Hi-Fi News & Record Review, January 2015: Difference between revisions
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Luca, if memory serves, finally got garrotted in a bar after being stabbed through the hand and this time the message got relayed ''back'' to Papa Brando: "Luca Brazi sleeps with the fishes." Which means, apparently, that they've dumped his remains in the river. I believe it's the same as being told someone's wearing a concrete overcoat. | Luca, if memory serves, finally got garrotted in a bar after being stabbed through the hand and this time the message got relayed ''back'' to Papa Brando: "Luca Brazi sleeps with the fishes." Which means, apparently, that they've dumped his remains in the river. I believe it's the same as being told someone's wearing a concrete overcoat. | ||
Whatever, it's the fish that concern us | Whatever, it's the fish that concern us here. 'Cos that's what the extremely stinky brown paper parcel that ended up on my desk at ''Melody Maker'' was stuffed full of — rotten, dead fish. Mr Elvis Costello, it seems, was sending me a message. | ||
here. 'Cos that's what the extremely stinky brown paper parcel that ended up on my desk at ''Melody Maker'' was stuffed full | |||
of — rotten, dead fish. Mr Elvis Costello, it seems, was sending me a message. | |||
I | I can't recall which of Mr Costello's interminably dull mid-career albums I must have slagged off to warrant this melodramatic death threat but, at the time, I remember thinking he must have been a bit of a dummy to send such a clichéd response to my review. I mean, he wasn't actually going to have me killed, was he? But looking back now, I've come to appreciate that, unlike all the other playacting little Godfathers over-dramatising their petty little lives for a month or so until the next fad took hold, Mr Costello was sincerely neck-deep in this acting tough malarkey for the long haul. | ||
After all, in 1977, around the release of ''My Aim Is True'', his debut album and the one | After all, in 1977, around the release of ''My Aim Is True'', his debut album and the one we're here to eulogise, Mr Costello told ''NME'''s Nick Kent that, "the only two things that matter to me, the only motivation points for writing all these songs, are revenge and guilt. Those are the only emotions that I know I can feel." | ||
told ''NME'''s Nick Kent that, "the only two things that matter to me, the only motivation points for writing all these songs, are revenge and guilt. Those are the only emotions that I know I can feel." | |||
He also shows Kent a bent nail he keeps in his pocket for when he gets into fights and tells him that he has a little black book | He also shows Kent a bent nail he keeps in his pocket for when he gets into fights and tells him that he has a little black book full of the names of all the business people who've crossed or frustrated him in his bid to establish a career in music up to this point. New names, he assures Kent, are being added by the day. | ||
full of the names of all the business people | |||
point. New names, he assures Kent, are being added by the day. | |||
And Kent was nearly one of them, choosing to chat to Wilko Johnson of headliners Dr Feelgood in the Marquee dressing room rather than check out Mr | And Kent was nearly one of them, choosing to chat to Wilko Johnson of headliners Dr Feelgood in the Marquee dressing room rather than check out Mr Costello's band-in-a-previous-life, Flip City, who were supporting. | ||
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The [[New Musical Express, August 27, 1977|article]], which was published in August 1977 around the time ''My Aim Is True'' was released by the fledgling independent Stiff label, was entitled: "D{{nb}}P Costello of Whitten, Middlesex, it is your turn to be the future of rock & roll." | The [[New Musical Express, August 27, 1977|article]], which was published in August 1977 around the time ''My Aim Is True'' was released by the fledgling independent Stiff label, was entitled: "D{{nb}}P Costello of Whitten, Middlesex, it is your turn to be the future of rock & roll." | ||
The D{{nb}}P refers to the | The D{{nb}}P refers to the singer's time spent trundling around the pre-pub rock circuit under the moniker D{{nb}}P Costello. | ||
moniker D{{nb}}P Costello. | |||
His real name was actually Declan Patrick McManus, but his dad – a musician too – occasionally | His real name was actually Declan Patrick McManus, but his dad – a musician too – occasionally traded under the Costello brand so his son took it on as a tribute. | ||
traded under the Costello brand so | |||
his son took it on as a tribute. | |||
He then started calling himself Elvis once | He then started calling himself Elvis once he'd fallen under the influence of a feisty fellow called Andrew Jakeman who had managed Chili Willi & The Red Hot Peppers and The Feelgoods under his own gangster-ish nom de plume, Jake Riviera. Riviera had selected Costello from a pile of hopefuls who'd sent cassettes to the new Stiff label and soon had him penning ditties for Welsh rocker Dave Edmunds who, for some reason, rejected them. | ||
Riviera had selected Costello from a pile of | |||
So, using cheap down-time at Pathway Studios in Holloway with ex-Brinsley Schwarzer Nick Lowe behind the mixing desk, they banged out an album over six four-hour sessions for the princely total sum of two grand, using Clover, an American country rock outfit lurking around town, as the uncredited backing band. | |||
And what a strange and seismic album it turned out to be: a weird and wired hybrid, musically pretty traditional with an occasional whiff of reggae thrown in, lyrically completely unique. | |||
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LOSER IN LIFE | |||
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The opener, "Welcome To The Working Week," sets the tone with the words: ''"Now your picture's in the paper being rhythmically admired,"'' its references to masturbation and barbed-wire wordplay (he feels like a juggler running out of hands!) born of a deep-seated loathing, aimed both at himself and the hard, cruel world in which he just doesn't fit. | |||
This is an album about being a loser in life and a no-hoper in love, but it doesn't romanticise these situations like the famous '70s singer-songwriters did and doesn't once plead for our pity. It writhes and it hurts and it gets all nasty, like a punked-up version of Mr Costello's only avowed hero, Gram Parsons. | |||
Delivered with a barely suppressed sneer, Costello's songs exhibit a wicked way with words. Take the album title, ''My Aim Is True'': are his intentions honourable or does he dream of shooting the girl? The title's taken from "Alison," the album's pivotal track which, if you weren't | |||
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Revision as of 20:13, 15 February 2015
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