Posts Tagged Music
Archive
June 30, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Try Three – New Series
From time to time I like to start a new series of posts here at Off The Tracks. I’m not really revieiwng albums these days, certainly nowhere near as much – so now it’s time to focus on material I just love – older albums, or brand new ones. So I’m starting a new series called Try Three. Recommendations of […]Archive
June 29, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Going Back To Lou Reed: Time To Revisit His Strange, Wonderful, Weird Catalogue
It was strange when Lou Reed died. I wasn’t all that sad, concerned, upset; he was 71 – he started cheating death in his 30s. And though he’d been a clean-living portrait of near-enough-to-health for the last 20 years and most of the last 30 years, time was always going to catch up; the indulgences […]Archive
June 24, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Remembering Puppies
Puppies – I always hated the name – was a small bar located ever so slightly off the beaten track in Wellington city central still, but a basement, yet another Wellington venue with an annoying pillar in the way. It was a stoned-throw from the action but if you could summon the enthusiasm to get […]Archive
June 17, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
On: Paul McCartney Turning 80
When Sir Paul McCartney screamed his woos all over those first Beatle hits, you never thought about him one day being 80. And you might assume that he wasn’t thinking that either. But Paul has been dreaming of 80 for a long, long time. First, he imagined himself at 64, and then there was Your […]Archive
May 16, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: Knowing The Score
Some time ago when I was 10 or 11 or maybe I was 5 or 6, music hit me and I’m glad it did. I felt no pain, only joy, sorrow of course, when the music told me to feel that way – and thanks must go to Mark Knopfler for his soundtracks of Last […]Archive
May 16, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Watching Music
The best way you can learn about music is by listening to it – sure, you can research, ask questions, read up, get opinions from others…these are all smart ways to build your knowledge, but number one is to listen widely. And far too often. Reading about music has been a big part of my […]Archive
May 7, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Photos from Photospace: Dirty Spoons w/ BOX OF HAMMERS and Bachelor of Architecture
Last night, Saturday, May 7, we hosted a gig up at Photospace Gallery in Courtenay Place. The excellent The Show Must Go On exhibition featuring some extraordinary rock’n’roll images captured by Murray Cammick is on until the end of May. And we thought it a nice idea to stage some sort of gig there. So my band, […]Archive
May 3, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
The Best New Zealand Music Drives Me Home
Drive along any coast of this country and listen to Pink Frost by The Chills or Anything Can Happen by The Clean or Hanging In The Wire by Dave Dobbyn or Clockhouse Shuffle by Waves, or, well, I’m obviously just naming songs. New Zealand songs. New Zealand artists. Some well-known, some less obvious, but from […]Archive
April 28, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Once I Was Such A Good Shot
When I was 13 I was in the school’s First XI hockey team, at that point the youngest and even the first ever junior to be in with the seniors. We were playing the best school in the league and in the final moments of the game the ball was dragged back in front of […]Archive
April 23, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: I AM
standing in awe of the Colin McCahon, listening in awe to Peter Gabriel. I cannot believe the information. (My heart going boom-boom-boom). I stand for an age, trying to drink it all in, in that moment there was no one that could arrive with any suggestion to take me home. […]Archive
April 19, 2022 by Simon Sweetman