The road to self-reliance: My Aim is True

[Jack of All Parades]

“Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, "Who are you, Sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self- Reliance”

I remember it as a very warm summer. I spent my days driving a truck around the five boroughs delivering beer and soda, hauling cases up and down basements and into back rooms and quite possibly being in the best shape of my young life. My nights in an apartment in Astoria were spent reading and walking around in the neighborhood for some coolness going down to the park by the East River to hang out, maybe catch a smoke. The Yankees were romping to a pennant and all the city adored Billy Martin. The city that summer was caught up in the hysteria of a serial killer and that dark presence seemed to hang over everything only adding to the hysteria that occurred when all the power died in the city that July.

I was on my own getting ready for my junior year at Columbia trying to bank away as much money as I could for tuition and expenses. For entertainment, as usual, I read, mostly Melville, Emerson and Stevens or I tuned on the radio or played the albums I had collected. Two new stations were in my ken-WKCR [Columbia’s student station] and WLIR out on the Island, both eclectic in their spinning choices. On the airwaves I was infatuated with Punk and the new/old sounds of The Clash, Talking Heads’s ‘77' and the extremely assured sound of a young Englishman with the audacious nom de plume, Elvis Costello. These three artists fueled my summer evenings and became a soundtrack for my nights in the heat and isolation of Queens. I used to be a regular visitor to Bleecker Bobs in the Village when it was still a cool place to sluice around in for gold nuggets of sound. It was there that I got a copy of the Stiff release that July [I have long since lost that album, borrowed and never returned by some friend]. It was one of those acquisitions that stays with one. Sui generis, it seemed to spring full born from the artist’s head; thirteen songs that sped by never overstaying their welcome .

At the time I remember being struck by how fully formed the songs were as individual units with little repetition or filler. I remember thinking how different they sounded from the typical fare that day but yet how they seemed to be grounded in the musical genres that enthused this young Englishman, R&B, soul, folk, the American songbook and , yes, country. I would later come to understand just how true this was. What I initially found was a jolt of pure ear candy. The songs accompanied me everywhere I went that summer and I could not get the infectious word play out of my ears[ a pleasant affliction from which I still suffer]. The opening line of the first song is the barbed hook that catches the attuned listener: “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired”-insouciant, sexual, sarcastic and clever right off the start- I was hooked.

I only later learned that what seemed so easily put together as an album took a great deal of effort over many years. That what seemed at the time, a solid musical statement, was years in the planning stages within EC’s head as he laboriously pounded on doors and tried to get people to pay attention to him as a performer and writer. That may be what makes this record still resonate for me after 33 plus years. What I listened to that summer was a last shot effort by a performer to start a musical career. He had in essence created his own final exam and filled his ‘blue book’ with his best efforts in an attempt to dazzle. And that he did. Listen after listen showed me that he knew his songbook, hooks and all. But listen after listen also showed an impressionable young man, someone who had an ear for words and their felicitous combinations as sounds and meanings. I was besotted with words [and still am] and I found this wordplay intoxicating. I was also taken by striking similarities to musical interests we shared[ something that was only solidified for me years later when EC would freely talk of his musical tastes and favorite artists and albums]. I was a political science major with a minor in history and international economics and as a student of twentieth century totalitarianism I was thrilled that here was a songwriter taking on the thug Oswald.

I was equally captured by the melodic and harmonic skill of this young writer. He could handle a broad range of styles and perform them in a confident and beguiling manner. Hooks were second nature it seemed. He definitely had mastered and schooled himself on the crisp two to three minute pop gems of his masters from Liverpool and Detroit and the deep south. He also had learned from another master out of the north woods of Minnesota as attested by “Waiting on the End of the World”. One thing that has consistently stayed with me over the years and which became yet again evident as I reacquainted myself with the album in the past weeks is the musicality of the words, themselves. They ‘sing’ in the individual songs, moving with the beat seamlessly, as if they were notes themselves. I have always admired that about these songs.

Relistening to the record, I have been struck by his treatment of women. It is rarely healthy and he too often paints himself as the victim with a strong hint of 'veiled' misogony. He is the one being wronged, being made a ‘fool’ of, too often asked to be the ‘Miracle Man’. At the time this view of women never did hold true for me; it does even less now. I am happy that he has moved beyond this viewpoint as he has matured as an artist. As another poster, Pophead 2K, has noted elsewhere it would make for a great critical chapter, his treatment of women over the years; something I one day hope to commit to paper if Pophead does not beat me to it.

Thirty three years and it still sounds so fresh. I can hear most assuredly why it holds up and why it has been deemed one of a handful of debuts that are memorable. If one couples it with its sister record from 1978 it is a most auspicious debut: clear eyed, cynical, sarcastic, full of the hubris of a brash youth ready to tackle the world and all too near the ‘prince’ that Emerson cites. I also, when I listen very closely, hear intimations of the elder statesman that brash youth evolved into in the ensuing decades. It definitely helped to inform, entertain and mold a young man starting out in his apartment in Queens one hot summer many years and listens ago.

[verbal gymnastics]

Erudite as ever.

Remember that around that time he was saying the only emotions he understood were revenge and guilt.

The album came out at a real time of change in the UK and Elvis was drawn in with it.

I should think most people's attitudes to the opposite sex, sexual orientation etc change as they get older.

[bronxapostle]

a good read Chris..thanks for sharing. but didn't they teach MATH at Columbia...thrity four years bro!

[Jack of All Parades]

I avoided that subject assiduously, BA- that and spelling! Though I did take Astronomy as my science core curriculum requirement and one would think some rudimentary addition skills would have rubbed off- apparently not!

[bronxapostle]

just funning ya...you obviously had other strengths! cheers.

[wardo68]

You ever think of publishing this stuff, Chris? or at least collecting in on a website outside of this forum?

[bambooneedle]

Relistening to the record, I have been struck by his treatment of women. It is rarely healthy and he too often paints himself as the victim with a strong hint of 'veiled' misogony. He is the one being wronged, being made a ‘fool’ of, too often asked to be the ‘Miracle Man’. At the time this view of women never did hold true for me; it does even less now. I am happy that he has moved beyond this viewpoint as he has matured as an artist. As another poster, Pophead 2K, has noted elsewhere it would make for a great critical chapter, his treatment of women over the years; something I one day hope to commit to paper if Pophead does not beat me to it.

Just because Elvis, a songwriting artiste with a certain image at the time, in the midst of the punk era, delved into the subject of youthful frustration with certain women refreshingly in terms of the most basic emotions which are universal it doesn't mean that it reveals his "view on women" or that it equals his "treatment" of women generally. sheeeshh....

[bronxapostle]

well said bamboo...it was a lifetime ago and songs are just momentary blips in how the writer is putting words together that day. i would hardly view them as insightful to the person they are or would become. if Nick Cave writes murderous songs, is he a murderer???

[verbal gymnastics]

Isn't that what I was saying? Albeit in a less verbal gymnastic way?

[bronxapostle]

who me, VG? funny you should remind me of one of my old nicknames (for my SELF!) you may be a verbal gymnast, but I AM A VERBAL SWORDSMAN!

[bambooneedle]

BA, even funnier than the nickname itself is if you gave the nickname to yourself.

[bronxapostle]

THAAAAAAANK YOU boo! i said it from the get go, my nickname for my SELF!!! laugh it up, we only live once! and when you're dead, you're dead a LOOOOONG time!

[Dr. Luther]

...if Nick Cave writes murderous songs, is he a murderer???

Right.
Like Nick Cave isn't a murderer.

[bambooneedle]

It wasn't clear to me but I agree BA, and I'm laughing with you!

That's news to me, Dr. Luther.


Anyway, by all means let us get back to the importance of the original topic...

[bronxapostle]

screw the original blase topic: let's talk of Nick and kinder murder and verbal swordsmen and bunny munroe and omalley's bar and the ass saw the angel and death is not the end. p.s. @dr.luther: AWESOME aside. thanks for dropping by.

[Poor Deportee]

Thanks to Chris for yet another thought-provoking thread. My own experience of MAIT is (characteristically) backwards. I came to Elvis as an 18-year-old with Spike. While this is generally not regarded as his finest hour, that album's mad eclecticism, and the basic force of Elvis's talent and attitude, impelled me to seek out, in piecemeal fashion over the next few years, the rest of his catalogue. Having pegged him as an eclectic junkyard genius, I was initially surprised to find his previous records generally much more unified and coherent than Spike. But when I finally got to MAIT, I was startled at its musical conservatism. Sonically, it seemed positively stodgy coming from the man who had made Get Happy!!, Armed Forces, or even the demented New Wave/punk hybrid of TYM. So it took me a while to warm up to the charms of this little masterpiece of catchy and deceptively simple three-minute wonders. It's still not my favourite by any means; which goes to show, I think, that part of that album's impact came from the sheer novelty of EC's skewed perspective and persona. If you'd heard the later records first it's unlikely that it would mow you down the way it did people in 1977.

But on its own terms, there's no denying what's there. It's simply amazing that this guy had to scrounge for a record contract - what an indictment of the record industry...

As for the issue of EC's early attitude to women: despite the smug dismissals on this thread, it remains a very real question, especially given that EC's career is still fundamentally defined by his early, groundbreaking records. What I'll say is this. Self-loathing is incompatible with healthy relationships, and EC's early records explore this reality as unflinchingly as any I've ever heard. The narrator in these songs desperately needs and wants women, and resents them for it, while his self-loathing drives him into relationships marked by a humiliating dependency. He goes for toxic relationships with toxic women and is left seething at the keyhole.

Why'd you have to say that there's always someone who can do it better than I can?

In one sense, these women deserve to be resented; they are as pathological as the man who lusts after them. Impotent longing and resentment is his basic motif. Of course, the threat of violence is never too far off - most clearly in the unsettling coda of one of EC's most subtly disturbing songs, 'Alison' - but it's generally of the fantasy/wish-fulfilment variety so characteristic of the immature, self-loathing male psyche.

To me, this is fundamentally psychological stuff, miles removed from the cartoon misogyny of much hip-hop or frat-boy rock, where the women really is nothing more than a cipher, a dependent object or possession. There's a strong suspicion that the 'Avenging Dork' would like to be in the position of the frat boy or the hip-hop singer, of course. But that's fair game. All of this amounts to a portrait of a certain type of male experience with a real (albeit discomfiting) ring of truth. In the end, these songs aren't about women, they're about the inner world of an emotionally stunted character. And the truth of the presentation redeems it of the charge of political incorrectness, I think.

[Kevin Davis]

For me a lot of it is redeemed by it just being pop music and not a master's thesis on gender roles--I mean, as it exists as a catharsis for relationship turmoil, I'd think most rock songwriting is better for asserting its power in spite of its irrational psychological base. Biographies suggest that Bob Dylan has treated women like crap his entire life, but some of his greatest, funniest, and most powerful songs (as well as, admittedly, one of his absolute worst ones) come in the form of venomous diatribes about how he's been wronged by them. Are the songs compromised as a result?

As for the issue of EC's early attitude to women: despite the smug dismissals on this thread, it remains a very real question, especially given that EC's career is still fundamentally defined by his early, groundbreaking records.

I don't know about this. To me this seems to suggest that Elvis is doomed to forever atone for the sins of his young self just because people are too lazy to look further. Elvis would go on to write songs of regret and adulation that were every bit as reverent to the women in his life the as songs on 'My Aim is True' were spiteful of them, and just because the latter record is the one constantly popping up in Rolling Stone commemorative best-of issues doesn't make those unwilling to look beyond it any less wrong. I've never seen anything in Elvis's career to indicate that the songs on 'My Aim is True' represent his views on women in general; it is, as you articulately express, a portrait of a certain type of male experience--one extremely common to young males of all walks of life, hip-hop singers and frat boys included, and one nearly as commonly grown out of.

[Jack of All Parades]

For me a lot of it is redeemed by it just being pop music and not a master's thesis on gender roles--I mean, as it exists as a catharsis for relationship turmoil, I'd think most rock songwriting is better for asserting its power in spite of its irrational psychological base. Biographies suggest that Bob Dylan has treated women like crap his entire life, but some of his greatest, funniest, and most powerful songs (as well as, admittedly, one of his absolute worst ones) come in the form of venomous diatribes about how he's been wronged by them. Are the songs compromised as a result?

As for the issue of EC's early attitude to women: despite the smug dismissals on this thread, it remains a very real question, especially given that EC's career is still fundamentally defined by his early, groundbreaking records.

I don't know about this. To me this seems to suggest that Elvis is doomed to forever atone for the sins of his young self just because people are too lazy to look further. Elvis would go on to write songs of love and adulation that were every bit as reverent to the women in his life the songs on 'My Aim is True' were spiteful of them, and just because the latter record is the one constantly popping up in Rolling Stone commemorative best-of issues doesn't make those unwilling to look beyond it any less wrong. I've never seen anything in Elvis's career to indicate that the songs on 'My Aim is True' represent his views on women in general; it is, as you articulately express, a portrait of a certain type of male experience--one extremely common to young males of all walks of life, hip-hop singers and frat boys included, and one nearly as commonly grown out of.

That is the point as made earlier:

"Relistening to the record, I have been struck by his treatment of women. It is rarely healthy and he too often paints himself as the victim with a strong hint of 'veiled' misogony. He is the one being wronged, being made a ‘fool’ of, too often asked to be the ‘Miracle Man’. At the time this view of women never did hold true for me; it does even less now. [iI am happy that he has moved beyond this viewpoint as he has matured as an artist. As another poster, Pophead 2K, has noted elsewhere it would make for a great critical chapter, his treatment of women over the years; something I one day hope to commit to paper if Pophead does not beat to it"[/i]

He definitely has moved beyond a simplistic view of women. As he has matured, so has his songwriting perspective towards women into an adult's perspective and not that of an adolescent coming to grips with his own sexual persona. That is also why I think it would make for a sound study- the arc of his dealings with women and sexuality as he has matured both as a man and as a songwriter. Hopefully, somebody is working on that as I write. Should make for an interesting discussion.

[Kevin Davis]

This seems like as good of a place as any to acknowledge my admiration for your Tift Merritt signature. What a great artist.

[Jack of All Parades]

Thank you- she does have her moments as a songwriter. I would also add to your comment about how most young males outgrow their early relationships with women that I would hope that is the case but I too frequently have seen examples to the contrary amongst men, young and older, I have observed in my life. As the father of three daughters I am extremely sensitive to the way they are treated as well as to the way women are still treated or thought of by male acquaintances of mine or the general male population I can observe. I do think the young EC grew into a very balanced and caring middle aged man when it comes to dealing with women and it is frequently reflected in the more mature songwork in his later career, but, as previously pointed out, could be considered problematic in his earlier songs about women and relationships.

[sweetest punch]

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2012 ... s_true.php

Elvis Costello's My Aim is True turns 35

In the early 1970s, a bespectacled English waif named Declan MacManus -- later to be known as genre defining songsmith, Elvis Costello -- was pulling off a con in am Elizabeth Arden cosmetics factory. "I read the papers all day long because... No one realized that the computer did all the thinking," Costello told Q Magazine in 1996, speaking of his job as a computer operator in the factory. "I wore a white coat and everyone thought I was a rocket scientist because I was the only one who knew how to work the machine. Everyone thought I was a genius. It was brilliant. I just skived all the time... I took my guitar in. I'd stay late, sometimes work 36 hours just on coffee and write two or three songs and read the music press."

In the mid-1970s, English pop music was beginning its cultural decline. It was a time that many reflect on as being overindulgent, technically proficient yet primally unexciting drab of ten-minute solos and epic themes (see Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Center of the Earth rock opera). Though by the second half of the decade, a decidedly baser, more barbaric movement of sound and fashion began to fill the pages of the music magazines that young Costello was reading. The Damned, The Sex Pistols and The Clash were attempting to reinvent English culture and youth rebellion, and were doing a damn good job of it. As a part-time musician, Costello was all for it: knowing that his songs were better.

Born into a family of music industry insiders, Costello's mother often took her young son to concerts at the Liverpool Philharmonic, where she worked for a period as an usher; she would later find work at Brian Epstein's NEMS music shop, introducing her child to whole other dimensions of music mythology. His father would sustain a life-long career in the music business, performing trumpet in the popular Joe Loss Orchestra and recording minor successes as a singer. In 1973 Costello would cut one of his first recordings, singing backup on the award winning Secret Lemonade Drinker TV ad, written and performed by his father. Having this behind-the-curtain view of the music-into-money operation would later give Costello a unique advantage over his contemporaries, inspiring him to criticize the industry with songs like "Radio Radio," and to know just how far he could take his pranks on media insiders.

Mostly unsatisfied with both the glam and prog rock coming out of England, and the hippie-fied folk ballads coming out of America, young Costello drifted into the London pub rock scene with his band, Flip City. Now viewed as the cultural predecessor to punk rock, the pub rock movement was described by future Costello producer and collaborator, Nick Lowe, as being "the regrouping of a bunch of middle-class ex-mods who'd been through the hippie underground scene and realized it wasn't their cup of tea." Like punk, it was a reaction to the arena rock shows -- with it's massive stage sets, light shows, and check-out-my-big-cock guitar solos -- preferring a more stripped down, primally accessible form of drinking music.

Though by this time Costello was married with a child, working a full time job and writing songs either on the subway, at work, or after work at home, quietly tapping the piano keys so as not to wake the wife and baby. Hardly a bohemian existence, this lifestyle kept Costello in a disciplined world of consistent productivity, sharpening his craft and avoiding the indulgences of drink, drugs and women that trap most creatively inclined men.

After splitting with Flip City -- yet retaining a few songs he'd written with the band -- Costello began sending demo tapes around to all the major labels of the time, enduring rejections left and right until the summer of 1976 when the London based Stiff Records took an interest. Still living in the suburbs, Costello was only aware of the burgeoning punk scene through the pages of rock magazines like NME, Sounds and Melody Maker , only vaguely aware of Stiff Records, the label that would put out the first "official" punk record, Damned, Damned, Damned.

Casually assigned as producer of Costello's debut album, Lowe would turn out to be an incalculable asset to Costello's early career, producing his first five albums and penning the mega-hit "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding" (not to mention having a respectable career of his own). The two were already pretty chummy from their pub-rock days, and neither wasted any time getting to work on what would be a very exciting project. Recorded in a series of six, four hour sessions at a cost of 1,000 pounds, Costello would call in "sick" to work in order to complete My Aim is True. Within a matter of months, he would quit his job at the Elizabeth Arden factory to become a full time musician.

The title of the record is plucked from Costello's second single, "Allison," a tune rooted in a theme that would remain consistent throughout the punk-crooner's songwriting career: desire and betrayal. Perhaps the reason so many disaffected, High Fidelity-style young men latched on to Costello's music, was the way he would describe a conflicting ardor for, and silent rejection from, the women of his life. It was a pose that many a proud males have taken on: I hate you, but you still own my heart. Less a Morrissey type of self loathing, yet not quite a Johnny Rotten fuck-you-bitch, Elvis Costello existed in the kinetic middle-ground of love and revenge. "Oh I used to be disgusted/ now I try to be amused," he sings on "(the Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes."

This method was also applied in the political realms, like in the anti-fascist "Less Than Zero;" or in protest of a cultural fascism in the media with "Radio Radio": he preached against evils, but rarely provided a specific framework to fix things. It was clear to the minds behind Stiff Records that they had a unique voice on their hands, someone who both embodied the rage and indignation of the punk movement, yet had a lyrical and musical eloquence to express those frustrations, like a marriage of Bob Dylan and Tony Bennett.

Yet however miles ahead of his contemporaries Costello was as a songwriter, he was seriously lagging in the style department. Of all the enduring worth of late-'70s British punk records, it was unarguably one of the most heavily stylized of all rock's incarnations. Stiff Records attempted to take this angry-glitter attitude into their marketing department, employing witty phrases like "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him float" on their adverts, or "contains no hit singles whatsoever" on album sleeves. The idea to bestow on their new young talent the name of rock and roll's most treasured hero -- Elvis -- was one more punk rock marketing gimmick from Stiff, an attempt to shake the etch-a-sketch of history, to burn down the library, to defiantly state that nothing is sacred and all is up for grabs.

The performer himself -- who had been using the maiden name of his paternal great-grandmother, Costello, for some time by then -- had his reservations about the name-change, but in the end didn't put up much resistance.

Besides, he knew a thing or two about gimmicky promotional tactics himself. Just weeks before My Aim is True was released, Costello, along with his newly minted band, The Attractions, set up a generator-powered sidewalk show outside London's Hilton Hotel, where CBS Records happen to be hosting their annual international conference. Hoping to secure a US record deal, Costello drew a reasonable crowd on the sidewalk, which contained a handful of reps from CBS. "All these guys were actually standing there and applauding," Costello told Trouser Press. "But the Hilton didn't see the humor in the situation and called the police. The police also didn't see the humor and arrested me. It's wasn't a big deal... just a crazy stunt." A stunt so crazy it landed young Costello a CBS/Columbia contract by years end.

This stunt, along with a growing word of mouth about the just released album, swelled Costello's public relevancy, landing him on the cover of Sounds and Melody Maker: two of the magazines he'd poured over as a factory worker living in the suburbs. The record both added to, and yet was separated from, the infamous collection of UK punk records released just prior to it. Later that year, Costello's record company put on a Stiffs Greatest Stiffs live revue, a 24-date UK tour boasting Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, Larry Wallis and The King himself. The tour would be recorded and packaged into a live album; yet despite recently opening up for Santana before a 12,000-person audience, along with the serious buzz about his debut LP, Costello refused to play any songs from the album. When the audience protested, Costello dug in his heals, establishing his punk credibility (not for the first or last time), shouting back at the crowd: "if you want to hear the old songs, buy the fucking record!"

Much of the quotes and facts in this essay were taken from the book Elvis Costello: A Biography, by Tony Clayton-Lea.

[watercamp]

Elvis Costello releases first album July 22, 1977. less than a month later Elvis Presley dies.
The King id dead, long live the King!