Elvis Costello Fan Forum

The recent reports from concert land, and EC's comments about people not dancing at shows, has got me thinking about the whole "dance" issue. EC is clueless if he thinks that the fact that Romans or Cardiffians who refuse to get up and boogie to his songs is an example that they are (i) be...

We're dancing fools, you and me Tonight it's a dance of insecurity It's my solo while you're away Shadows have the saddest thing to say [i](Sweet Sucker Dance, J.Mitchell/Ch.Mingus) Go on over there and turn on the light....no, all the lights Now come back here and stand on this chair...that's right...

Many years later we found ourselves in Canada, trying to save our marriage. I'd serenade you every night, but you'd never come round to hear it. I'd write your name with fireworks in the sky, but you'd never turn up to see it. (Arab Strap) virgin aisles and green marinas/kitchen tiles and vacumn cle...

our office IT guys, quite the political sophisticates, warned us yesterday about some German shennanigans, saying: "There is a German language "worm" spreading rapidly on the internet. It was particularly active this past weekend, and a number of people received one or more e-mails ge...

So I'm reading Steven Pinker's book, "How the Mind Works" (he's my favorite evolutionary biologist/linguist y'all) and on page 426 I find: As the post-60s rock musician Elvis Costello asked, "Was it a millionaire who said "Imagine no possessions"? Totally unexpected, and qui...

Welcome back, whar (dude, how's the new handle different?). The board's been kind of predictable without you. Post away.

As someone who writes for a living, I get as annoyed as the next person when people make spelling mistakes (relevant/relevent and affect/effect are pet peeves). But I definitely will not join the spelling police. Spelling mistakes are annoying, but the notion that bad spelling (like bad grammar) is ...

Sorry, Bobster, the name of the author is Edward J. Epstein, and Slate notes that he is the author of "The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood".

My computer skills are shitty, so I am reuscitating an old thread, and pasting the text of an article in today's Slate on-line magazine which does a summary of the whole saga from almost a couple of years ago about Michael Moore, Disney, and whether Disney refused to release the movie in order not t...

I don't watch horror films, so my list is mostly filled with psychologically jarring movies, some of them good, but still sickening: BULLY (by the director of Kids, and one sicko movie about the young) BAD LIEUTENANT (Keitel's unrelenting badness and angst makes this movie unbearable) REQUIEM FOR A ...

IP, do you get Seifeld in Poland? It's (or was, now it's on reruns) a situation comedy popular in the US (sorry, if this is a naive question, but have not been to Europe since 94). Anyway, they had a whole show about how one of the characters was the only person in NYC who could not sit through The ...

rope, the albums you bought recently are late Beatles albums, and the drug themes in them (which you are right about) were really incorporated by them from Dylan and stuff others were doing at the time. The Beatles were late converts to public espousals of drug use. In fact, I would argue that the B...

Miss BA, you are clearly clairvoyant. I was about to type that one in (the description would have been "paltry paltrow") but I remembered kind of liking the whole conceit of the thing, so I gave it marks for originality. But it was the only other candidate.

Damn right, Noise, in fact the language of pop music in Latin, South and Central America is Afro-Cuban music, yeah baby!! But for those Beatle boys coming along we'd have the whole Western world doing some proper dancing!! Come to think of it we had jazz (when it mattered) pretty much taken over too...

Some time to kill and a chance to talk about movies, a bad combination. Inspired by talk of overrated Oscar nominated movies, I went back to 1990 and drew up a list of my most over-rewarded films (I used Oscar nominated as a surrogate). Here they are: Seabiscuit (horse shit) Moulin Rouge (juvenile m...

When did you see it, Bobster? I saw it in 69, and in my preteen years the movie was a bolt of sexuality (I think it did the same for a lot of older people). It's the swinging sixties in London. Nudity makes an appearance (at a time when this was not at all common) and sexuality is expressed in ways ...

Bobster, despite our disagreement on The Vanishing, I'm with you on disliking Antonioni (popular in my neck of the woods way back in the 60s only because the women liked Delon and the men Vitti; no one gave a shit what existential dread was worrying their pretty faces). I did like Blow Up though. At...

Bobster, I saw this movie a long time ago, so when I rise to its defense please keep in mind the time elapsed. Like you I agree that the banality of evil thing is not news (and was not news back in the late 80s when the movie was made). Here's why the movie's take on it made an impression on me. As ...

Saw this movie upon its original release, and almost 15 years later I still recall with vividness, rising from my seat at the end, with the house lights going up, and seeing the stunned faces of the other moviegoers as they quietly filed out. At the time, the movie reminded me of Chabrol's nastier p...

Feliz Cumpleanos, Robestero

John and Sadie, as we know EC's lyrics are often disjointed, and frequently he throws in stuff that just sounds right with the melody, so it's fruitless to analyse his songs looking for lines that make sense. Hey, but it's still fun and kills some time, so, speaking of God Give Me Strenght, my sense...

I am: paranoid schizoid narcissistic obsessive compulsive Fairly accurate, yes fairly accurate I said and what a maginificent combination of traits I have!!(anybody have a problem with that? come on say it, I know you do), but maybe I'm not so complex as that or am I? Oh I don't know, I don't think ...

midg: I just automatically assume that the music that young people gravitate to, pop music that is, is made by their peers, that's all. To be in your teens and think that your favorite pop music is being made by a 50 year old just strikes me as odd. I love EC's music, but I just don't know if he had...

Bobster, we are U2 sould mates. Angel of Harlem rocks!! I ended up buying Rattle and Rum when it came out because it was on that record. Nothing since or before. I was blown away when at the time that record came out they publicly stated that it was inspired by their first becoming aware of American...

Bellow is one of my favorite writers. He lived to a ripe old age, and by all accounts had a blast to the end. He will be missed. I ran into him one night in the 80s in a restaurant in the Upper East Side (we sort of bumped into each other while leaving) and all I could say, at a time when I had read...