various ‘Bootleg Series’ releases. It turns out that, like Dylan, Springsteen is even more preternaturally prolific than we thought.
‘The Lost Albums’ contains 82 unreleased songs, including entire albums that were made but not released, like the one accompanying his Oscar-winning ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ song. All on seven CDs or nine LPs. The only drawback? Those seven CDs will cost you NZ$500.35 from Amazon. However extravagant the packaging, that’s still more than $70 per CD. Someone is ‘aving a laff.
One last snippet
The doyen of musical biographers, Peter Guralnick, has written a third book about Elvis or, more accurately, about Tom Parker, ‘The Colonel and the King’.
The estate gave Guralnick access to thousands of private letters and documents and what emerges is very different from the usual demonisation of Colonel Parker, who put Elvis in all those awful movies and, from 1966, collected 50% of his income. Fascinating stuff.
Hear Winston’s latest Playlist: https://tinyurl.com/2zd7rv7jv