Category: Elvis Costello

I started this one off and soon discovered that, in the fullness of time, it actually was released as a single.

mp3: The Costello Show – Brilliant Mistake

Brilliant Mistake is the opening song on the 1986 album King of America, which is credited to The Costello Show.  Recording had taken place the previous year at various studios in Los Angeles, California. The original idea had been for half the album to be performed by a large group of American session musicians dubbed The Confederates, who had been selected by producer T Bone Burnett with some drawn from a band that had backed Elvis Presley in the 1970s, with the other half being performed by Elvis Costello‘s regular backing band of the time, The Attractions.

In the end, The Attractions appeared on just one of the album’s 15 final tracks. Also worth mentioning that the writing credits of the original songs were attributed to Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus (the singer’s real name), and the performances to The Little Hands of Concrete, a name given to him in fun by Nick Lowe as a result of Costello’s tendency to frequently break guitar strings.

The odd number can partly be explained by the fact that the bosses at Columbia Records, on hearing the proposed album, considered none of the songs as being obvious singles, which led to the late addition of a cover version – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, originally recorded in 1964 by Nina Simone but better known as a later Top-10 hit for The Animals a year later.

The single entered the charts at #39 in February 1986, peaking eventually at #33. The album followed a month later, entering at #11, and going on to spend just seven weeks in the Top 75.  It was an album not loved by the bosses, and judging by sales, not too loved by the fan base.

And yet, many critics on both sides of the Atlantic raved about it, although there were a number who panned it.  The retrospective take on things is quite similar, with loads of praise, with some pointing out that it really marked where Costello really began the journey of looking to experiment with different styles, sounds and genres that would increasingly define his later career, but others really not liking it – one later review to coincide with a 2005 reissue said it was a mess, containing eight of Costello’s  “meatiest songs” and seven others that ranges from “forced whimsy” to “self-parody”.

Me?  I fell for it immediately.  Not all the songs are ‘classics’, but there were way more hits than misses.  Which is why I was bemused that the label bosses didn’t see fit to lift a second 45 to help boost sales during the spring/summer months.  Especially the album opener….but then again, it seemed to be the sort of clever song that British and European fans would fully appreciate but American fans night feel bordered on being sacrilegious.

Time has proven to be very kind to Brilliant Mistake, and in 2005 it was given a very belated release as a single to help promote the fact that King of America had been reissued in a remastered form, along with a bonus disc with ten additional tracks.  Too little, too late in my book.  It should have been all over radios throughout the summer of ’86.

 

JC

A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#4: New Amsterdam – Elvis Costello (1980)

New Amsterdam was technically the third single taken from Elvis Costello’s fourth album, Get Happy! (1980) but with the inclusion of three other non-album songs the EP feels as though it inhabits its own little space in the Costello canon, separate from what came before and after. Stylistically, none of the songs, including New Amsterdam, have much in common with the rest of Get Happy! and they don’t signal a shift towards either the expansive sophistication of Trust or the country and western detour of Almost Blue that appeared the following year.

At the time Get Happy! came out, the story went around (and was subsequently confirmed) that Costello had written most of the material in a compositional binge assisted by a crate of old Stax and Atlantic soul singles that he had bought in bulk from a couple of London record shops. Song after song was absorbed, analysed, deconstructed and reassembled into original material, distilling the hooks and hit factory tricks into new songs. As well as the obviously soul-styled songs like Love For Tender, High Fidelity, 5ive Gears in Reverse and Beaten to the Punch, there are two cover versions, I Stand Accused and the lead single I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, all of which imbue the album with a 1960s r’n’b vibe. A further cover of Van McCoy’s Getting Mighty Crowded appears on the B-side of second album single High Fidelity to amplify the effect.

Get Happy! is much more than an edition of Soul Train, however. There are several songs that flaunt different roots, such as the ska-styled B-Movie and Human Touch, torch-song crooner Motel Matches and the closer Riot Act, which could have been written and arranged in the same session as Party Girl from Armed Forces. New Amsterdam is likewise of a different kind.

For a start it’s in 3/4 time. This wasn’t entirely new for Costello – Little Triggers from This Year’s Model and Sunday’s Best on Armed Forces both employ waltz rhythms. Sunday’s Best also fades out with a musical quotation from the 1950s Danny Kaye hit Wonderful Copenhagen, betraying Costello’s familiarity with old-time schmaltz, no doubt inherited from his band-leader father. To my mind, Costello employed the crate-of-singles deconstruction method for New Amsterdam, but rather than some old soul banger, the inspiration came from the unlikely source of Tulips From Amsterdam, a big hit in 1958 for Max Bygraves. A double A-side in fact, with You Need Hands. Maybe a copy got mixed up in a Sam and Dave sleeve by mistake.

Tulips From Amsterdam was originally a German song written in the ‘schlager’ or ‘hit song’ tradition, a particularly Germanic style of cheesey, simplistic, sentimental pop born out of folk tunes and operetta. The English lyrics were provided in 1957 by Marcel Stellman, a Belgian-Scottish producer and lyricist, and Max Bygraves never looked back. Listening to Costello’s New Amsterdam it’s not difficult to hear a slight tonal shift that would produce an altogether more naïve version, oom-pahed out to an audience of swaying grannies and children before the tubas and accordions segue slickly into The Birdie Song.

Costello’s lyrics wouldn’t work in that schlager version though. Apart from the wilful perversity of using Rotherhithe as a rhyme, and the difficulty of ever working out exactly what he’s talking about, the song finds its composer overwhelmed and disappointed by the city of New York (New Amsterdam prior to 1667) and closes with a withering judgement on the “transparent people who live on the other side / Living a life that is almost like suicide.” Not quite the stuff to get the grannies rocking in their seats.

Another thing that sets the New Amsterdam EP aside is that none of the tracks are credited to Costello and the Attractions. It was released under Costello’s name alone because he provides almost all the accompaniment himself, except for Pete Thomas adding drums to Dr Luther’s Assistant and Steve Nieve the keys on Just a Memory. New Amsterdam itself was played and recorded entirely by Costello some time in 1979 in a “fifteen-quid an hour demo studio” in London using the drums, fretless bass, vibes and “a very nasty synth” that he found there. Another version was attempted with The Attractions, but ultimately rejected in favour of the original demo. The group version eventually appeared on the 2003 reissue of Get Happy!

Dr Luther’s Assistant is a song left over from the writing of This Year’s Model in 1977-78 and it’s easy to see why it was left off that album. Not because it’s bad, but because it just doesn’t fit. It’s a sordid tale of an imaginary but all too believable sexual creep, voyeur and pornographer, set to a slightly plodding Paul McCartney-esque arrangement and a verse melody that somehow puts me in mind of The Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home.

Ghost Train is one of those Costello songs that sit almost entirely within quite traditional genres and could just about pass for an old standard were it not for the rather bleak portrayal of social and romantic relationships. Maureen and Stan are a couple of aspiring performers (“She plays the queen of the fleapit / He plays a Spanish guitar”) thwarted by their lack of good looks (“Step right up and show your face / We only want the pretty ones”). The failure of their careers is soon mirrored in their personal relationship: “While they make believe it’s just another holiday / They turn on each other when they hear that joker say… / Roll up for the ghost train …” The style is 50s/60s cocktail bar jazz-pop, a few years before The Style Council and Everything But The Girl got with it. Young Marble Giants were about the only other people in 1980 getting away with this kind of cool.

Finally, Just A Memory is a tender tragedy of love lost, a relationship falling victim to incompatibility, his inability to see what’s important to her. Brief and to the point in two verses, Costello pulling a poignant melody over Steve Nieve’s piano. It’s the kind of musical and lyrical material that Costello would frequently overwork in years to come, striving for that big Burt Bacharach complexity, but here he keeps it simple, and the result is a sparkling little teardrop of a song. As postpunkmonk has detailed (The Great B-Sides: Elvis Costello – Just A Memory | Post-Punk Monk ) the song was originally written for and eventually recorded by Dusty Springfield.

The whole package is housed in a beautiful laminated sleeve designed by Barney Bubbles to look a bit like a classic 50s or 60s jazz record with a very mid-century painting credited as “Jazz City Opus 1958 by Sal Forlenza” on the front, tying in with the New York theme of the title track. Sal Forlenza was a pseudonym used by Barney Bubbles, also to be found on the cover art for Imperial Bedroom.

New Amsterdam

Dr Luther’s Assistant

Ghost Train

Just a Memory

 

Fraser

A GUEST POSTING by JONNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER

Beyond Belief – An ICA of Opening Tracks

I loved Jimdoes’ ICA Begin the Begin Part 1: A set of lead-off album tracks that weren’t released as singles. A great concept and a daunting prospect since most LPs tend to lead off with the single hits. Part 2–opening tunes that were also single releases–seemed just too much to take on. Man, the choices are endless.

But I like a challenge. And I also like Elvis Costello. So when JC wrote “I’d rather the TVV community got on board” with our own picks, I narrowed down a top 10 list of Elvis Costello album openers, arranged in sequence like a complete LP. To make it more difficult I added additional criteria: no singles, no cover versions, no co-written songs, and no songs taken from collaborative, compilation or soundtrack albums. Came out like this:

Side A

No Action (This Year’s Model – 1978).
Pony St. (Brutal Youth – 1994).
Uncomplicated (Blood & Chocolate – 1986).
Down Among The Wines And Spirits (Secret, Profane And Sugarcane – 2009).
Brilliant Mistake (King of America – 1986).

Side B

Welcome To The Working Week (My Aim Is True – 1978).
Love For Tender (Get Happy!! – 1980).
Button My Lip (The Delivery Man – 2004).
National Ransom (National Ransom – 2010).
Beyond Belief (Imperial Bedroom – 1982).

JTFL

And here are both sides of the ICA as stand-alone listens.  (JC)

Beyond Belief: A Costello ICA: Side A (15:38)
Beyond Belief: A Costello ICA: Side B (14:46)

 

 

A GUEST POSTING by JONNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER

ELVIS COSTELLO WITHOUT THE ATTRACTIONS

ICA #136 listed the 10 Best Songs by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Lots of folks griped about their favorite tracks being left out, and of course they were in the right since it’s impossible to list only 10. But I did it anyway; my only rule was that the set had to feature all three of the Attractions: Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas.

To be honest, I lost interest in EC after 1986’s Blood & Chocolate. It was fun when he made a couple more records with the Attractions in the 90’s (Brutal Youth and All This Useless Beauty), but only because he toured them. No one could touch Elvis, Steve, Bruce and Pete as a live act. GTFP and I saw a fantastic set when they came to Los Angeles in ’94. But while those last records have their moments they can’t touch Costello’s eight earlier records with the Attractions (nine if you count 1981’s country covers album, Almost Blue).

This time around I tried to come up with the 10 best tracks from an Elvis album without any of the Attractions. Unfortunately, this rules out all his records with the Imposters because they’re just the Attractions with Davey Faragher on bass instead of the irreplaceable Bruce Thomas. The task proved a bit harder than I thought because even when he’s recording with an entirely different set of musicians Elvis likes to have Pete or Steve around the studio. For example, I hate everything on Mighty Like A Rose except the lead single, ‘The Other Side of Summer’ which features Thomas. Likewise, I wanted to include ‘Days’ from the cover album Kojak Variety, but Thomas is on that song, too. I’m not a fan of Painted From Memory, the album EC did with Burt Bacharach, though I kind of like ‘I Still Have That Other Girl.’ But Nieve shows up on that track. You get the idea.

So, here goes: The 10 best Attractionless Elvis tunes, just for the sake of another argument.

1. Alison.

The entire TVV congregation knows that Elvis recorded his first album, 1977’s My Aim Is True, with a California band called Clover, nicknamed the ‘Shamrocks’ for the LP. It’s a fantastic record and it would have been easy to just take half the songs for this ICA from Elvis’ remarkable debut. But I think we can all agree on ‘Alison.’

2. Waiting For the End of the World.

I chose WFTEOTW because I love it and used to sing it in a cover band. It’s also got John McFee (later of the Doobie Bros.) playing pedal steel guitar, an instrument that wouldn’t feature on an original EC song for some time. But, really, anything off My Aim Is True would have made the cut. ‘Sneaky Feelings’, ‘Blame it on Cain,’ ‘No Dancing’, ‘Pay It Back’, ‘Less Than Zero’—every track is a winner.

3. Hoover Factory.

One or two folks complained that ‘Hoover Factory’ didn’t make it onto the first ICA. But this track, originally released as a B-side to the ‘Clubland‘ single in 1980, is just Elvis by himself. None of the boys were around so this tune happily gets included here.

4. New Amsterdam.

I don’t remember if anyone missed ‘New Amsterdam’ the first time around but it, like ‘Hoover Factory,’ is just Elvis on all vocals and instruments. An album track from Get Happy!!, perhaps the most beloved EC & the Attractions LP of many friends of this venerable blog.

5. Brilliant Mistake.

I didn’t know what to make of King of America when it came out in 1986. Why on earth would Elvis dispense with the best band in the world? The Attractions played on a single tune, ‘Suit of Lights’, which is…okay. I just couldn’t get my head around Elvis wanting to hook up with legendary session guys like Jerry Scheff, Jim Keltner, and James Burton. (It was kind of cool to see double bassist Ray Brown in the credits, I’ll admit.) I still don’t like the album but I do like two songs. The rhymes are a little forced on ‘Brilliant Mistake’ but it’s a classic Costello pop song with elegant chord changes and a proper chorus, and he sounds great singing it.

6. Lovable.

Here’s the other song from KoA that I like. It’s a basic number co-written with Elvis’ then-wife, Cait O’Riordan, but it does move right along. What elevates it into something special is the perfect harmony vocal sung by David Hidalgo of LA’s favorite sons Los Lobos.

7. Veronica.

Elvis formally ditched the Attractions when he released Spike in 1989. I hate everything on it except the single, ‘Veronica’, one of three tracks co-written by Paul McCartney, who also plays bass on it. The song reached number 19 in the US charts which, believe it or not, is the highest any Elvis song ever got in the States.

We’re still in the 80’s. Everything Elvis did for the next 30 years that was worth listening to featured the Imposters or at least one of the Attractions. The great man did release a fair bit of music without them but it’s terrible. (For The Stars, Il Sogno, North—ugh.) There were loads of guest appearances on compilations, tributes and other artist’s records but that’s cheating. Nope, I can’t find a worthy inclusion on an Elvis album until…

8. Hidden Shame.

Elvis turned the century with some pretty good efforts: When I Was Cruel (2002), The Delivery Man (2004), The River in Reverse (2006, with the legendary Allen Touissant), and Momofuku (2008). But all those records featured the Imposters. In 2009, Elvis went down to Nashville and recorded a straight up bluegrass record: Sacred, Profane & Sugarcane. It was another genre exercise but this time it really worked. The band is relaxed, the songs are strong, and Elvis sounds right at home. ‘Hidden Shame’ is a good example, featuring Stuart Duncan on fiddle and Union Station’s Jerry Douglas on dobro.

9. A Slow Drag With Josephine.

Sugarcane was such a welcome surprise that Elvis gave it another go with a year later with National Ransom. The Imposters all made appearances this time around, but not on the charming ‘Slow Drag’. It could almost be a vaudeville number—acoustic guitar, fiddle and mandolin underneath a lively vocal melody. If, like me, you were turned off by Elvis’ latter year self-indulgent genre jumping, his albums with the Sugarcanes are a good opportunity to turn back on.

10. Tripwire.

Everybody likes The Roots! So does Elvis, apparently, so they cut a record together in 2013 called Wise Up Ghost. Elvis sounds like Elvis no matter who he plays with but this time out the vibe is calm, understated and unhurried. Elvis is on equal terms with his jazzy cohorts. Of course, if you can’t chill with ?uestlove you ought to pack it in.

Bonus Track: God Only Knows (live).

For reasons I can’t imagine, in 1993 Elvis thought it would be a good idea to record a quasi-classical album in the form of melodramatic letters sung over compositions by the Brodsky Quartet. You have to admire a guy for taking such a leap, but that doesn’t mean the songs are any good. It’s a mismatch made in heaven. All us dutiful fans bought it and listened to it exactly one time. Then, on some damn compilation or other, I heard this version of the Pet Sounds classic. Unlike the stilted Juliet Letters, the song was lively, playful, and fun. After all these years, it’s still one of my favorite Attractionless Elvis songs.

 

JTFL

Second posting about this artiste in quick succession.  But this time it doesn’t feature his inital backing band and it only highlights how even two ICAs wouldn’t really do justice.

There are times when its the music that makes a song so utterly fantastic. Then there are other times when its the lyrics that make a song so utterly memorable. And just sometimes, both music and lyrics are as stunning as the other…

in 1986, the LP King Of America was released. It was the tenth LP in the career of Elvis Costello, and for the first time in seven years he hadn’t relied on the talents of The Attractions. Instead, it was a record released by The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates. Another change was that the songs were credited to Declan McManus, the singer’s real as opposed to stage name.

The Confederates were not a band as such, but instead a collection of top session musicians, most of whom had played and recorded with Elvis Presley. Some folk reckon its this fact that led to the songs not being credited to the be-spectacled Elvis….

Now I’m no great expert on every recording made by Elvis Costello, but I usually argue that this is the best LP he ever made. It’s a truly stunning bit of work that contains lyrics that go in many different directions – there’s the bitter and twisted, the poetically lovely, the hilarious put-downs and the occasional bit of self-deprecation – all underscored by some of the best and most varied music he would ever commit to one LP. As evidenced by the words to Brilliant Mistake, the LP’s opener:-

He thought he was the King of America
Where they pour Coca Cola just like vintage wine
Now I try hard not to become hysterical
But I’m not sure if I am laughing or crying

I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense
And watch this hurtin’ feeling disappear
Like it was common sense
It was a fine idea at the time
Now it’s a brilliant mistake

She said that she was working for the ABC News
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use
Her perfume was unspeakable
It lingered in the air
Like her artificial laughter
Her mementos of affairs

“Oh” I said “I see you know him”
“Isn’t that very fortunate for you”
And she showed me his calling card
He came third or fourth and there were more than one or two

He was a fine idea at the time
Now he’s a brilliant mistake

He thought he was the King of America
But it was just a boulevard of broken dreams
A trick they do with mirrors and with chemicals
The words of love in whispers
And the axe of love in screams

I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense
And watch this lovin’ feeling disappear
Like it was common sense

I was a fine idea at the time
Now I’m a brilliant mistake

This would stand alone as a near perfect bit of poetry – and like so many of the best poems, it has a number of interpretations.

EC himself in an interview in 1986 said:-

“Brilliant Mistake is a sad song, but it’s also sort of funny. It’s about America and it’s about lost ambition, not lack of inspiration. It’s about a disappointed or frustrated belief. It’s a song that people are going to read wrong. One line in it is, ‘There’s a trick they do with mirrors and with chemicals.’ It means celluloid and mirrors, movie cameras. It occurred to me the other day that people will think it’s a reference to cocaine. “

However, a more commonly held view was that Elvis was in the midst of a very painful and messy divorce, and that the heart of the song was a criticism of himself and his behaviour.

mp3 : The Costello Show – Brilliant Mistake

Now I make no apologies for adding a second song to this post – another from the LP and the track that I believe is the best he’s ever recorded:-

mp3 : The Costello Show – Little Palaces

This is basically a solo song – the acoustic guitar and mandolin are played by Elvis, with just a hint of string bass to back it up, played by Jerry Scheff. The closing few minutes of this song often bring a tear to my eye – the raw and powerful images invoked by the lyric and the traditional almost folk-like music.

I remember also when this LP was released that many long-time fans thought this would be the end of The Attractions. But instead, within six months, another LP – Blood & Chocolate – was released, and this was a bona fide band record.

And sometimes I think that just might be the best EC album……

Happy Listening.

My love for music extends to the written word. I haven’t counted them up but I do have a substantial number of biographies about musicians and bands….its certainly into the many hundreds and it grows by the year as I have a rule of thumb never to toss away any book, even if I don’t like it.

I got a pleasant surprise from Santa this year, courtesy of Cullen Skink, a friend who was an occasional contributor to the old blog. He gave me a copy of Complicated Shadows : The Life and Times of Elvis Costello, originally published in 2004. The book is the work of Graeme Thomson, one of the most prolific contributors about music and culture to newspapers and magazines here in the UK as well as the author of a number of bios with Johnny Cash, Kate Bush and George Harrison among those he has covered in addition to the man originally named Declan McManus.

It is a cracking read – for once the promo blurb on the cover got it spot on with its description being ‘meticulously researched and fluently told’. It is the work of someone who clearly very much admires and respects the singer but at the same time who pulls no punches in terms of offering a critique of some of the music that EC has released, nor does it shy away from behaviours or incidents showing the singer in a less than flattering light. One review at the time of its issues said “As believable and fair a picture of the man himself as I suspect is actually possible. He’ll not like it though.”

It again brought home just how diverse a career Elvis Costello has enjoyed over such an extended period of time. The reader is left with a clear impression of a man who is determined not to be pigeon-holed in any shape or form and who has such incredible self-confidence that he feels no form of music is beyond him. And for the most part, he’s been proven to be right and time and time again he’s defied those who have written him off with some sort of masterpiece coming on the back of some lesser well-received recordings.

If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello but haven’t got round to reading it then I recommend it highly. Equally, if you’re someone who likes biographies of famous folk, musicians or otherwise, then I can also recommend this as an entertaining and enlightening read.

Four songs today, lifted from a 1989 EP centred around a song lifted from his then new LP Spike and co-written with his then partner Cait O’Riordan, former bassist with The Pogues, but containing three other ballads from various points in his back catalogue:

mp3 : Elvis Costello – Baby Plays Around
mp3 : Elvis Costello – Poisoned Rose
mp3 : Elvis Costello – Almost Blue
mp3 : Elvis Costello – My Funny Valentine

Enjoy