Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

-- David (huntsma...), May 25th, 2001.

David wins!

http://launch.yahoo.com/read/album.asp?contentID=7205

I still adore This Years Model (and My Aim Is True for the most part) and various songs from later periods (mainly for the melody - I dig a good part of Brutal Youth actually)...

I guess he qualifies as a dud Classic, meaning somebody who you can't truly hate on but doesn't offer much joy. A classic Dud is someone you love to hate, a band that's recorded career is basically worthless but you wouldn't want to live in a world without them (Kiss is a big one for me).

wow there are no less than THREE c/d threads for elvis.

anyway, November 8th, San Francisco, Great American Music Hall: Elvis Costello and Clover perform "my aim is true". sold out though and just found out about it so phooey.

EC: My new record is too expensive. Please don't buy it.

ha! i wouldn't mind hearing the show...but who pays for these kinds of things? the 1%?

This implies somebody would *want* to wash EC's guitar. I'm content to let it rot away.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, May 22, 2001

I find Costello to be mostly workmanlike and boring, although his has hit on a very small handful of classics in his career. I honestly can't stand his voice either. So aside from that very small handful of classics... Dud!

If on the other hand you should still want to hear and view the component parts of the above mentioned elaborate hoax, then those items will be available separately at a more affordable price in the New Year, assuming that you have not already obtained them by more unconventional means.

^^ Costello revealing the "inspiration" behind the 'Trust' album, there.

in case you were wondering it's $268

...for one CD, one DVD, and a 10" vinyl EP. His 5-disc live box with Steve Nieve costs less than half that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxardpBReQc

BTW, sort of like Prince, it's not really fair to count EC's prolific nature against him. He had a run of six or so classics in a row before he came anywhere close to dud. After that, sure, it's been hit or miss, but a couple in there have been classics, too.

well, Prince can sing though.

Man, that's a really scathing parody of Elvis that Nick Lowe's doing in that vid.

I mean, that is Nick, right?

xpost That's for sure! But EC's non-singing is no worse than one RZ's.

I mean, I love Prince, more than EC at his best, but even Prince's totally unimpeachable winning streak was almost exactly as long as EC's before things started going off the rails.

Is Nick Lowe the fuzzy red one or the puppet?

The grey haired guy hamming it up behind Elvis glasses (but seriously, I didn't realize Elvis had decided to give up on dye.

All the viral Sesame Street viral vids baffle me, because like, they NEVER ACTUALLY COUNT in this clip! The ratio of parent-baiting in-jokery to educational content is pretty overwhelming. Stop shouting "red 2" and do some basic addition already!

you gotta cool out a bit croup

please don't mistake my use of the exclamation point and all caps for anything more than bafflement.

How is he supposed to count if a monster ate his red 2?

maybe a verse about basic subtraction, unless "3 - 1 = 2" is a bit advanced for educational television these days

But there's no 2! It'd have to be a song about variables, but then they'd have to introduce letters into the mix.

maybe the point of the bit wasn't to be educational, how about that

No, it's Sesame Street! It's about learning!

don't get me wrong, i know kids need to learn about elvis costello sooner or later, I just think there was room for an additional lesson here.

xpost frogbs stop being a capt save-a-muppet

gottta hand it to him for that blog entry about the box set.

weirdly i feel like old-school E.C. fans are more likely to be grandparents than parents of children still learning to count to ten.

in other words, he looks old.

so do i.

look croup i understand it re: katy perry but i feel like the young'uns should know about elvis costello

When EC reunited the Attractions for that '94 tour, they called it the "Lock Up Your Mothers" tour.

Not classic or dud. Bunch of catchy songs whose clever lyrics don't really age as well as he may have thought they would when he wrote them. I'd happily sit through a bunch of his records if someone else played them, but would never put them on myself. I like "Beyond Belief" because of the weird structure. He's like the perfection of a musical dead end, in some ways.

I love a few early Costello songs and quite a few late ones but if the next generation treated him as, I dunno, punk's Arnold Bennett I wouldn't lose any sleep.

All y'all pretending those first few albums are nothing but a few good scattered songs are crazy. Those albums are so solid, so musically inventive, and even if EC is, ironically, often the weakest point, so what? Again, like Prince, he hasn't done himself any favors over the years, and his propensity toward dilettante detours and distraction annoying, but downgrading the dude as a musical dead end is as bonkers as the nuts who dismiss the Clash.

agree. i'd go as far to say his first decade is a pretty astounding body of work.

I love TYM and Trust especially, and considerable portions of AF, GH, and B&C, but his weaknesses even then are so much more obvious than Prince's.

What miccio said upthread about how easily he reduces his own songs to bitchslaps is otm, and while Prince has his nasty moments at least he's flexible enough as a singer to consider generosity as a virtue.

the idea that the answer here is anything but "classic" is laughable. I think if he were less respected there could be a critical reappraisal but he's in that uncomfortable middle ground where he's canonical enough that the knee-jerk canon haters dismiss him and he's not obscure enough to get that sort of reappraisal. someday maybe.

yeah, totally. also the fact that he undeniably peaked early means it's hard for people to champion different eras of his work -- there's never going to be some revival of appreciation for Brutal Youth or something

For context's sake, the uncertain place in which you condemned him is exactly where Bill Wyman condemned him in the Big Orange SPIN Book.

To me of course he's classic, but if you don't listen to an EC album when you're under 21 you're never going to understand him; his weaknesses curdle into the most uninteresting kind of Grand Guignol the older I get. A few months ago I eliminated most of my EC collection -- I was one of those fans who owned The Juliet Letters, Brutal Youth, All This Useless Beauty -- and don't miss a thing.

if you don't listen to an EC album when you're under 21 you're never going to understand him

idgi, please explain. that seems to be a purely lyrical analysis, right?