Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

Xgau taught me what it means to hate music.

Same! God bless him.

Do we not like the Dean? Inscrutable as his prose may sometimes be, he has turned me on to so much great music over the years I will forever be in his debt.

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

I have found his reviews educational and his prose influential, but in general (and particularly from the 90s on) I find his approach and opinions as often vapid as they are on point.

The bootlegs from the Get Happy era - really any from that early era - are so propelled by amphetamines they're hilariously exhausting.

Indeed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94pXANbucw

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 27, 2018

I'm glad I piss everyone off. His fans are skeptical of if not downright hostile toward me. We haven't agreed consistently in over thirty years.

and in person I've found him a creep.

i've heard that the dude's a bit of a creep too, but to be honest i get that from his writing too. i think some of his older essays, the one on al green and the one he wrote after lennon died, are thoughtful and better than his blurbs. "i feel like i don't even know or care wtf he's even talking about like 75% of the time" is otm for me.

UMS is speaking partly in jest, but the reality is we don't agree on sexuality, his fascination with certain so-called geniuses, and his increasingly cramped blurbing style.

His disdain for anything even remotely artsy or Romantic, especially in the more European sense, is why I've never managed to take him seriously, though our tastes overlap at least 20% of the time.

RC being a creep in person (as opposed to just in print) is the least surprisingly thing I've ever heard.

here's a question: I feel like I once heard, somewhere, a bouncy reggae cover version of "the beat" by someone. but I can't seem to locate that now. ring any bells?

it's by Elvis Costello on TYM iirc

man y'all are making me want to dive back into this catalogue again. I don't think I've heard much past Blood & Chocolate but I remember liking that one a lot.

tbh it's been really tough for me to listen to Elvis Costello these last few years. I had a friend who was really big into him - I brought My Aim is True to one of our poker nights and he absolutely loved it, we'd listen to that CD pretty much every time we got together. saw EC w/ him at Summerfest and it was awesome. he died of an overdose 4 years ago. I heard "Watching the Detectives" in a mall a few months after that and felt like I was getting PTSD. I had to run away. It was so weird. I've been kind of scared to hear his music again.

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 27, 2018

I'm glad I piss everyone off. His fans are skeptical of if not downright hostile toward me. We haven't agreed consistently in over thirty years.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 27, 2018 5:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

alfred it was just a light zing, i just recalled you seemed like a big fan, which i obviously exagerrated in my memory, apologies!

Get Happy is the peak for me. Hook after hook after hook, and the wordplay is out of control.

opportunity & secondary modern, both sooo great. watch yr step is like a chorus-less retread of secondary modern.

love opportunity, probably my favorite on get happy!!

i hear the similarity beween watch your step and secondary modern, but i disagree about watch your step being a retread, possibly my fav song on trust.

you lack lust, you're so lacklustre

I wish you luck with a capital F

His vocal on Watch Your Step is one of his best.

possibly nieve's most measured and beautiful piano/organ

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jul/06/elvis-costello-cancer-diagnosis-cancels-tour-dates :(

my 50yo Fall-mad housemate played me his 'my aim is true' LP the other night. it took a few goes round, but its such a fun album!

New album with the Imposters coming. I like the two songs he shared this week.

Under Lime being the better of the two.

yeah Under Lime is a great song; haven't liked his stuff for quite some time. However, the album cover is in the running for the worst cover of all fucking time.

Scroll past the bellend 2001 posts

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/ode-to-elvis-costellos-stellar-backing-bands-the-attractions-the-imposters-invisible-hits/

Thanks for this tylerw. Great to see Nieve and the Thomases get their due. That Rockpalast show is incredible.

the rockpalast show has probably the definitive version of "the beat"

Well it turns out that “Under Lime” might be the only song on the new album that I like.

sounded good, the album, but the tempos are too slow and the trademark ec melodies a little too fussy.

need to give the new one a little more time, but i like that it doesn't sound like EC is coasting — some interesting moves/arrangements.

Could be the best album since All This Useless Beauty. But then again When I Was Cruel with 20 minutes shaved off it would be really something

What would your 40 min ‘When I Was Cruel’ look like? Have to agree it drags on a bit.

Got ‘Look Now’, it’s good. No idea how it holds up to his recent material as the only other EC record I’ve bought since ‘When I Was Cruel’ was ‘Wise Up Ghost’, which I remember liking but haven’t gone back to much.

I think this is his best album in a while, but I don't love it.

Current tour setlists look awesome, I wished I caught him here last week.

"All this Useless Beauty" (listening this morning) is such a nice collection of songs, I wish less of it was so mannered. I remember the tour behind it (the last as the Attractions). It came to Chicago the same night as the big Sex Pistols reunion, but I was all, fuck that, I want to see the Attractions again. But even the show was kind of mannered, so I guess EC was just in a mannered mode.

A mannered out of time.

(Open gole, soz)

It came to Chicago the same night as the big Sex Pistols reunion

Weird, I don't remember those being on the same night. I'd seen Elvis with Steve Nieve a few months prior, which was pretty wonderful.

The Pistols played a fine show, but the Aragon was crazy oversold. They shoehorned what felt like an additional 500-1000 people in there, and it was really uncomfortable and annoying.

Yeah, EC played at the Rosemont Theatre. Maybe it was the night the Pistols came back? The second reunion show? I think I saw that EC& Nieve show, too, either at the Park West or the I think the Cadillac Palace Theatre (both of which were EC&Nieve nights).

has he ever played "Opportunity" live? did he not play a lot of Get Happy when it came out?

I think I saw that EC& Nieve show, too, either at the Park West or the I think the Cadillac Palace Theatre (both of which were EC&Nieve nights).

I saw the one at Park West, and it was a perfectly intimate atmosphere for that show.

I...don't know what the Cadillac Palace Theatre is...(looks it up)...oh shit! That was the Bismarck! I saw Frankie Goes To Hollywood there in '84.

XP

There is a live version from 1979 prior to the recording of Get Happy. The 1980 tour could be a weird one, lots of cover versions jostling with old favourites as well as songs from GH and AF.

He opened with Opportunity when I first saw him in 1996.

is that 1979 live version on youtube?

would love to see that, opportunity is my favorite get happy track

XP - Not quite what you're looking for but kinda interesting, a rough and ready version from '79, it's well known that EC had grown wary of stylistically repeating himself with the new songs he'd been writing and rolling out on the AF tour, so this version is before they changed the arrangements which made them more beholden to older soul music.

https://youtu.be/wuTcUvsdWiQ?t=24m28s

Oh and check out the version of High Fidelity too, it is kinda insane.

holy shit this heavy version of Opportunity is incredible, thank you!!!

So I just now see that Steve Nieve had been doing online Facebook shows at home with his son and wife. Today, they have Elvis Costello on zoom or something, and they just collaborated on "45" and on "13 Steps." Nieve is gonna take a break after today, and then resume it in 3 days or so.