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45 Days Of @ElvisCostello: a twitter megathread in anticipation of the Oct 12 release date of LOOK NOW, the new LP by Elvis Costello & The Imposters

This is either a bright idea or a brilliant mistake, but this is only, this is only, this is only the beginning...

I did something similar to this 5 years ago, in anticipation of EC & @theroots' Wise Up Ghost LP, on tumblr.

(You can still find all those posts if you look, although a lot of the YouTube links etc are now dead ends. It was 40 Days Of EC then, so for 2018 I'm upping it to 45.)

Mostly I will be going chronologically from the early years right up to the present, but it feels right to start out with Costello's 2002 song, "45."

Music Video directed by @jessebdylan

(There's an alternate "diner" version I can't find anywhere online)

Here's my 1st "hot take" of this megathread: IMHO the best version of "45" is still the debut performance on The Tonight Show w/@jayleno, from 1999.

I can't find the video anywhere, so here is the audio (in 2 tweets)

(Jay accidentally mispronounces @SteveNieve as "Steve Nevy.")

(Hopefully it won't be too annoying that I'm posting partial clips of songs or occasionally splitting them into segments that fit twitter's 140-second video clips.)

Part 2 of the 1999 live version of "45":

In most cases, I won't be posting full songs anyway, or full videos-- just enough to get the point across so this isn't 45 days of tweeting about music with no examples. When possible, I will try to link to full videos on Vevo or Spotify or whatever is most legit.

The hope is that, if you like something you hear within this thread, you will be inclined to seek it out on LP, CD or streaming somewhere. Costello's body of work was daunting when I started and has doubled since then, but it is a fun musical rabbit hole to fall down into.

And while I'm getting started, I should go ahead and apologize for all the many mistakes I am likely to make while tweeting this thread for the next 45 days. This is just something I'm doing for fun & I just know I'm gonna get stuff wrong. #AccidentsWillHappen

Before I go allllllll the way back to the beginning, I'll answer a question that people sometimes ask, which is if I can recommend a point of entry for Costello, whose discography now spans 4 decades and can be intimidating to approach...

First of all, my point of entry was his 1993 collaboration with The Brodsky Quartet, which is as unlikely a place to start as any. Put on a blindfold and pick one, flip a coin, or select the record whose cover art catches your eye.

(Give it at least 3 tries if using a random method, to guarantee that you don't accidentally veer to the most obscure or uncharacteristic corners of his back catalog. By choice #3, you are guaranteed to land on a solid pick.)

You can't go wrong w/chronological of course (we will get to that in this thread pretty soon & you can follow along-- we have 45 days, folks!) + there are also a lot of "best of" releases & compilations out there, all reasonably priced. And basically all of this is on streaming.

But there is one "best of" that I still think stands head & shoulders above the rest, and it is @ElvisCostello's lovingly compiled & annotated GIRLS +£÷GIRLS=$&GIRLS, which covers his first decade of records in deliberately, defiantly non-chronological order.

It jumps around but I think it really gives you a sense of who he is as a songwriter and recording artist. Basically, if you like this collection, you'll probably want to keep on exploring.

Also: it was released on vinyl, cassette and compact disc and each format has a slightly different track listing and running order. Did I mention that it was a 2-disc/2-tape/double LP?

I took the liberty of putting together a Spotify playlist, although it blends the song selections and running order so it's not a perfect approximation but you'll probably play it in shuffle mode anyway, right?

open.spotify.com/user/12854279/…

And here are the liner notes, albeit in less pleasing form than if you track down a physical copy, which of course I highly recommend...

elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And yes, that collection only draws from the first decade. A lot of popular opinion regarding EC rates his early work more highly than the records that follow, I like much of his post-1986 output even better. (It just doesn't lends itself as gracefully to compilation.)

Also, while Costello has never directly explained the arithmetic of the compilation's title, he drew his inspiration playfully from the "other" Elvis:

OK, let's get started (he said, nearly 20 tweets in)-- for Day 1 of this megathread, we're going to start at the beginning, or actually a little bit before the beginning.

Here's EC's dad, Ross McManus, in a clip he showed off regularly when promoting his memoir a few years back:

Every time I see that clip, it brings to mind this music video from 1980. The apple did not fall far from the tree:

This LP from 1970 is something I originally assumed was put out after Declan MacManus adopted the name "Elvis Costello" but it's not a quick cash-in, it's a marker that the McManus family musical roots run deep

Of course, it has since been reissued in an edition which takes full advantage of the Elvis/Elvis connection! These aren't radical reinterpretations, but it's a nice record of Presley covers (available here at a very nice price: m.bear-family.com/item/353231343…)

1973: R. White's Lemonade "Secret Lemonade Drinker" advert with lead vocals by Ross McManus & backing vocals by young @ElvisCostello:

At this point, we are still several years ahead of his debut album, My Aim Is True. The early 1970s saw young Costello join the Liverpool band RUSTY. Amazingly, there are TAPES.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about Rusty, but you can read pretty much every available scrap of info about them here: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

"Are You Afraid Of Your Children?" (Elvis Costello; home demo, November 1972)

"Love Is Like Everything" (Elvis Costello; home demo, November 1972)

"Warm House" - noted as Rusty's most crowd-pleasing original song (Elvis Costello; home demo, November 1972)

Smash cut to 2015: @ElvisCostello is touring to promote his memoir, and Rusty reunites in concert! And they open with their hit, "Warm House"!

(Full clip at: )

Another early demo that has survived is for the song "No Star", a melancholy number that EC revealed to audiences on his 2015 book tour.

@ecsongbysong has written more about this rare track than I ever could, so I will just link to that excellent site: ecsongbysong.com/2015/12/21/no-…

And that brings us to 1975 and Flip City, Costello's last band before turning pro.

The Flip City Demos have been widely circulated for decades, and include a mix of covers and early versions of familiar Costello songs. I first heard these on bootleg cassette in the mid-1990s.

You might have seen this recently unearthed clip of EC performing w/Flip City, demonstrating both his good taste in songs + his pre-punk fashion choices.

Here he is performing Holland/Dozier/Holland's "This Old Heart Of Mine."

(Full clip: )

The Amazing Rhythm Aces' "Third Rate Romance"

Fake Stiff Records label on this bootleg LP, playing an embryonic version of "Living In Paradise" which would later appear in souped-up form on his first Attractions album, 1978's This Year's Model...

The only officially released track from these demo sessions is the lovely EC original, "Imagination Is A Powerful Deceiver" which has graced multiple reissues of My Aim Is True and is easily the highlight of his Flip City recordings:

However, I do really enjoy this cover of @bobdylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," which at the time was a relatively new Dylan song:

Side note to @google: stop identifying this song primarily as a Guns N' Roses song just because they recorded it for the fucking Days Of Thunder soundtrack.

"Radio Soul" the earlier, more optimistic version of what would later become the scathing "Radio, Radio":

"Exiled Road" - Costello singing with his thickest American accent on this one (as thick as the Cockney one he would put on a few years later in concert)

And if I had to bet money on any Costello song never being pulled out of obscurity for a one-off performance in concert, I think I would put all my money on "Baseball Heroes" which somehow seems off-brand even for an artist whose brief is that he can & will do any kind of song:

Dammit, caught an autocorrect typo 2 tweets up, but this thread is a frieght train that cannot turn back-- it's "Exiles Road" not "Exiled Road." #AccidentsWillHappen

And that's Day 1 of 45 (unless I think of something else from the "pre-professional" days.)

Tomorrow, Day 2: My Aim Is True

DAY 2: My Aim Is True!

This debut album opens with a masturbation reference and its lead track is over in less than 90 seconds, a perfect start.

@ElvisCostello recorded this LP on sick days and almost immediately became a sensation.

Released on July 22, 1977.

To be honest, it has always been hard for me to hear in this debut the raging "Angry Young Man" thing that was so immediately clear in his live appearances & the next album.

I hear a lot of humor on it & "Alison" alone seems to pull against that image

Looking at his first TV appearance, there is intensity, but also more tenderness than spite. And while about half of the album points the way towards the "Revenge & Guilt" character that would soon emerge, the other half paints a more nuanced picture.

Less than 6 months later, his legendary appearance on SNL, which would get him banned until 1989. A totally different energy. Part of that is his formation of The Attractions, obvsly, but it's all a part of his first big shape-shift. His MAIT "sound" was over almost instantly.

One of the strengths immediately on display is Costello's ability to take his record collection & make something new out of it. The sound of a song like "No Dancing" is instantly recognizable as a Phil Spector/Ronettes-style song without feeling like a pastiche or a rip-off:

Costello would get better & better at slipping in quotes/tips of the hat to other people's music. Occasionally it would be overt, almost like sampling; other times, he'd sneak in The Twilight Zone or Looney Tunes theme into a song & it would take a dozen listens to recognize it

I should give more context than I'm giving! EC got himself signed to Stiff Records on the strength of his demo tape. At one point, I think the plan was for him to do a "split" LP where he was on one side and the other side was Wreckless Eric.

Nick Lowe was kind of Stiff's "house producer." EC didn't have a band yet, so he was given the band Clover to record with. Huey Lewis was a member of Clover but wasn't part of the MAIT sessions, and parts of Clover would eventually become Huey Lewis & The News

FYI: Clover have made a new album & Costello sings a guest vocal on a new recording of one of their old songs, "Mr. Moon"!

(Right now, I think the record is only available at @MillValleyMusic)

Here's their recollection of their MAIT experience, from FB:
m.facebook.com/pages/category…

Here's a sample of EC's guest appearance. (About 45 seconds in, I think John McFee's guitar sounds almost exactly like it does on the original recording of "Alison.")

Costello's demos for MAIT are much folksier than the persona he would adopt & it was a savvy move on his part. This doesn't feel like the vibe one associates with London 1977.

(Flashing forward, this feels closer to 2009's "Sulphur To Sugarcane" & Prairie Home Companion)

So far, I am dwelling more on what I feel is the lighter side of MAIT, but that's just bc we will soon shift into the overtly darker and more ferocious energies. Some of these songs just sound like a good time (even though there is usually a bit of poison mixed in, lyrically)

Costello holds auditions for a backing band, hires @SteveNieve (keyboards) Pete Thomas (drums) & Bruce Thomas (bass) to become "The Attractions"

Here they are on Top Of The Pops in Sept 1977. (I believe this is lip syncing to a new live performance?)

Arguably the most significant song on MAIT wasn't even on the original LP release: "Watching The Detectives"

Steve Nieve's overdubs combined with some of Costello's most ominous, cinematic songwriting make this feel like the way forward.

Sinister & threatening, it felt like this song was closer to capturing the moment than songs like "Sneaky Feelings."

It's also a song that somehow never gets tiresome, no matter how many times it shows up in concert. This is partly to do with the way Costello never stops playing with the arrangement but mostly it has to do with the strength of the song. It was built to last.

It's a song that commands your attention, even if you've heard it a dozen times before. Those first lyrics just grab you by the collar and don't let go.

Costello was almost immediately covered by Linda Ronstadt; he was (by his own admission, later) rude & dismissive about her versions of his songs, while still cashing the checks. (That's his self-burn I'm paraphrasing.)

As much as the aggressive pose of the Angry Young Punk helped Costello make a big splash, it obscured a lot of his most compelling qualities. "Stranger In The House" was left off MAIT bc it was "too country." It was more fashionable to sneer than to be enthusiastic.

In those first few years, when Costello would drop the pose and reveal his true enthusiasms, it feels like it was done with a semi-aggressive stance: "yeah, I like Bacharach & David-- what's it to ya?"

Is there a song on this album that feels particularly "2018"?

"Waiting For The End Of The World" has felt timely before-- many times in the past 4 decades-- and yet it feels downright anthemic in the era of trump.

And that's Day 2 of 45!

Tomorrow, Day 3: This Year's Model

Here's an extraordinary early attempt at that record's opening track, from the MAIT sessions, the microphone levels set too "hot" to handle the fury of Steve Goulding's drumming:

Oh, one more thing! While I'm at it, I might as well post some useful links at the end of each of the 45 days, when possible.

Costello's 2001 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

My Aim Is True [deluxe edition] on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/3d3I3Ppu…

Day 3: This Year's Model

His first LP w/The Attractions, so bursting w/confidence & skill that it makes his remarkable debut seem timid by comparison

I tend to think of this as the one EC album everyone agrees is perfect.

It's not even in my Top 5 & yet I agree: it is PERFECT.

Starting w/just his voice moments before the band comes crashing in "No Action" is a howling open wound of a song. "I don't wanna see you cuz I don't miss you that much" is as transparent a lie as I have ever heard in a song lyric & the whole thing is pure pain, in the best sense

The same song in concert-- unhinged & with The Attractions contributing backing vocals (something that would happen less often over time)

5/5/1978 - New Jersey
Full show at:

Released on March 17, 1978

Nick Lowe producing, although my sense is that the dynamic in-studio had already begun to evolve. This was no longer a guy calling in sick from his day job. He had his own band now & very specific ideas about what the record should sound like.

It was also 11 days instead of 3.

(I can't find the specific quote, but I recall hearing Nick Lowe talk about sometimes being baffled by unusual background vocals where EC would layer himself shouting out something that would end up sounding great once it was all put together)

One clear and admitted point of reference for the sound of This Year's Model was The Rolling Stones' Aftermath.

Costello later wrote: "'This Year's Girl' was pretty much an 'answer song' to the Rolling Stones' 'Stupid Girl' -- though my words were much less contemptuous."

While I can definitely hear the influence (especially in the bridge), the two songs in many ways couldn't be more different. Costello saves his contempt for the fashion scene & the way it uses up "this year's girl." There's just a lot more going on than in the Stones' song.

The opening line of "The Beat" is a direct quote of Cliff Richards' "Summer Holiday" although the similarities end there. While his public persona and the tone of the album leaned more toward coiled intensity, there is no question that Costello was having fun, at least musically

It's worth taking a moment to really LISTEN to how great The Attractions sound on this LP. This is a band that just got assembled, via auditions

They would be together for a decade, split up, reunite, fall apart again & now 2/3rds of them make up his current band, The Imposters

In addition to quoting Cliff Richards, Costello also references The Kinks' "See My Friends" with his "see your friends" backing vocals.

Lord knows how many musical references I'm *not* catching. The man was talking back to his entire record collection.

"Pump It Up" is part of a lineage of songs, I'll go through them now...

Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business"...

Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues"...

Moving past "Pump It Up" to The Escape Club's "Wild Wild West"...

And U2's "Get On Your Boots" (we will return to U2 paying homage to EC a couple more times in this thread...)

EC writes about this in his memoir (quoted here from Wikipedia):

Two songs were cut from the original U.S. release!

One was "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" which was a hit single in the UK!

The other song cut from the original U.S. release is the album's closer, the anti-fascist "Night Rally."

The night before @realDonaldTrump was elected, Costello opened his concert with this song, making it my uncontested pick for the most "2018"-relevant song on the album...

Those 2 songs were replaced by "Radio, Radio" which was already notorious in the U.S. because of his on-air switch to playing it live on SNL.

(It had only been a few years since "Radio Soul," the earlier version which was a cheerful love letter to Radio!)

One of the most striking things about This Year's Model is that perhaps its best song -- and the song I think best encapsulates the "Revenge & Guilt" spirit of the LP as a whole -- wasn't even a single!

"Lipstick Vogue" captures The Attractions' frenzied brilliance perfectly:

EC, in 1989, wrote: "Here are the bones of it; the rhythms of the Metropolitan Line (on which it was written) colliding with a song by The Byrds called "I See You". I didn't mention this bit to Pete Thomas at the time, so what you hear is all his own work. I stand by every word."

One thing that is fun to note is that in a year's time, Costello went from having a song that his musicians referred to as "the one that sounds like a Byrds song" (Red Shoes) to a recording a Byrds-influenced song that sounds nothing like The Byrds.

On an unashamedly self-indulgent note (there's room for that in a 45-day twitter thread, right?) if you are ever in NYC on a Friday & come see The Stepfathers @ucbtny Hell's Kitchen, the song played just before we begin will be "Lipstick Vogue," always.

newyork.ucbtheatre.com/show/717

[There was one week when they changed the pre-show song to something else, and I swear it was the worst show we ever did. This song is magical, and it is exciting to hear it fill the theater before our show begins. Ok, no more talk about my improv group. Apologies!]

Costello on a Boston radio show in 1978 (Nick Lowe next to him) answering a question about some unpleasantness at an earlier gig. Almost any early interviews strike me as him trying to negotiate a certain shyness with an aggressive posture that was fashionable at that moment...

Here's @ElvisCostello trying to get the audience to stand up, and targeting one audience member in particular.

"He doesn't think I mean it."
"He doesn't think that I MEAN IT."

Finally, to close out This Year's Model (Day 3 of 45), here are some useful links...

Costello's liner notes from 2002:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the deluxe edition of the album on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/4KSxPj7L…

Plus some super 8mm film of a 1978 concert...

Plus, a few more concerts from 1978...

Day 4: Armed Forces

Three albums in and Costello returns with a third distinct sound, influenced by what they were listening to on the tour bus: ABBA, Bowie, Kraftwerk, Iggy Pop, etc.

It also opens with a telling confession: "Oh, I just don't know where to begin..."

Released January 5, 1979

This is an album spilling over with words and images, the overstimulation of touring America blending with a growing overconfidence & an out-of-control new lifestyle that often necessitated writing songs in code to cover his tracks. It also sounds GREAT

The opening track's original lyric was: "Accidents will happen / I only hit and run / I used to be your victim, now you’re not the only one"

The final lyric blurs things a bit: "Accidents will happen / We only hit and run / He used to be your victim, now you’re not the only one"

It was confessional songwriting until he mixed up the pronouns so you could no longer tell who was doing what to whom.

Also: this music video was made by @ajjankel & @mortorock2, who co-created Max Headroom!

While My Aim Is True was recorded in 3 days & This Year's Model went all the way to 11, Armed Forces was the result of a full 6 weeks in the studio.

Steve Nieve also clearly had a whole bunch of new synthesizer sounds to play with.

There is a lot of highly charged language on the album, sometimes delivered w/cheerfully contrasting music; the hit single "Oliver's Army" borrows musically from "Dancing Queen" but the subject matter ("visions of mercenaries & imperial armies around the world") is grim as hell

The album was aggressively anti-war while also clearly spoiling for a fight, and Costello makes so many Holocaust and Hitler references that it borders on being a concept album.

[Side note: I know almost nothing technical about music, but BT's galloping bass line here is fun]

Costello was in a provocative zone at this point, using language to shock in a post-Lenny Bruce, pre-South Park world. He pulls it off on the record, but there is a certain glibness he would avoid on every album after this one. (He was about to learn a big lesson the hard way.)

It's easy to read too much into this album in hindsight, to see glimpses that Costello's trajectory was steering him towards trouble...

"I am starting to function / In the usual way / Everything is so provocative/ Very very, temporary"

This album was an instant success; listen to any track on it & you'll get why. Sharp, smart, catchy, sly, with a pop energy that can't be beat.

Almost on cue, things took a bad turn.

From Costello's 2002 Armed Forces liner notes:

I don't have much to add to what's already been written about The Columbus Incident

Basically, EC & The A's ended up staying at the same Columbus Ohio Holiday Inn as Stephen Stills & his band

In the hotel bar, Costello tried to provoke an argument, and things turned ugly, fast

Costello, drunk & looking to make the most outrageously offensive remarks he could think of, ended up saying monstrous things about both Ray Charles & James Brown. He was looking to start a fight, and it worked: it didn't take long for it to escalate to a full-on bar brawl

Soon, word leaked to the media, and a disastrous press conference ensued.

The most complete write-up of these events can be found in this 1997 article from Uncut magazine, which features something close to a play-by-play of the entire unpleasant ordeal:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

Costello wrote in some detail about The Columbus Incident in his 2003 reissue of his 1980 album, Get Happy!!

It contained this postscript, detailing the way that the shame of the incident never fully goes away...

A few years later, promoting 1982's IbMePdErRoIoAmL, Costello spoke about a moment when Michael Jackson was recording in the next studio, and his regrets at how his drunken behavior in 1979 had come to define him in the eyes of many...

What seems clear in hindsight is that the Elvis Costello of '79 was heading for trouble, one way or another. If it hadn't been this, it likely would have been something else.

It was a humiliating way to learn a lesson, but it would have a huge effect on both his music & persona.

In 2013, when promoting Wise Up Ghost, his collaboration with The Roots, Costello revisited the topic that has followed him for more than 3 decades...

Now, nearly 40 full years since it happened, it is easier to view the incident as an aberration & to take Costello at his word in a way that a skeptical press & public couldn't back in 1979. It's also a cautionary tale, to be learned from-- especially in the age of social media.

And on that note, I'd like to cycle back to the LP, particularly its closing track.

The original UK edition ended with "Two Little Hitlers"-- not a political anthem, just a song about a bad relationship.

But the U.S. version-- now considered definitive-- ends with this:

Though Nick Lowe originally wrote "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love & Understanding?" as a tongue-in-cheek hippie anthem, Costello made it his own by channeling his fury into a totally sincere version.

It's a defiant cry for basic human decency, and it points the way forward

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Barney Bubbles' masterful sleeve design. BB was the in-house art director for Stiff Records and basically did all Costello-related graphics from MAIT to IbMePdErRoIoAmL. Everything he ever did was awesome.

I highly recommend picking up the book Reasons To Be Cheerful for a great look at Barney Bubbles' body of work.

And hey: I almost forgot this weird personal experience I had with the first copy of Armed Forces I ever bought.

It was 1993, I had *just* become a fan. I only owned The Juliet Letters, his recent album with The Brodsky Quartet.

I had borrowed my friend Jeff's entire Costello collection and copied it all onto cassette tapes, but all mixed up and out of order.

I was hooked, but had no idea what the chronology of his discography was.

And I was ready to start buying them on CD.

Rykodisc (Demon in the UK) was starting to reissue all of Costello's early albums on CD, with new liner notes and bonus tracks, beginning with a box set, "2 1/2 Years", which contained the first 3 albums plus the Live At El Mocambo concert on CD.

I snapped it up immediately.

My Aim Is True & This Year's Model sounded familiar and great, but when I played Armed Forces, it sounded unlike anything I had heard from Costello, on any of my cassettes.

Turns out Ryko had somehow mistakenly pressed a CD of gregorian chants onto a disc with this label!

It says something about Costello that I got a few minutes into the disc before I knew for sure that Armed Forces wasn't an album of gregorian chants.

I couldn't immediately rule it out as a possibility. He could still surprise us and release one, next year or the year after.

And that's the end of Day 4 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello.

I'll close it out with this bit from the end of "Party Girl" where the music is quoting the end of Abbey Road:

And what the heck, a little snippet of Costello & The Attractions, live on TV in 1979...

Oh, and I almost forgot!

Costello's 2002 liner notes: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the full album on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/3ZAHIjLd…

And, for good measure, the excellent Live At Hollywood High album on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/6FMx94Hv…

Day 5: Get Happy!!

Ok, believe it or not, this is the first @ElvisCostello album that is definitely in my Costello Top 5.

It's 20 songs, with The Attractions once again totally changing their sound, this time to emulate more of a Stax/Motown R&B vibe.

Released February 15, 1980

I feel like Get Happy marks the beginning of Costello dropping the angry pose & revealing that he loves music

That might sound stupid bc the first 3 LPs are obvsly jam-packed w/musical allusions but the public persona disguised a lot of his enthusiasm

This 1980 @ElvisCostello TV commercial is tongue-in-cheek but also mostly tells the truth about Get Happy!!

I love the music videos that were filmed for Get Happy!! I love how ramshackle they are, how they seem to have been shot all at once, how not all of them were for songs that were singles! They capture the spirit of the LP really well.

"Love For Tender" (not a single):

And the DANCING!

Costello's revved-up version of "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" was a perfect example of the new Costello. The intensity was still there, but he was no longer hiding his enthusiasms, he was celebrating them.

I actually heard EC's version of this song first, so I was stunned to discover how different the Sam & Dave original is

I can't emphasize this part enough: one of the best things about being a Costello fan is that he is constantly shining a light on the music that inspires him

Can you name the song he is referencing in the opening line of this song? It's obvious, but I didn't catch it for years!

"Possession" (another non-single!):

Some of Costello's nods are hiding in plain sight and it takes years before the penny drops.

More great dancing, and another lifted opening line! Do you know what it is?

(This song was used to great effect in a Sopranos episode where the FBI is trying to plant a bug in Tony's house. It also obvsly inspired the title to Nick Hornby's novel.)

The Supremes' "Some Things You Never Get Used To"!

(I'm kicking myself now that I forgot to mention yesterday how "Accidents Will Happen" quotes "You Keep Me Hangin' On"!)

It's amazing to me how many tracks on this record could've/should've been hit singles. "King Horse" should be one of Costello's most famous songs, not a deep cut!

Costello says that the guitar part in "King Horse" alludes to The Four Tops' "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" but I never would have caught the reference if he hadn't pointed it out.

Some songs veered so close to the songs that inspired them that Costello has compared it to sampling, as in this song, "Temptation":

Before I tweet out the answer, I'll double the mystery!

Here what Costello wrote about the song in the liner notes for GIRLS+₤÷GIRLS=$&GIRLS in 1989.

He has since REVEALED who the VERY FAMOUS ROCK STAR is/was...

Booker T. & The MG's: "Time Is Tight"

In concert, Steve Nieve would frequently segue into directly quoting this song during "Temptation" and you almost can't tell the difference!

I highly recommend tracking down this 2006 CD compilation of Booker T & The MGs, 15 tracks selected by @ElvisCostello + liner notes by him, too!

Or, for those of you without access to a CD player or disc drive, follow these links...

Liner notes by Costello: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The compilation on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/7dqek04x…

Oh, and who was the VERY FAMOUS ROCK STAR Costello originally wrote "Temptation" about?

"Who's this kid with his mumbo jumbo...?"

Backing up just a bit, to "High Fidelity"-- this whole LP started out closer to the vibe of Armed Forces, before EC thought better of repeating himself & reimagined the record entirely.

The original arrangement of this song was fashioned after Bowie's Station To Station:

Decades later, Costello would perform "High Fidelity" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon backed by @theroots, using the original, discarded arrangement (which The Roots' producer @StevenMandel remembered but Costello himself had forgotten...)

vimeo.com/58062946

Not to skip too far ahead, but this would lead to "High Fidelity"'s original riff becoming the base for Wise Up Ghost's "Cinco Minutos Con Vos" (which was itself a sort-of sequel to another Costello song we haven't arrived at yet!)

And we still haven't gotten through all of the music videos from Get Happy!!

"New Amsterdam" is a solo track! The Attractions attempted a fine version of it, but it couldn't match the feel of EC's demo.

I finally saw him perform this, at his most recent concert, in Amsterdam!

He threw in a quote-- as I have heard him do on MANY live concert recordings but never before at a show I was attending-- from The Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away."

Costello recorded a cover of "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" in the early 90s, which came out first as a b-side & then on the now-out-of-print bonus disc for Kojak Variety. (While EC's main catalog is mostly available via streaming, lots of stuff is not currently "in print")

"Men Called Uncle" is another song from Get Happy!! that wasn't a single but oh man this song is wayyyyyyy too good to be a deep album cut:

Including not one but TWO cover songs on the LP was also indicative of EC pivoting from his angry persona to that of the guy who loved his record collection & knew how to channel that love into new music

"I Stand Accused" also felt somewhat related to his recent difficulties:

The Merseybeats' "I Stand Accused"

I don't have any interesting insights or trivia about "Clowntime Is Over" except to say that it is one of many performances on this record where The Attractions sound even more perfect than usual.

The one song that EC admits was directly inspired by his recent controversy is "Riot Act," which sounds like it was written as a farewell/potential escape hatch should this be the end of his career.

It would not be the last time he announced his retirement as a recording artist.

And the long, dark night of the soul that is the Riot Act solo demo:

It should be noted that the original release of Get Happy!! was 20 songs, its first CD reissue added 10 bonus tracks, and the Rhino reissue added 20 more, bringing the total to 50 TRACKS! 50!!!

Thankfully, this was not the beginning of the end, merely the end of the beginning.

There are some who lost interest at this point, just when things were starting to really get interesting...

To close out the day, I'll flash-forward a bit, to a 1982 performance of "King Horse" which begins with a The O'Jays' "Backstabbers"!

(Full clip at )

Costello would return to this song a couple of years ago, for the soundtrack to @vinylHBO starring my pal @GriffLightning of Amazon's The Tick, who dresses up once a month to play sidekick Watto in The George Lucas Talk Show at UCBNY. Small world, huh?

OK, that's Day 5 of 45 Days Of #ElvisCostello!

I'll close it out with EC's excellent 2003 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the full album (but *not* the 50-track reissue) on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/38sLlYZ4…

One more thing: check out this lip syncing on Top Of The Pops for "Black & White World"! Costello doing everything possible to signal that he is not singing into that microphone.

An excerpt from EC's memoir talking about how dumb he thought this show was:
theguardian.com/music/2015/oct…

And here is that TOTP clip he writes about, where they have Costello flying around like Mary Martin:

The "Flying @ElvisCostello" GIF you didn't know you needed until now:

Day 6: Taking Liberties/Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers

4 albums in & Costello already had enough b-sides & region-exclusive non-album singles to make up an entire LP.

TL was for the USA, 10BM&10HYF for the UK. Both collections are top tier Costello material!

Released November 1980

"Taking Liberties" was released in the US & Canada & contained a few essential album tracks that had been inexplicably left off of the US editions of This Year's Model & Armed Forces: "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea", "Night Rally" & "Sunday's Best."

Released (on cassette only) November 1980

"Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers" was the UK equivalent but replaced those UK album tracks with tracks that were on the US LPs: "Watching The Detectives" "Radio Radio" & "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding."

Now, I believe all these tracks had all been released in both territories, if not on the album then as singles & b-sides. So my guess is that for Costello diehards, they already had these, just not on an LP...

The remaining tracks on both LP collections were 15 previously released non-album tracks (b-sides & singles) plus two previously unreleased tracks.

This was Costello's second 20-song LP of 1980.

Both collections open w/an outtake from the Armed Forces sessions, "Clean Money," that sounds more like This Year's Model.

It's an early draft of Get Happy!!'s "Love For Tender" & I really *wish* it had been licensed to be the theme music for #Ozark on @netflix.

#HappyLaborDay

"Tiny Steps" is a prime example of how @ElvisCostello often releases some of his best recordings as non-album tracks. This is as strong a track as anything on his first 4 LPs:

I always liked this track, but the @333books volume about Armed Forces by @humanfranklin made me appreciate it even more, especially pointing out to listen for how drummer Pete Thomas' playing is particularly inventive throughout:

From Costello's 1989 liner notes for GIRLS+₤÷GIRLS=$&GIRLS:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Where The Woodbine Twineth" (SPOILER ALERT!)

Costello's winning streak as a pop songwriter was so strong by this point that he inadvertently gave away "Girls Talk" to Dave Edmunds, who had a massive hit with it.

EC's version:

Here's the Dave Edmunds hit version. (I've also heard a stellar live recording of @AimeeMann performing it at a Costello tribute concert.)

Costello wrote this song thinking of Dusty Springfield...

Two years later, Dusty Springfield recorded it!

Fun fact: future Imposters bass player Davey Faragher played on this track!

(As far as I can tell, it has only been played ONCE at an Imposters show, in 2012- and I can't tell if it was a full band performance or just EC & Steve!)

In some ways, the eclectic nature of these compilations strikes a new template that a great many future Costello albums (including his next one) will follow. While the first 4 LPs basically had 4 distinct styles, this one sometimes shifts completely from one track to the next...

Whether it was intentional or not, these records served as a sort of proof of concept that he could put a melancholy Rodgers & Hart cover on the same LP with a surf music pastiche or garage band number; he didn't have to conform to any one style, not even a little bit.

This solo demo recording is (I *think*) a fan favorite-- "Hoover Factory" -- I am basing on this on nothing more than that any time this song comes up in conversation with other Costello fans, everybody loves it, even though it is certainly at the obscure end of his catalog.

Costello called "Wednesday Week" "a two-part trifle in which insincere lovers put each other on something rotten" & said the 2nd half was a nod to @PaulMcCartney's WINGS.

That switch at the 1:15 mark transforms this from a Benny Hill rave-up to something far more tremendous:

"Getting Mighty Crowded" by Van McCoy almost made it onto Get Happy!! and would've fit right in on that record:

And here's Betty Everett's original:

Both collections close with the excellent EC solo track, "Ghost Train," a re-working of a song he had written with Allan Mayes back when he was in Rusty:

I have run past midnight for Day 6 due to Labor Day indiscipline, but if you think that's an outrage, just check out how angry "Bob Broad" was in his review of Taking Liberties for the Connecticut College Voice in September 1980!

(I wonder which round of expanded Costello reissues caused Bob Broad's head to explode?)

No liner notes to link to, but it is fun to point out that he sleeve note by Columbia Records VP Gregg Geller is mostly lifted from the sleeve note for the 1958 LP "Gene Vincent Record Date"!

The album is on Spotify, thankfully, so all these great songs remain "in print" in our current streaming music distopia.

(As we get deeper into his catalog, post-1987, a huge chunk of Costello's non-album material becomes harder to find...)

open.spotify.com/album/5h4pJfrT…

Day 7: Trust

Another LP that usually lands in my personal Costello Top 5, Trust borrows from the hodge podge/anything goes template of Taking Liberties, but w/all new songs.

If each of his first 4 LPs defied expectations, now he would switch things up from one track to the next

Released January 23, 1981

This was a mere two months after Taking Liberties & less than a year since Get Happy!!

Costello decribed Trust as"easily the most drug-influenced album of my career" & said that "it was completed close to a self-induced nervous collapse."

Alternate titles under consideration included "Cats & Dogs" and "More Songs About Fucking & Fighting."

Opening track "Clubland" was not a hit single, though it deserved to be, especially with this stylish & sinister music video directed by Barney Bubbles:

He has occasionally quoted snippets of George Benson's "On Broadway" when performing "Clubland" in concert, and it does feel like kind of a seedy answer song; here is The Drifters' version:

There are times when I am in absolutely no mood to listen to "Lovers Walk" and then there are times when simply no other song will do:

It is hard to beat Get Happy!! for deep album cuts that should've been hits or at least better known within Costello's body of work, but "You'll Never Be A Man" is among Trust's heavy hitters:

Costello has written that "You'll Never Be A Man" "borrowed some musical ideas from The Pretenders' "Brass In Pocket" and several other @ChrissieHynde songs."

I mean, in what world is "Pretty Words" a semi-obscure song in any songwriter's body of recorded work? For most artists, this would be among their top 10 most beloved songs. This is the danger of writing more than 700 of them, I suppose...

Also, this is a great Attractions album. I mean, that might sound stupid to say-- they almost always sound great-- but I feel like this record captures some of their best performances, including "Strict Time":

One thing that I find peculiar about Trust is that I like roughly half of its tracks significantly more than I like the other half & yet I can't name a single track I would want to cut from the album. Each one adds to the overall effect.

("Luxembourg" is among the lesser half)

And yet, "Luxembourg" adds a texture to Trust that adds to the overall effect of the LP. I'm not sure, given the choice, that I would want to replace it, even w/a superior song from the same sessions.

Here is an earlier demo version, "Seven O'Clock", written for Dr. Feelgood:

"Watch Your Step" is another non-hit single! But it's perfect! I mean, what more did people want?

Maybe it would've been a bigger hit if it had been released with this as its music video:

It is fascinating to hear how wrong the early versions of "Watch Your Step" were. Fun, but wrong!

Another early version that is super fun but also wrong:

The final, perfect version of "Watch Your Step" actually sounds a lot like Get Happy!!'s "Secondary Modern" to my ears:

But no song on TRUST is more perfect than its crown jewel, "New Lace Sleeves." Apparently this was a song he started writing when he was a teenager.

Another excellent music video directed by the great Barney Bubbles:

"From A Whisper To A Scream" is a fun little song that gets a big jolt from the presence of guest vocalist @GlennTilbrook from Squeeze (whose 1981 album, East Side Story, was co-produced by EC w/Trust co-producer @RogerBechirian!)

Costello returns the favor on that album, making a sneaky vocal cameo on "Tempted."

Oh, and in case you were wondering what the deal was w/the kid at the mixing board in the clip 2 tweets above, that performance was from the UK television show, "Jim'll Fix It" where kids make wishes & that kid's wish was to be a roadie

The animated intro is super creepy, and...

...of course if you've never heard of Jimmy Saville b4, he was a beloved TV host who was considered eccentric, then after he died in 2011 it was revealed that he was a predatory sex offender. He was knighted in 1990

Sorry for the shockingly dark side note, but that's the context

"Different Finger" is simultaneously one of the most minor tracks on Trust AND one of its most significant.

As a song, it is good but slight; however, its inclusion is almost brazen, a simple country song that probably doesn't "belong" with these other songs. Which is the point.

Costello has only played this song 4 times in 37 years, even though there have been many contexts in which it would've been appropriate, so he clearly likes it less than, say, "Indoor Fireworks" or "Poisoned Rose."

But its placement on Trust was a major statement.

[It also ended up serving as a bit of foreshadowing for his next album, but we'll get to that soon enough...]

"White Knuckles" is a brutal song which Costello said was "privately modeled on a couple of XTC records" but he kept that a secret from The Attractions to avoid risking "a rebellion."

UGH, I can't find the clip but I believe the lyric "He needs her like the axe needs the turkey" is a Preston Sturges line from The Lady Eve...

Costello's aggressive early persona & so many songs about bad relationships led some people to think his songs were misogynistic, but I think he is consistently taking sides against cruel & selfish men, even in many cases (cryptically) taking aim at his own infidelities

"Shot With His Own Gun" is just Costello with @SteveNieve on piano. It is artsy and theatrical, another place where the album is doing whatever it wants to, and another song that previews a certain slice of Costello's future ambitions. He won't be categorized.

"Fish 'N' Chip Paper" was Costello going after Britain's tabloid news culture, including the likes of Rupert Murdoch:

The album closes on an EC solo track, "Big Sister's Clothes" which is the first time he would write a song inspired by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but certainly not the last...

One thing I will continue to lament throughout this thread is that a lot of Costello's recordings are either out of print or remain unreleased.

The main stuff-- all the albums-- are all streaming. But interesting stuff like this Trust outtake are harder to find now:

This is the version of that song I found on YouTube:

I was lucky to become a Costello fan during the era when his back catalog was being splendidly reissued on CD

First, Demon/Rykodisc re-released the albums w/bonus tracks, then Rhino Records put out the all of the 1977-1996 albums w/entire 2nd discs filled with bonus material.

The albums from 1997-present have never been reissued in this way, largely because during that time the CD era ended and we are now in the weird era of streaming, and it's unclear whether any kind of archival program would be worth the trouble...

But fans who devoured all the bonus discs from 1977's My Aim Is True to 1996's All This Useless Beauty basically know that every record from Painted From Memory to Wise Up Ghost likely has a "phantom" 2nd disc's worth of quality bonus material that remains unreleased...

Here's another example of fun bonus material from Trust: for a brief period, Costello entertained the possibility that The Attractions might contribute some songs for the album. Steve Nieve wrote this one, which Costello attempted, but it didn't make the cut.

ACK! I should have mentioned this yesterday or the day before: somehow in 1980, The Attractions made their own album WITHOUT Costello, produced by @RogerBechirian!

The full album is on YouTube:

Another fun out-of-print Trust outtake, "Slow Down" by Larry Williams:

...and Larry Williams' original:

Costello, solo and in a melancholy mood, covering Cole Porter's "Love For Sale."

This at-the-time unreleased recording pointed not only towards his next LP, but also, the one after that...

And the same goes for his cover of one of the most depressing songs ever, "Gloomy Sunday":

I'll close out Day 7 of 45 with a bit of Costello appearing on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Coast-To-Coast, presenting a humbler & more authentic persona to the public. He seems nervous, but genuine. It's an improvement:

As always, some useful links...

Elvis Costello's 2003 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The full album on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/2B6i9ZY0…

Day 8: "Almost Blue"

Elvis Costello & The Attractions go to Nashville to record an album of country standards with veteran producer Billy Sherrill.

Like perhaps a lot of people, I didn't "get" this album at first. It made no sense to me.

Eventually, it made *perfect* sense.

Released October 23, 1981

Adopting an aggressive, angry persona had gotten him some attention but also nearly destroyed his career, pretending to be something he wasn't

Recording a covers album of country songs was arguably the most authentically "punk rock" move he ever made

Looking back, this album is less of a surprise, given all the left turns Costello's recording career has made since 1981.

I have also seen Almost Blue given credit for helping pave the way for "alt country."

On its initial release, the LP came with this warning sticker:

It's hard to know what fans at the time might've made of Costello's previous attempts at country songs-- was "Stranger In The House" just a one-off, a genre exercise? Was "Different Finger" him showing off, a reminder that he could write all kinds of songs? Was he serious?

The promotional campaign for Almost Blue seemed intent on making it clear that this was not some kind of put-on, that this was a deeply felt record of some songs that meant a lot to him.

In the UK, the record gave Costello a big hit single with his cover of George Jones' "A Good Year For The Roses."

With the exception of the twins from The Shining glumly mouthing background vocals & Steve Nieve on violin, this video is pretty straightforward & sincere:

Any suspicions that Costello wasn't 100% genuine in his love for this music must've evaporated pretty quickly, I'm guessing; his thrill at performing with George Jones on this TV special (while suffering from the mumps) is impossible to mistake for anything else:

The South Bank Show did an episode about the making of Almost Blue which actually helped unlock the album's appeal. I liked the record on first listen, but seeing Costello's process, including his struggles with producer Billy Sherrill, actually made me enjoy it more...

It's fascinating to watch Costello being revaluated at a point when he had been a public figure for less than 5 years.

Back in the era of physical media, this doc would've made an excellent bonus DVD for a reissue of the album:

Costello seems intent on making this album almost as a kind of musical ambassador, showcasing a style of music that his audience might not otherwise seek out...

Here, Costello gives a kind of capsule history of how Nashville became the center of country music, and we are introduced to legendary producer Billy Sherrill (on his speedboat):

Costello has a preliminary meeting with Sherrill and then gets right down to recording, with Johnny Cash's "Cry, Cry, Cry" (which would not make the album until it was reissued with bonus tracks):

Interesting glimpses of Nashville circa 1981:

Billy Sherrill expressing his muted feelings about the project, and then displaying even less enthusiasm in the studio. Costello seems to be having fun, at this point:

I had forgotten what an emotional roller coaster this doc is: Costello, eager to impress the legendary Sherrill; Sherrill, sometimes expressing enthusiasm but guarded towards Costello & openly skeptical in the studio...

FASCINATING in-studio exchange between Sherrill & Costello.

Costello has commented that the doc makes Sherrill into the villain of the piece, and the editing of some of this does him no favors; the most enthusiastic he gets is when he says he hopes to "buy another boat!"

Sherrill's expressions in this montage are basically GIFs in a pre-GIF era.

I don't know how fair this montage is in terms of representing his disinterest in Costello singing George Jones, but my guess is that they wouldn't have cut it this way if it wasn't at least close.

Costello talks about his 2 favorite Sinatra albums, and his love for Hank Williams, and we see an unimpressed Billy Sherrill take in The Attractions' deconstruction of HW's "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do?"

Billy Sherrill "double bluffs" Costello & The Attractions by challenging them to double-track the entire take:

In this doc, Sherrill always seems to be in a better mood when he's on his boat than when he's in the studio

Two of the grimmest minutes of the whole film, as Costello & the band take in some local bar culture while he muses on guns, failure and Robert Altman's regionally unpopular film, Nashville:

More in-studio drama as Costello attempts an original song only to be met with Sherrill's passive-aggressive disapproval:

After hours, Costello and the band drown their sorrows and complain about Sherrill. Meanwhile, we cut back to Sherrill on his boat. Everybody has a different way of processing what's happening in the studio.

And then Sherrill is MIA:

Costello on Gram Parsons, one of the biggest influences on this album (with 2 of the 14 songs, just like George Jones):

Costello emoting like mad on Parsons' "I'm Your Toy" and excitedly discussing why he's satisfied with the take (his enthusiasm met with what seems like some mild resistence from Bruce and good-natured teasing from Pete.)

Sherrill: "We did so many tracks... I don't know what we've done, to tell you the truth."

Costello: "I got the 'sound' that I wanted."

Costello listening to the finished version of "Sweet Dreams":

After all the tensions of making the album, Costello finishes listening to "Sweet Dreams" looking satisfied, and closes on a pretty great story about the day the background singers completed "A Good Year For The Roses."

The film concludes with a one-off concert in Aberdeen, Scotland, with The Attractions and John McFee.

(Note that, as on the record, Costello reverted from "drunk" back to "loaded", per Billy Sherrill's correction)

Whoops! Costello isn't done talking! He has more thoughts, about sadness and self-destruction, edited in between songs:

And that's the end of the film! Directed by Peter Carr and the whole thing can be found in non-chopped-up form on YouTube:

And now, I'll alternate between some clips of Costello introducing the album tracks on a 1981 promotional LP with some clips of other artists' versions of the same songs...

"Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do"

Costello opening the album like that is a kind of fake-out, as if to suggest that it's going to be an LP full of brutalized country classics.

Hank Williams' original:

The 2nd track, "Sweet Dreams", couldn't have been a bigger contrast to the way the record opens, with swelling strings and swooning background singers.

This is just two years since he was singing nervy, paranoid pop songs like "Two Little Hitlers" and "Goon Squad."

Patsy Cline's version:

"Success" is thematically not a million miles away from some of the songs on his previous records...

And future Costello collaborator Loretta Lynn's version:

Costello re-named Gram Parsons' song "I'm Your Toy" instead of keeping its less dignified original title.

Both Parsons tracks on this record are high points, Costello is well-suited to his songs as a singer...

The Flying Burrito Brothers' "Hot Burrito #1":

So much of Almost Blue is about Costello passing along what he (at some point) discovered to an audience he knows might otherwise be reluctant to hear it. "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down" is exactly the kind of song I would've avoided as hokey C&W prior to hearing this version:

Merle Haggard's original version:

"Brown To Blue" is the first of the two George Jones tracks. It's no shock that the best songs on the album are songs of heartbreak, which has been Costello's most fruitful recurring theme over 4 decades.

Jones' original version:

Costello's love for George Jones will eventually lead to him recording a whole entire album's worth of demos that is among my favorite things EC has ever done. But we are many days away from that...

"Good Year For The Roses":

And Jones' original:

"Sittin' And Thinkin'":

Hearing Charlie Rich's original, it's easier to understand why Billy Sherrill was so resistant to Costello's re-working (even though I think both versions are good!)

Oops, I forgot that there are THREE George Jones songs, not two! This one was co-written by Lawton Williams, and Costello altered the title to reflect the UK spelling of "color."

"Colour Of The Blues":

And, once again, Jones' original version:

Costello covering Billy Sherrill's own "Too Far Gone." It's a good song, but after re-watching the 'making of' doc, I'm struck by how much Costello wanted Sherrill to appreciate what he was doing.

Tammy Wynette's version:

And Bobby "Blue" Bland's version:

"Honey Hush" by Lou Willie Turner. A change of pace after so many sad songs!

Big Joe Turner's version:

Maybe my favorite song on the album, largely due to @SteveNieve's gorgeous, fluid piano part. Costello & The Attractions nail it in one take. (This was the one we saw EC enthusing about in the doc, and he was right.)

The 2nd Gram Parsons track, "How Much I Lied":

Gram Parsons' original version:

I have gone wayyyyy past Day 8 for this one, and if I don't stop soon, Almost Blue will become a 2-day album and I will never catch up.

Here's the thing: the original LP is less than 35 minutes long.

The 2004 Rhino reissue bonus disc is more than TWICE that long. Seek it out.

If you like Almost Blue, the extras are worth seeking out, as they are NOT on streaming (though you MIGHT find them on YouTube.)

It's enough unique studio outtakes to make "Almost Blue Volume 2" plus basically a full live album.

What the hell, here are a few choice clips from the OOP bonus material.

A duet with Johnny Cash on "We Oughta Be Ashamed":

And another gem that didn't make the album, "Honky Tonk Girl":

Okay, that's Day 8 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello. It was a long one, but worth it, I think. Almost Blue is a significant turning point in his disography.

Costello's 2004 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the full album on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/6Y234kkX…

And a link to a playlist someone made of the original versions of the songs on Almost Blue:
open.spotify.com/user/danny_la_…

Day 9: IbMePdErRoIoAmL

Produced by the great @GeoffEmerick (of The Beatles) this was EC & The Attractions at their most ambitious.

Refreshed from his Nashville adventure, Costello newest batch of songs would have The New York Times comparing him to Cole Porter & George Gershwin

Released July 2, 1982

The easy/lazy comparison is to call this Costello's Sgt. Pepper & I actually don't think that's a bad point of reference. (At least, I can't think of a better one right now.)

Hiring Emerick, the thought of Pepper must have crossed his mind once or twice...

After EC had baffled many US listeners with Almost Blue, this New York Times profile made it seem as if Costello's new focus was The Great American Songbook (although only a couple of songs on IbMePdErRoIoAmL overtly leaned in that direction)

A promo LP, entitled "A Conversation With...... Elvis Costello" featured EC introducing each track, at length.

That seems like a good way to work through the album...

Costello's first spoken introduction is a full 10 minutes long, as he is not merely introducing the opening track but explaining the context of the entire album...

Costello talking about his & Emerick's shared ideas about how the record should sound...

More about Emerick's legendary career, and then he pivots to talking about the songs that were under consideration for IbMePdErRoIoAmL

Costello talks about the way the songs changed when he brought them into the studio, specifically "Beyond Belief":

And then, at last, he segues into the magnificent opening track, "Beyond Belief":

It's not hard to seek out the complete track elsewhere, but the chorus of "Beyond Belief" (which doesn't arrive until the very end of the song) is too good not to post.

Pete Thomas recorded his drum part in one take, while nursing a hangover.

The 2nd track, "Tears Before Bedtime" was originally tested out as a country song for Almost Blue, and basically rejected (on camera) by producer Billy Sherrill.

Here is that version:

Another early version of "Tears Before Bedtime," from the IbMePdErRoIoAmL sessions:

Costello introduces "Tears Before Bedtime":

"Tears Before Bedtime" was one of the first Costello tracks I ever heard. My friend Jeff, who would later loan me my first Costello CD, was putting this track on a mix tape and asked me to do the lettering on it because his handwriting is unreadable.

By the way, this song keeps evolving! The current arrangement, which premiered on tour with The Imposters two years ago, is my favorite:

Costello on "Shabby Doll": "it's one of those songs where the title needs to be repeated as many times as possible."

Costello talks about why the intro to "The Long Honeymoon" always makes him laugh, and how Sammy Cahn turned down the offer to write the lyrics for it:

"The Long Honeymoon" is one of those songs that every time I hear it, I think, "oh wow. this is a perfect song."

Costello talking about the development of "Man Out Of Time" as a song, and also about its inspiration...

More of Costello's 1982 thoughts leading into the stunning "Man Out Of Time":

It is fun to hear the early drafts of "Man Out Of Time" as it struggled to find its perfect, final shape:

There are so many directions the song could've gone in that would have led to it becoming a less majestic song than it ultimately turned out to be...

"Man Out Of Time" on Late Night With David @Letterman, 1982:

Costello talks about another one of IbMePdErRoIoAmL's perfect songs, "Almost Blue." (No relation to the previous album of the same title, except that it is a sad song.)

He also talks about wishing he could play the trumpet, and wishing that Chet Baker would sing this song:

"Almost Blue" is one of Costello's most-covered songs, and for good reason.

Costello would work with Chet Baker on the next album, but he wouldn't discover that Baker had added "Almost Blue" to his live repertoire until after his passing in 1988...

Costello talks about the musical evolution of "...And In Every Home":

Costello talking about all the "cheeky" musical references @SteveNieve snuck into his orchestral arrangement on "...And In Every Home":

Here is a rehearsal take of "...And In Every Home" from the session tape that Costello has said sounded a lot like Trust.

(This is clearly not the early "rocker" version he spoke of in the clip I posted above, but preparing for the orchestral album version.)

"It's better to live than to die young, y'know?" - Elvis Costello on "The Loved Ones."

For a great many years, this was one of the only album tracks he had never played live. (He eventually got around to playing it-- in 1996! He has since played it many times, apparently...)

"Human Hands" is "just a straightforward love song" according to Costello, who claims to have never written such a thing prior to this:

Can anyone identify the chord Costello plays on this song that "everybody said was completely wrong"?

"Kid About It" is a beautiful, sad song EC wrote on the morning after John Lennon's murder, although it isn't "about" that.

"Little Savage" is "sort of a love song, in spite of itself" says Costello:

Costello thinks most love songs are either desolate or "starry-eyed" and that "Little Savage" is for the people "stuck in the middle":

An earlier take on "Little Savage" sounds as if their might have been some alcohol involved at some point prior to its recording, or maybe it's was just exhaustion:

Costello talks about writing the music for "Boy With A Problem" and giving it to @chrisdifford to write the lyrics, then how The Attractions completed the backing track in Costello's absence:

...and how "Boy With A Problem" was a last-minute addition to the album that almost didn't make it!

"Pidgin English" is described by Costello as "a political song":

"Pidgin English" was also the first track to be fully completed during the process of making IbMePdErRoIoAmL:

Some fun details about how they figured out the "sound" of "Pidgin English" in the studio:

"A tongue-in-cheek sound effects record, with serious lyrics" - Costello, wrapping up his thoughts on "Pidgin English"

Some fascinating insight into Costello's approach to singing songs "in character," specifically the "creep" in "You Little Fool":

Costello has tended to criticize this song as a timid choice to be the single for such an adventurous album, but I've always thought "You Little Fool" was one of the most underrated pop songs in his catalog:

In the music video for "You Little Fool," Elvis & all three Attractions play supporting roles, some quite dramatically!

Who gives the best performance?

And the dramatic conclusion of the same video, with Elvis' big scene:

Elvis talks about the running order of the album:

Costello talks about "Town Cryer," "a proud song" to close out the album.

(He also talks about the insane alternate version which I will post in a minute.)

"I wanted it to sound like The Impressions, y'know? But obviously I can't sing as good as Curtis Mayfield." - Elvis Costello on "Town Cryer":

"The Attractions Go To Rio!" version of "Town Cryer," also known as the "Barry White Version." Recorded on a lark, released as a b-side. Imagine a version of IbMePdErRoIoAmL where this is the closing track:

Costello talks about coming up with the title, which at one point was going to be This Is A Revolution Of The Mind:

And how they finally landed on the title IbMePdErRoIoAmL (pronounced "Imperial Bedroom"):

My goodness, it is nearly 3:30am. This megathread was an insane idea that I am quickly falling behind on.

Thankfully not all of the days will be as content-heavy as the past two. The AB doc & the IB promo LP both involved a lot of dumb editing of clips on my phone.

A few more quick/fun things. Some of the b-sides will pop up on a compilation LP next week, so I'll stick to rarer finds here in the wee small hours of the morning...

Sing along with The Attractions' superb backing track for "Boy With A Problem":

The other performance from that 1982 Letterman episode: "Kid About It"

For headphones: my mix of "Beyond Belief" featuring its first draft, "The Land Of Give And Take," panned to one side with the LP version in the opposite ear.

(For the full track, go to: )

Also released in 1982, Elvis Costello's self-declared "worst song," the title track to the motion picture "Party Party."

(Truly, it isn't that bad. It's a catchy little number that EC has singled out for exclusion on nearly all of his deluxe expanded CD reissues.)

OK, that brings Day 9 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello to a close, wayyyyyy too late/early...

As always, 2 useful links...

Costello's 2002 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The full LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/1pK8MLyj…

Oh, ALSO, to answer @ColumbiaRecords' question:

The answer is/was "yes."

Day 10: Punch The Clock

This album sometimes takes some heat, as it was Costello admittedly looking to score a hit.

Personally, I have always really loved Punch The Clock & see less of a distinction between the orchestral pop of IbMePdErRoIoAmL & the kind of record this is.

Released August 5, 1983

IbMePdErRoIoAmL had brought Costello a new level of critical acclaim, but no hit singles.

He brought in producers Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley to do their thing, and it worked.

Langer & Winstanley were the big UK hitmaking producers on a hot streak, but they also did make really good records. They were a smart choice.

Madness: "Our House"

Costello was acutely aware that a lack of chart success could lead to less freedom to do what he wanted, but as crass commercial pivots go, he was still picking people whose work he respected.

Dexys Midnight Runners: "Come On Eileen"

The thing that PTC is best known for is "Everyday I Write The Book," which was Costello's first Top 40 single in the US.

4 years ago, he was basically DONE in America, and now he had a single on the charts and it was a love song with a radio-friendly modern sound.

This song is probably the most 80s-sounding track on the record, but it clearly delivered exactly what Costello was looking for.

It is a shocking change of image to look at him here compared to just a few years prior.

ALSO: these Charles & Diana look-alikes were pretty swell.

The song began as a kind of Merseybeat spoof, Costello showing off how quickly he could write this kind of basic pop song. In recent years, this is often the arrangement he has favored when playing the song live:

He has also played it in medley with Nick Lowe's "When I Write The Book" a song which had already basically covered this territory with Rockpile in 1980:

On their way to figuring out how to turn it into a hit, they flirted with this reggae version:

The Attractions were augmented by The TKO Horns and Costello was supported vocally by backing singers Afrodiziak, and the recording process was more of a "building block" approach than the band was used to.

I think it's a fun sound:

It could be that my ears are broken, but apart from EIWTB, the rest of this album doesn't sound as characteristically "80s" as its reputation would suggest.

Here's an atypically upbeat song about marriage, with a lot of words:

"The Element Within Her" is another quick piece of pop fluff, but I have to say I am really glad that Costello made one album like this. He has made so many records that are explicitly avoiding being this, it's fun to hear him not fighting some of these pop impulses.

Two things, in "Charm School":

1) "a girl with a trick, and a man with a... calling"

2) "they say it's hell to finance, too, and I just want to romance you (do-do-do-do-do-do-do)"

This album is FUN.

I think "The Invisible Man" (a song which has its roots in Trust outtake "Twenty-five to Twelve" & the later outtake "Seconds Of Pleasure" which I failed to post in all the frenzy of tweets yesterday) is just about as fun a wordy pop song as Costello has ever written:

Honestly, this album is mostly remembered for the hit single and two "political" songs which I will get to in a minute, but it is absolutely loaded with deep cut album tracks which are catchy as hell and full of clever lyrics, like "Mouth Almighty":

"I had forgotten all about The Case Of The Three Pins" is one of my favorite opening lines to a song.

"King Of Thieves," yet another terrific obscure song on this record:

"Love Went Mad" was a song Costello didn't think much of, and he came close to swapping it for another song after PTC's original release, but the line "I wish you luck with a capital F" feels particularly mischievous for a 1983 pop album:

"Heathen Town" is the song that almost took its place, a fun song that quotes from Guys & Dolls:

"Sit Down, You're Rockin' The Boat"

("and the devil will drag you under")

Ok, now to the 2 "political" songs that gave this pop album a certain edge.

"Shipbuilding" is a song that Clive Langer wrote the music for & then Costello wrote lyrics, originally for Robert Wyatt. It is a devastatingly sad anti-war ballad inspired by The Falklands War:

Costello's version for PTC added a beautiful trumpet part played by Chet Baker:

The other political song was "Pills & Soap" -- first released as a single under a pseudonym, The Imposter.

It was a rush-released protest song that made no difference in thwarting Thatcherism, but it did get to #16 in the UK pop charts...

Costello:

The BBC freaked out that the song's political content might violate "fairness" rules during an election but Costello got away with it by saying the song was about "man's abuse of animals."

Costello has cited Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" as his inspiration for the style of the song:

Barney Bubbles' proposed album design for PTC was rejected in favor of the more conventional version they went with. (He committed suicide in November 1983.)

Bubbles was such a key part of the "look" of every Costello release prior to this. (Things would be very hit-or-miss for EC, design-wise, from this point on...)

Also in 1983: Costello accepts an invitation to appear on a Count Basie TV special, only to blow out his voice in concert the night before. Unwilling to back down from the chance to perform with this legendary band, he soldiers on and suffers the consequences...

Costello looks SO nervous dueting with Tony Bennett-- oozing casual confidence and swagger-- that it is almost hard to watch:

I would only post that clip knowing I could immediately flash-forward 11 years to Costello's guest appearance on Tony Bennett's MTV Unplugged.

Costello still seems (charmingly) a little nervous, but he nails it. (He's a better singer in 1994 than he was in 1983, inspiringly.)

Another fun thing from 1983, Costello's guesting with Madness on their song, "Tomorrow's Just Another Day."

Here's a live performance:

And the excellent studio recording, which I believe came out as a Madness b-side:

Costello in concert, adding The Beat's "Stand Down Margaret" after playing his own "Big Sister's Clothes":

The Beat (aka "The English Beat"):

If you like Punch The Clock-- or even maybe more so if you don't-- it is really worth seeking out the Rhino Records 2-disc reissue. Costello's solo demos are a totally different take on the same material, minus the Langer/Winstanley production sheen:

Some of the songs sound so completely different in these acoustic demos, it really is a terrific alternate version of the record:

I really like Costello's Punch The Clock phase. Recordings of his live tour wThe Attractions + The TKO Horns + Afrodiziak all sound amazing & the whole period is a satisfying blend of pop ambition & political activism. It's a much more genuine & complicated public persona now.

This is a much friendlier version of Costello, smiling where he once would've given the camera a bug-eyed glare. Was he happier during this phase? Hard to say. It may be that this pose is as much show biz artifice as the "Revenge & Guilt" era. But I like these songs, a lot.

I'm calling it! That's Day 10 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello (I have NYC Comedy shows tonight to prep for!)

Tomorrow: his worst album? Maybe?

Here are the useful links...

Costello's 2003 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The full LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/0jo7K3Ik…

Day 11: Goodbye Cruel World

Costello has famously dismissed this as his "worst record" and there aren't a lot of contenders for that particular title.

It has some good stuff on it, including some fine songs that don't sound their best. It feels like a confused record.

Released June 18, 1984

This was another LP produced by Langer & Winstanley, only this time Costello seems torn between trying something new or repeating the successful formula of Punch The Clock.

It lands somewhere in the middle.

There's gonna be plenty to pick at on this record, but I'm gonna start out by defending a track which I hated at first but grew to love, not in spite of its garish 80s production but BECAUSE of it: the @realdarylhall duet, "The Only Flame In Town."

This music video is super dumb, but I have come to appreciate the song as a fairly perfect pop confection, blaring saxophone and all.

Costello has reinterpreted it as a more somber ballad, but the lyric isn't built for that. It's built for this. This is a fun/sad pop single.

Costello's attempts to reclaim this particular song (to make it something akin to his later flame-based ballad "Indoor Fireworks") always feel like he is trying fit a square peg into a round hole.

(Obviously, I can imagine someone prefering the more maudlin version. EC does!)

But there are other things going on here. The song is fine. It's fun!

But what would prompt the radical change of image in this alternate music video: no glasses??? And I can't tell for certain but is that a rattail he's sporting???

It's a kind of simple pop songwriting that Costello excels at, when he permits himself to. Books, for "Everyday I Write The Book," fire, for "The Only Flame In Town." I bet if you gave him any word, he could whip up a pop song for it, like an improv team taking a suggestion.

I think Langer & Winstanley turned the trifle Costello wrote for them into exactly the song it needed to be. But I don't think, deep down, Costello really wanted to make that record. For the first time, perhaps, he wasn't sure what kind of album he wanted to make.

Costello's marriage had finally broken down, that was likely a big part of it.

The 2nd track on the album, "Home Truth," reflected the gloom of his personal situation. It also seemed like it belonged on a totally different album from "The Only Flame In Town."

Costello's solo demos for GCW (many of them on the OOP Rhino reissue) point towards a much simpler & starker sounding album.

There are a handful of tracks on GCW that I really, really like without any caveats or reservations. "Room Without A Number" has a kind of cluttered, claustrophobic sound but I think it works:

"Inch By Inch" is another genuinely good song, only slightly marred by the dated synthesizer sounds of 1984. (It's easy to imagine this same track sounding a little bit better if they had recorded it one year earlier or later):

"Worthless Thing" is one of my all-time favorite Costello songs.

I don't even mind the 80s production touches. The song just WORKS for me, on every level, especially the chorus:

The specifics are a time capsule of the moment it was written during, but it feels like Costello is being prescient about the horrorshow of the modern broadband corporate media landscape to come: "they're gonna take this CABLE now and STICK it down your THROAT."

And this is why the 2-disc expanded Rhino reissue of GCW is one of the most essential things to track down. Even most of the albums BEST tracks are presented in superior live or demo form:

"Love Field" seems to be the one track on GCW that Costello really likes, including it on a few "best of" collections as the sole representation of this album.

"You lie, so unfolded, in a love field" is a fantastic opening line...

The two singles were the tracks where Costello fully allowed Langer/Winstanley to do their thing.

I kinda wish that EC had made 2 records, one where he gave in & made a full-on 80s-style LP in the style of those singles & another bare-bones album of heartfelt, sad songs.

Costello's cover of Farnell Jenkins' "I Wanna Be Loved" is another track it took me a while to warm to but I really appreciate the way it commits to & sustains a mood.

This excellent music video (dir. by Evan English) was the thing that ultimately led me to like the song more:

The extras casting for this is pretty spectacular-- the choices for style of kissing are fascinating, esp. those which are near misses or oddly aggressive.

ALSO: Costello is vocalizing over the pre-recorded track, a striking device he would return to in the video for "Veronica."

This music video was copied TWICE by @u2! They have basically admitted to Costello that when they are at a loss for what to do for a music video, they simply re-make the video for "I Wanna Be Loved."

And @U2's second re-make of "I Wanna Be Loved," for "The Sweetest Thing":

Teacher's Edition's original record of "I Wanna Be Loved" from 1973:

The 2nd half of the album is where things really start to lose some steam.

"The Comedians" isn't bad-- I like it, overall, even though I have no idea what he's singing about (that has never been a deal breaker for me with Costello songs)-- but he would improve it later...

Costello re-wrote the song almost entirely, for Roy Orbison, replacing its rather cryptic verses with a narrative the listener can actually make sense of, a parable of betrayal set atop a ferris wheel. The song is transformed:

"Joe Porterhouse" usually leaves me feeling a little underwhelmed, unless I approach it with lowered expectations, in which case it pleasantly surprises me, and then the cycle begins all over again...

The bones of the song in demo form are identical, but I find this simple rendition makes me want to lean in and listen:

[RECORD SCRATCH] twitter failed to post this tweet, 2 tweets back...

Orbison takes ownership of the song from the very first line: it is his song now. When I hear Costello sing it now, I hear him singing a Roy Orbison song.

"Sour Milk-Cow Blues" is a song that feels like it is supposed to be fun but I have never enjoyed it, despite always being open to it. I feel like it's very close to being a fun song.

Beyond the reference in the title, is there any other connection to "Milk Cow Blues"?

Honestly, Costello's song exhausts me, I can't hear one but I don't know if his song just breaks my brain & wears me out. I kind of turn off listening halfway through it, involuntarily...

"The Great Unknown" - I like this song a LOT. The album version is a little bit plodding, but it's not enough to do any real damage to a good song.

I'm a sucker for a lyric like "Footprints set in sentimental cement / Now burden down his bones":

Costello's solo demo for "The Great Unknown" is slow but somehow feels like it has more of a lift to it. Goddamn, this is a good song. If I ever heard him play this in concert (unlikely), I would absolutely LOSE IT.

"The Deportees Club" is another bummer of a song. It's baffling that Costello has done his kind of raving song so well on albums before and since, but I find this one basically unlistenable:

Costello also rescued this song, after the fact. (Often, this process happens before he records and releases a song, this one just got slapped onto an album before it was ready.)

"Deportee":

Recently humiliated idea-lover Malcolm @Gladwell did a podcast episode that talked at length about the transformation of "The Deportees Club" to its final, superior form as "Deportee":

openculture.com/2016/09/malcol…

The album closes on a somber political ballad, "Peace In Our Time" which Costello played on The Tonight Show with guest host Joan Rivers:

From a 1995 Record Collector interview, Costello talking about that Tonight Show performance, and admitting that he "lifted" the melody for "Peace In Our Time" from someone else's song!

(Anyone know whose song he stole it from?)

Around this same time, Costello wrote & recorded the theme song for a TV series by his pal playwright Alan Bleasdale, called Scully:

The basic track was produced by Langer & Winstanley (credited as "The Mono Kings") but the guitar & vocals were done later w/Jon Jacobs (Geoff Emerick's assistant on IbMePdErRoIoAmL) & it honestly sounds so much better than most of GCW:

UPDATE: from @CharlieSedarka, an answer to the question of where EC "lifted" the melody for "Peace In Our Time." (I should have re-read those Rhino liner notes this morning but this thread is like a runaway freight train!)

I can hear it, although his reference to "lifting" the melody was clearly at least half-joking. (He's good at adapting his influences so it's never outright theft, he always bends it or twists it a little to make it his own...)

Some more fun gems from the GCW bonus disc: the demo for "Mystery Voice" contains bits that would wind up in "Room With No Number" & "Worthless Thing."

(I like those songs better than this, but I like this song better than other GCW tracks!)

"Blue Murder On Union Avenue" is an early draft of "Worthless Thing."

Again, I prefer how it ended up, but this version ain't half bad, and it is fascinating to observe the development of a song like that.

Speaking of Blue Murder, I know I already posted a TV clip of Costello performing "Peace In Our Time" but I need to post this one just so you can see him perform in this blue sweater:

And here is the final half of the Top Of The Pops performance where the BBC became furious when drummer Pete Thomas looked into the camera and mimed a drum fill on his head, revealing the state secret that TOTP used pre-recorded music & lip syncing...

Costello being interviewed by Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show, 1984. Costello brought a little devil puppet along with him, for some reason.

(Watch him slyly take it from its resting place atop Steve's keyboard)

Joan Rivers throws names of musicians at Costello, and he doesn't hold back.

(I believe this clip will have consequences for Costello in 1997. We'll return to it then.)

"I'm CRAZY about you!" exclaims a delighted Rivers. "Because you tell the TRUTH!"

EC did a solo tour after recording GCW, & quickly figured out where he had gone wrong on this record.

That tour featured a healthy sampling of cover songs. One of them was @johnhiattmusic's "She Loves The Jerk" which EC had also recorded while doing the demos for GCW:

Costello recorded a guest vocal on a cover of "Living A Little, Laughing A Little" for @johnhiattmusic's 1985 album Warming Up To The Ice Age.

Costello was presumably unavailable for Hiatt's music video shoot, which then clearly adapted to make his absence its main plotline:

Hiatt does his best Costello imitation throughout, all leading up to a big surprise cameo appearance at the end, clearly filmed at a different time and place...

The song is, of course, a cover of the song made famous by The Detroit Spinners...

...which Costello sang a tiny snippet of at the end of "Alison" on his 1983 tour with The TKO Horns.

This is one of my very favorite things, the way this builds at the very end:

A couple more quick things before I close out Day 11 and go to sleep...

One of the more fun covers from his 1984 solo tour, Jerry Dammers' crowd-pleasing "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend":

Also from that tour, a partial clip of Costello performing The Beatles' "Yes It Is."

This is another song where if he played this at a concert I was attending, I would LOSE IT.

Here is a brief interview with Costello from 1984, split into 2 parts, including an impressively swift & honestly too-close-for-comfort mimed strangulation:

Part 2 of that interview (no mimed strangulations!):

A GIF of the sudden mimed strangulation:

Also a GIF of Pete Thomas miming a drum fill on his head on Top Of The Pops!

Almost an hour of a 1984 concert with The Attractions at Forest Hills, NY:

And I think that pretty well does it for Day 11 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

The usual links...

Costello's 2004 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/4XIzcMRI…

This is totally self-indulgent, but if a person can't be self-indulgent during a 45-day twitter thread...

Costello did one of those features where people name pop culture things they like, & he listed as his "favourite TV show" a program I will be appearing in 2 eps of in S2...

Day 12: King Of America

A major album, with a lot of big changes.

The Attractions are mostly sidelined as Costello & producer T Bone Burnett assemble a cast of American session musicians-- including members of Elvis Presley's TCB band-- to make one of his greatest records.

Released February 21, 1986

Technically, it's not even an "Elvis Costello" album-- it's listed as "The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates."

After the confused, fractured sound of Goodbye Cruel World, this album is brimming with confidence & genuine feeling.

Costello also starts pulling back from his stage name, crediting himself as Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus-- his actual name, with the addition (I think) of "Aloysius"-- and also as L.H.C, for his nickname as a guitar player, "The Little Hands Of Concrete"

1985 was the first year without a new Costello album since his debut, but he did tour a bit, and released a single with T Bone Burnett under their aliases Henry & Howard Coward, aka "The Coward Brothers":

Elvis & T Bone became fast friends in 1985, and The Coward Brothers were a comic device for them to perform covers of famous songs in concert, claiming to have written them.

(This Is Spinal Tap had come out a year earlier & I suspect that this is not a coincidence.)

After 4 albums in a row where Costello was dealing with various levels of ambitous orchestration & production techniques that sometimes weren't his cup of tea, this new album would be a chance to simplify. The lessons learned on Goodbye Cruel World would pay off on this record.

The advance single was perhaps the 2nd worst choice the record company could've picked to represent the album, a perfectly fine cover of Nina Simone's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

It's not bad but after GCW & a longer than usual gap between records, this wasn't the most impressive way to return

The NME ran a review basically saying that the single was proof EC was in a creative rut (a hysterical take which the critic would disown once the LP came out)

Nina Simone's original:

And The Animals' version, which EC's seems modeled after:

I think it was a significant blunder for this album to announce itself this way, when literally almost ANY other track would've been a more impressive lead single

(Even though the LP is considered a classic within EC's oeuvre, it was not a hit record & could've used the help)

The album opens with the perfectly titled "Brilliant Mistake," a song which I knew I was going to love from the very first line, and then the song just gets better and better and better:

Here he is opening the song in concert with a (slightly mangled) quote from "Tangled Up In Blue."

While Blood On The Tracks is a masterpiece often linked to Dylan's marital woes, Costello's personal life appeared to be on the upswing as he made KOA...

In the gap between records, Costello produced The Pogues' LP "Rum, Sodomy And The Lash" and ended up romantically involved with bass player Cait O'Riordan, a relationship that would last until 2002...

O'Riordan co-wrote the album's 2nd track, "Lovable":

It's startling to compare this album to his previous attempts at Country or Americana-influenced music of 5 or 10 years earlier. KOA feels so much more assured; there's no longer the slight feeling of him trying out a genre.

This song, "Our Little Angel," is astonishingly good:

(Of course, being backed by members of Elvis Presley's TCB band on several tracks probably goes a long way towards making it feel effortlessly authentic.)

"Glitter Gulch":

"Indoor Fireworks" is Costello's 2nd fire-based love song in as many consecutive albums; almost an answer song to "The Only Flame In Town," an attempt to out-do the things he felt went wrong on the previous record:

"Little Palaces" is a deep cut but it's as clear an example I can think of to demonstrate Costello's skill as both songwriter and performer. One of the casualties of him writing so many songs is that material this strong can get buried under a mountain of other great songs:

[The massive upside, of course, is that obviously this is just an overwhelming amount of great music to discover and re-discover, but it's also shocking how much of it even someone as obsessive as I am can actually overlook or forget about sometimes.]

"I'll Wear It Proudly" is a defiantly positive love song sung w/absolute conviction. I'm not suggesting that this is totally w/o precedent in his catalog at this point, but it does feel like it digs down to a specific place of feeling that he hadn't explored previously:

Also, the final minute of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" quotes "I'll Wear It Proudly":

ALSO: @thomyorke points to "I'll Wear It Proudly" as a song that was a huge influence on him, and he has performed it in concert. (A collaboration between @ElvisCostello & @Radiohead would be fascinating...)

King Of America isn't a concept album, but it does seem like it has a few kinds of songs that are sort of linked to one another.

"American Without Tears" feels like it starts out Side 2 as a kind of echo or reflection of the way "Brilliant Mistake" started out Side 1:

He would of course write a sequel to this song and at one point in time a few lucky audiences were able to hear them performed back-to-back as a 9-minute epic...

Legendary musicians Ray Brown & Earl Palmer make up the rhythm section on two tracks, which appear on the album in reverse order from how they were recorded.

First, the celebratory cover of J.B. Lenoir's "Eisenhower Blues":

Admittedly, sometimes this is perhaps the kind of track that EC maybe enjoys performing more than I enjoy listening to him perform

I think this & the cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" are both songs I could imagine being left of the LP w/o weakening it

Lenoir's original:

I think the best justification for leaving "Eisenhower Blues" on the album isn't that it gives the record a boost of needed energy-- it already has that, from other songs-- but simply that it was a victory lap after nailing "Poisoned Rose" w/that line-up & EC wanted it on there.

Yeah, he coulda released "Eisenhower Blues" as a b-side & replaced it with any of several stronger originals, but this LP already has plenty of those.

It meant a lot to him to have these musicians on one of his albums.

Here is that perfect take of "Poisoned Rose":

"The Big Light" is a nice big jolt of fun energy (that feels like literally the flip side of "Glitter Gulch" on Side 1) once again feat. TCB band vets James Burton, Jerry Scheff & Ron Tutt:

Seeing Johnny Cash & The Carter Family performing "The Big Light" feels almost like an out-of-body experience for me, I can only imagine how strange & thrilling it must've been for Costello:

And then, the album draws to a close with as strong a 3-song sequence as Elvis Costello will ever record in his lifetime.

"Jack Of All Parades" is 5+ minutes of perfection. The way the drums hit as chorus kicks in sends a chill down my spine, every time:

I'm splitting the song up into segments here, and it's all so terrific.

Every slight variation in the structure of the song takes my breath away. And then, at the very end of this 2nd clip, we hear the appearance of @SteveNieve on piano, for the song's glorious final minute...

The coda to this song, with @SteveNieve's gorgeous piano sweeping in to make an already extraordinary song fully take flight, alerts the listener to the fact that this album promised Attractions but so far delivered only Confederates.

The next song will be their only appearance!

Costello intended for The Attractions to play on half the album but things went too well with the new musicians and rising tensions meant things went less well with his original band.

Except for on THIS song, "Suit Of Lights":

The Attractions are in absolutely top form here, in a song inspired by Costello watching his dad perform before a rude audience who couldn't be bothered to pay attention. The band would soon fall apart, but they have rarely sounded better:

The album closer, "Sleep Of The Just" is a beautiful-sounding song that is actually a pretty funny act of petty revenge against a soldier he had an unpleasant interaction with at the border of Northern Ireland.

Costello conjures a scenario in which this soldier is getting a hard-on looking at pictures of his sister, a topless model.

"His family pride was rising up as he cast his eyes down."

The LP literally ends on a dick joke, in one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.

There are some good outtakes from King Of America, but I'm not sure this album needed any more good songs from Elvis Costello.

I like "Suffering Face" but I can't honestly say that it should take the place of the two cover songs on the album.

Same with "King Of Confidence" - as strong as it is (and it's shocking that it didn't come out as a b-side at the time), the album already has more great Costello originals than it needs...

A few more things...

Costello performing "Little Palaces" on Irish TV a year later:

A bunch of good clips of Costello & The Confederates on tour in Japan a year later, with Nick Lowe:

They sound especially nice on this version of Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding?"

And an Amnesty International TV commercial from 1986, featuring Costello:

And that's Day 12 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Now, the links...

Costello's 2005 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the full LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/6zwFIyWK…

Day 13: Blood & Chocolate

It's still shocking.

The same year Costello stages a comeback in an entirely new musical direction w/a new cast of players, he ALSO makes a 2nd LP w/The Attractions that is essentially a sequel to This Year's Model AND somehow doesn't disappoint.

Released September 15, 1986

In any other year, this record on its own would've been a big deal. Nick Lowe is back in the producer's chair for the first time since Trust in 1981. And yet, this is somehow a "back to basics" adventure which doesn't tread over familiar ground.

Costello re-christened himself "Napoleon Dynamite" 18 years before filmmaker Jared Hess used the name for his movie.

Hess claims he had no idea: "I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence."

Costello: "The guy just denies completely that I made the name up ... but I invented it. Maybe somebody told him the name and he truly feels that he came to it by chance. But it's two words that you're never going to hear together."

With its startling cover imagery harkening back to Barney Bubbles' painting for IbMePdErRoIoAmL w/a new work by the artist Eamonn Singer (aka EC; pronounced "Aimin' Singer" as in My Aim Is True), the LP announces its unsubtle intentions loudly w/opening track, "Uncomplicated":

No-brainer-shoulda-been-a-single "I Hope You're Happy Now" is classic 1978 Costello w/8 more years of bitter experience thrown in for good measure. It's zippy, quick & funny & The Attractions sound like a band unleashed.

It's also a song that took 2 years & multiple attempts

For some unknown reason, Costello & The Attractions played this song on The Tonight Show two years earlier, when it wasn't on the album they were promoting:

It was attempted for Goodbye Cruel World but wisely left off. This version is so close but it's not where it needs to be yet:

Going back to the drawing board as he did with so many songs from GCW, Costello re-imagines the song as an understated ballad in this solo demo from 1985:

Then there's this Confederates version from the King Of America sessions (supposedly "accidentally" released on a UK Singles box set in 2003) which is pretty damn good! It's a much gentler take on the song before it snaps back to being loud & fast for its perfect version on B&C:

I don't know whose idea it was for the singles for this LP to be the longest & most nightmarish tracks -- on an album where more than half the songs feel like potential hit singles.

"Tokyo Storm Warning" was a single you had to flip over halfway through:

Am I the only one who hears the classic "Sesame Street" theme music in "Tokyo Storm Warning"?

I did not buy this "Japanese God-Jesus Robot" when I saw it on ebay earlier this year. But I think about it often. And when I visited Japan in 2015, I looked everywhere for one.

I *did* however buy the withdrawn cassette edition that was made to look like a Cadbury's chocolate bar until @CadburyUK complained about it and it was deleted. Way to ruin the fun, company that makes candy!

I haven't had time to dip into this up to this point in the thread, but there was a great 1992 BBC radio documentary series about Costello where they talked to EC & various other ppl like Nick Lowe & Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas

Here's EC on the way he approached B&C:

Nick Lowe, in 1992, talking about the tensions & internal dynamics of EC & The Attractions during the making of Blood & Chocolate:

"Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head" is a great example of The Attractions' sound on this album. Even on a slow, measured track like this, they are a million miles away from the numb feeling of GCW. It's a grinding, churning sound that breathes like a living thing:

Costello in 1992, talking about how much he annoyed The Attractions when making Blood & Chocolate, and Bruce Thomas talking about how much he disliked the song "I Want You."

(These interviews were prior to The Attractions 90s reunion, when the band was split up & estranged.)

"I Want You" is Blood & Chocolate's centerpiece-- nearly 7 minutes long, it starts from a place of unbearable tension & doesn't let up

But while it was easy for listeners to assume the Costello of 1978 was singing from his own POV, this feels more clearly like character work

In part, this was because EC had produced a massive body of work by now; it was impossible to imagine that every song was HIM

But also, there is an element of theatricality to this performance-- what Bruce Thomas dismissed as a Norman Bates routine-- that is one of its strengths

It was almost like a method acting version of Randy Newman; no one thought Costello was really a psycho, but he threw himself into the character w/a Daniel Day-Lewis level of vocal commitment

The final minute has the mics switch off until it is just the vocal mic + distant music

From the Brooklyn Steel concert earlier this year, 2 minutes & 20 seconds of Costello once again taking this song to new places:

"Blue Chair" would eventually be a single, but a different version than this one. Which is bonkers, because this feels to me like a great pop single. (In my ideal world, a song like this would've had a shot at getting airplay on the radio in 1986.)

"Battered Old Bird" is the type of song that is cursed to mostly vanish from the touring repertoire once the album is done being promoted. Which is a shame, because it's a big, meaty song.

(He's played it exactly once since 1987.)

I mean, I get it-- on any given tour, a song like this takes up a lot of real estate, and it would probably always be better to play 3 songs from Get Happy!! or This Year's Model instead.

Still, listen to Costello really going for it with this song:

And here's the part where they use the "Strawberry Fields Forever" trick to stitch two different takes together:

While in most ways King Of America & Blood & Chocolate couldn't be more different, they both end with a sequence of 3 absolutely knockout songs.

B&C's begins with "Crimes Of Paris":

"Poor Napoleon" has a sound that jumped out at me the first time I heard it and I get that exact same feeling every time I hear it, still:

I finally got to hear him play "Next Time Round" in concert earlier this year!

I love how Blood & Chocolate begins with "you think it's over now but this is only the beginning" & ends by predicting what will happen "the next time 'round." This is a well-sequenced record.

Here's a snippet of him closing out a 1986 Attractions concert by segueing from "Poor Napoleon" into Lennon's "Instant Karma.":

Costello followed the release of B&C with a hugely ambitious tour involving two full bands (Attractions & Confederates) & five different kinds of show per city (including the one with the giant Spinning Songbook, where audience members spin the big wheel to pick the songs.)

Costello, speaking to Rolling Stone in 1989 about the Costello Sings Again tour: "Do you know how much money I lost on that? But it was worthwhile because people damn well talked about it."

There were also guest M.C.'s at the shows, including the likes of Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, Penn & Teller, Buster Poindexter & members of the Chicago Bears.

Here's @pennjillette yelling for Costello to play a Prince song, which he does:

(Full clip: )

I really like "Uncomplicated" on the record and as an opening track specifically but part of me feels like it was also not the best ambassador for an album that contains quite a few very catchy & melodic pop songs:

"I Hope You're Happy Now" is, I think, a much better entry point for the album overall. It's short & aggressive & funny & gets its point across in a way that would make me want to seek out the record.

"Uncomplicated" got a lot of TV time for a song that I think can be a little bit alienating as a first impression

It's also interesting that Costello opted to play a cover of "Leave My Kitten Alone" on TV instead of any of the other songs from the record, like "Blue Chair" or "Crimes Of Paris":

"Leave My Kitten Alone" was recorded during the B&C sessions but didn't make it onto the album & didn't even come out as a b-side!

EC would release a version on the covers album Kojak Variety but this more rowdy take wouldn't come out until the 2-disc Rhino edition of B&C:

And now, some intros that Costello recorded as Guest VJ on MTV in 1986...

(Might as well include some clips of the videos he chose...)

Public Image Ltd: "Rise"

"The Napoleon Dynamite Polka Hour"

Talk Talk: "Life's What You Make Of It"

Tom Waits: "In The Neighborhood"

Costello outros the Tom Waits video and then introduces a Talking Heads song wordlessly...

Talking Heads: "Burning Down The House"

X: "Burning House Of Love"

Outro for X, plugging the Costello Sings Again tour, then an intro for The Rolling Stones:

The Rolling Stones' ridiculously horny music video for "She Was Hot."

I have never heard this song before, and this video is BONKERS.

This insane Rolling Stones video continues as this woman makes everyone who sees her go sex crazy:

Whitney Houston: "How Will I Know"

Elvis Costello outros Whitney, intros Bob:

Bob Dylan: "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

The Pretenders: "Don't Get Me Wrong"

Costello outros The Pretenders & has an umbrella malfunction

The Pogues: "Dirty Old Town"

Final outros and farewells as Costello's Guest VJ hour comes to a close...

I'll wrap up now with a performance of one of the Blood & Chocolate songs being performed in concert by The Confederates.

The Attractions were about to split up, fired by Costello bc he couldn't afford to keep them on salary. He wanted to try some new things...

That's Day 13 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Here are the links....

Costello's 2002 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And the full LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/6T5rtCxx…

Day 14: Out Of Our Idiot

It's the sequel to Taking Liberties/10 Bloody Marys & 10 How's Your Fathers!

The big yellow sticker seems to be there so people could tell it was actually an "Elvis Costello" LP, which sort of cuts against the joke of its deliberately cheap cover design

Released December 4, 1987

It was technically credited to "Various Artists" since the tracks were released under so many different pseudonyms.

It's amazing to realize that 7 different artist names are included and they didn't even have one track by "The Imposter."

It's a much stranger & less cohesive collection than the previous mop-up releases, indicative that 1981-1986 was a much less cohesive period for Costello as a recording artist, something that was even truer for his non-album work

It opens with a song from the movie Club Paradise

It was written & recorded by @ElvisCostello & @jimmycliff for the film, which starred Robin Williams, Peter O'Toole, Twiggy + SCTV legends @iamandreamartin, @Realeugenelevy & Rick Moranis, all of whom appear in clips in this music video:

I've already posted about some of these tracks when tweeting about the albums during which they were recorded and/or released as b-sides

The CD reissues of the 90s & 00s made this album & TL/10BM&10HYF temporarily redundant, all of this material became bonus tracks:

Since those reissues are all now out-of-print & expensive, these collections have kept two entire LPs' worth of Costello's oeuvre available in the streaming age.

(Costello b-sides & bonus material from 1987-2018 have no equivalent compilations & require some searching)

EC: "This song was borrowed from the great Joe Camilleri, then of Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, after our first trip to Australia. Unfortunately our only @AbbeyRoad session fell on a Bank Holiday & was blighted by flying coffee cups, technical resistance & overwhelming blueness."

The original version by Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons:

One difference between this and the earlier b-sides collections is that there are more covers of other people's songs, reflecting his post-Armed Forces openness about his musical enthusiasms.

"Get Yourself Another Fool" by Frank Haywood & Ernest Tucker:

As performed by Sam Cooke:

And a bit of thread foreshadowing (x2!) with this clip of Sir Paul McCartney performing the same song decades later with Diana Krall on piano:

"Walking On Thin Ice" is significant beyond being @ElvisCostello's only cover of a @yokoono song -- it was produced by Allen Toussaint, who will obvsly figure prominently in this thread on 2 more days, one soon & one later...

Yoko's original, with some nice 80s footage of her in NYC:

This was recorded for a Yoko One tribute album in 1984; here is a delightful photo of them together that looks like it was taken around 2010-ish

A GCW-era cover of Richard Thompson's despairing "Withered & Died."

(Costello had seriously considered asking @RthompsonMusic to play guitar on GCW, but sadly never made the call.)

Richard Thompson's own distinctive performance of the song in concert:

And (pre-break-up) Linda & Richard Thompson:

Costello in 1985 was especially enamored of the saddest songs Richard Thompson could write.

(This isn't on OOOI, but is a King Of America Rhino bonus track)

And here is another take of that song which Costello donated to a substance abuse charity compilation only to have a producer add harmony vocals & synth bass without his permission:

Costello & Nick Lowe recorded this Bacharach song for a joint single to promote a tour they were doing, and Columbia Records refused to release it because they worried that it was "too good" and would distract from their other singles:

The Shirelles' version:

The Beatles' version:

And this version by Smith featured in Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof":

The IbMePdErRoIoAmL-era single, his cover of Smokey Robinson's "From Head To Toe":

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles' original:

B-side "The World Of Broken Hearts" didn't make it onto either the CD or LP edition of Out Of Our Idiot, which easily could have been a 2-disc/3-LP set:

And here is that Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman song as performed by The Amen Corner:

Also not on Out Of Our Idiot: b-side "Night Time" by Paddy Chambers, on which Costello sings "we can have a little party/laugh & sing & EVERYTHING"
and also "maybe first we'll dig a movie/then we'll hit the high spots feelin' groovy"

"Night Time" by The Escorts

The Coward Brothers are credited as producers on the single version of "Blue Chair" which was partly recorded during the KOA sessions; a new vocal arrangement was recorded in January 1987:

Probably my favorite track on OOOI is "Black Sails In The Sunset," a Trust outtake that didn't become a b-side until "Tokyo Storm Warning" 5 years later!

This is the song I think of first when considering how Costello puts out some of his best work as b-sides or bonus tracks:

Another prime track, which Costello has basically admitted should have made it onto Punch The Clock, is "The Flirting Kind." Both this and "Black Sails" are among my very favorite Costello songs:

Costello's demo (not on OOOI) is an early attempt to write a Bacharach-style song. I always wished he would have given Burt a crack at re-writing/re-arranging it when they were doing concerts for Painted From Memory in 1998...

Two b-sides from The Costello Show demonstrate why King Of America leaned more heavily on The Confederates than The Attractions.

"Shoes Without Heels" (backed by TCB's Burton/Scheff/Tutt) is good enough that it could've/should've been on the album:

Meanwhile, the only other Attractions recording from the KOA sessions is significantly less impressive than "Suit Of Lights." It's fine, even a little fun, but neither the song nor the record feels like it belongs anywhere near KOA:

"Big Sister" an early draft of "Big Sister's Clothes" from the Trust sessions:

But I think I prefer this blurry, slurred version from the same sessions to the one that ended up as a b-side & on OOOI. This version has the feel of a political argument made in a bar at 3am:

Some non-b-side outtakes that emerged on later reissues strike me as more interesting than a few of the ones that made it onto OOOI, including this B&C track, "Forgive Her Anything." (I think Costello was still hoping this song would find its way onto an album eventually):

Up until 1996, Costello avoided having "title tracks" but he wasn't above naming songs after albums they weren't on ("Almost Blue") -- my guess is that the solo track "Imperial Bedroom" was never even considered for inclusion on IbMePdErRoIoAmL:

One of the more unusual tracks on OOOI has its origins in Alex Cox's spaghetti western parody, Straight To Hell, a movie which features Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Courtney Love, The Pogues and Elvis Costello as the butler, "Hives."

Costello contributed the song "A Town Called Big Nothing" to its soundtrack, credited to The MacManus Gang & featuring Sy Richardson delivering the narration that is the song's main vocal.

(Also featured: Ross MacManus on trumpet & flamenco clapping!)

This is a really fun song, I am surprised that Costello hasn't written more in this style, basically prose over music.

(I'd be curious to hear the fragments of fiction in his memoir set to music and performed by actors)

The ending to this feels suitably epic.

I believe Costello has said this song has more of a plot than the movie (which I have never seen)

Someone made a supercut of all of Costello's appearances as "Hives":

Or you could just watch this 15 seconds:

Ok, that's it for Day 14 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

There are no liner notes for this one, so here is a link to the Costello wiki with technical credits & other info:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And here is the full compilation on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/2MCG7aNG…

Day 15: McCartney/MacManus

Now we reach the point in the timeline where a number of "lost" @ElvisCostello albums emerge; most are eventually released officially & at least one possibly never will be

Easily the most significant of these is the one he made with Sir @PaulMcCartney

The collaboration mostly took place in 1987/88, including the recording of basically 2 albums (one of raw demos & one of full studio sessions) that weren't officially released for 30 years.

It's complicated! Let's get into it...

Also, how fortuitous that we have arrived at this material today, with #PaulMcCartney once again making headlines both for his new album #EgyptStation and also for adding a provocative & previously unknown footnote to The Story Of #TheBeatles...

The latest headlines of course adding yet another detail to the list of ways that the Lennon/McCartney partnership differed from that of McCartney/Costello (we can reasonably speculate)

In total, we're talking about 15 songs written by McCartney & Costello.

And there are multiple ways to hear these songs, but originally, they were sort of split up and came out on 5 different solo records between 1989 & 1996.

Then, in the late 90s, a bootleg emerged, containing a bunch of the original demo recordings by McCartney & Costello, including songs that inexplicably had never been recorded by either of them.

I remember learning that this existed & worrying that I would never find a copy.

I don't recall how I tracked down my copy, but I remember that once I got it, I couldn't believe what I was hearing; I was astonished that something so great could sit in a vault for a decade, unreleased.

I played it constantly.

I wondered if it would remain forever unreleased. Eventually, in the YouTube era, you could find all the demos pretty easily. After a while, I kind of figured they would never officially come out, since they were already "out there" for anyone curious who knew to look for them.

Then, finally, last year, everything that had been bootlegged was finally released in McCartney's Flowers In The Dirt Archive Edition box set, along with a ton of Costello/McCartney recordings that had never leaked...

Even better, the original batch of two-man acoustic demos were released on vinyl, as a 2nd LP accompanying the original solo album.

Costello now had an answer to any inquiries about a McCartney/Costello joint album: "As to whether a record should come out. It has. This is it."

It's sort of amazing to me how quietly it was released, but I think it was bad timing & also there was a slight element of burying the lede: there is naturally going to be less buzz about bonus tracks on an archival release than if it had been framed as a lost album by 2 legends

"The Lovers That Never Were" (original demo)

Paul's vocal here is astonishing, and Costello's voice blends with his perfectly.

(If you own most of Costello's albums & are hearing this demo for the first time now, I'm guessing it means you have a new album to rush out and buy.)

Early sessions for Flowers In The Dirt involved Costello as co-producer as well as contributing vocal harmonies, but eventually the album went in a different direction. Paul's attempt at this song for FITD is solid but loses a lot minus EC's harmonies:

And this is the version that Sir Paul eventually released, on his 1993 album. Off The Ground.

It's not bad-- the bones of the song are strong-- but it doesn't give me the same feeling that the original demo does:

A hidden track on the deluxe edition is a @GeoffEmerick remix of "The Lovers That Never Were" demo, which is kind of a halfway point between the raw demo and the way it eventually sounded on an album.

I wonder if they tried this approach on any of the other demos? I like it.

When I first heard it on a bootleg CD, "Tommy's Coming Home" floored me.

How had a song THIS good not found a home on ANY Costello or McCartney album between 1989 & 1998?

Also, why didn't they just release THIS recording? It's perfect. (19 years later, they did, of course.)

In 2017, we finally got to hear a more produced version of "Tommy's Coming Home" and it is good but also falls short of the magic on those original demos. There is something magical they captured on those first recordings together that seems to difficult to re-create.

A 2nd then-unreleased song on the bootleg was mis-titled "Twenty-five Fingers"

Maybe it was the long shadow of "Tommy's Coming Home" that caused me to underestimate this song at the time or maybe the improved sound quality in 2017 made me like it more now

"Twenty Fine Fingers":

The more version of this they attempted in 1988 is a little more polished than the demo, but basically captures the spirit of it. I think this should've found a place on Flowers In The Dirt:

"So Like Candy" is one of the greatest songs from their collaboration, and the version that ended up on 1991's Mighty Like A Rose is probably my favorite album version of any of their songs.

Still, this demo with Paul & Elvis singing it together is stunning:

I mean, I know it's easy to second guess other people's decisions but how on earth Paul didn't include THIS 1988 band version of "So Like Candy" is something I will never be able to understand:

And oh MAN this arrangement has so many fun specific touches that did not carry over to Costello's eventual version on MLAR. I love the final 60 seconds of this:

Paul DID include this duet, "You Want Her Too," on FITD & I think it makes a pretty clean journey from fun demo to fun album track:

At first listen, this sounds like the album version, because it's the same "take."

This is a little bit cleaner-sounding than the FITD version, and I prefer it:

Someone who knows more about this kinda stuff can maybe tell me what they did to the version I just tweeted to turn it into this version that appeared on FITD:

This song always struck me as Paul & Elvis doing their own version of Michael Jackson's duet with Paul on Thriller, "The Girl Is Mine":

Speaking of which, as a child I never realized that this insane drawing on the lyric sheet for Thriller was BY Michael Jackson, depicting MJ & PM pulling apart an Olive Oyl-esque "girl."

"That Day Is Done" was a deeply personal song to Costello, and Paul's version on Flowers In The Dirt was one of that album's high points:

Elvis & Paul's demo for "That Day Is Done" was the only one of the original batch of EC/PM demos that wasn't on that bootleg CD I had. I was surprised when I finally heard it that Paul is almost the supporting vocal, since I mostly associated the song with his version of it...

Even though I know this song is actually more of an Elvis song than a Paul one, I still have a built-in feeling that when EC eventually did his version with The Fairfield Four, they were "covering" a McCartney song! I'm stupid.

I'm gonna present this one in reverse order, the way I experienced it.

The Flowers In The Dirt version of "Don't Be Careless Love" is for some reason a track I never clicked with. McCartney's vocal is impressive, but I found myself returning to this song less than the others:

AND YET: the DEMO for "Don't Be Careless Love" was a revelation! Easily the song that I prefer the most in demo form compared to its later shape.

It really is a shame that they didn't just release these demos "as is" back in 1988 when they would have made a much bigger splash:

This is pure irresponsible speculation on my part, but it always seemed to me like McCartney was the one who pulled back from this partnership; he seemed a little defensive about it sometimes in interviews.

"My Brave Face" was a pretty terrific Paul McCartney single:

Which is a shame, because a full-on McCartney & Costello album would've been a huge development in Costello's career, and might've boosted his fan base in a way that would've prevented a few later albums from struggling to find an audience.

The demo of "My Brave Face" is great:

"Playboy To A Man" was one of the more throwaway numbers they wrote, but I enjoy it:

The 1988 band version feels dated now; it feels like the kind of solo McCartney track I tend to skip:

Flashing forward slightly: I am of the minority opinion that the crazy way that Costello decided to sing "Playboy To A Man" on 1991's Mighty Like A Rose was EXACTLY what the song needed and that his production choices saved the song:

The first of the McCartney/MacManus songs to be released was a Paul track that Costello helped with the lyric a little, "Back On My Feet." It was a McCartney b-side, and a pretty splendid one. A good start!

The last of the McCartney/MacManus songs to be released (before the FITD box set) was "Shallow Grave" on 1996's All This Useless Beauty. (This was also the only one of their songs to be performed on record by The Attractions.)

The Paul & Elvis demo for "Shallow Grave" is a totally different mood than the Attractions version, much more relaxed:

The 15th McCartney/MacManus song is actually a demo they both forgot about until it was time to put together the box set, "I Don't Want To Confess":

EC & PM have done very little live performing together, which is unfortunate bc they sound so good singing live together.

Here they are playing The Beatles' "The One After 909":

And because this mid-90s performance was at a charity event attended by Prince Charles, McCartney cheekily suggested they perform their song, "Mistress And Maid."

Costello on working with McCartney:

Paul on working with Elvis:

Well, I am running wayyyy over with Day 15 and could easily just keep posting McCartney/Costello things, but it's long past time to wrap it up.

I'll conclude with EC's performance of "Penny Lane" at The White House (back when we had an actual president) honoring Sir Paul:

Costello's collaboration with McCartney is both a big deal that produced a couple of hit singles & a slightly well-kept secret, in the sense that I think that are still fans of both artists who would love those original demos who have yet to hear them, or even hear ABOUT them.

That Day (15) is DONE! 45 Days Of Elvis Costello will continue after I sleep & vote

A new interview w/Costello about his collaboration w/McCartney:
rockcellarmagazine.com/2018/08/09/elv…

A McCartney/MacManus playlist contain much of their work, though not all of it:
open.spotify.com/user/12854279/…

Oh, and just one more thing, from this week's headlines:

Day 16: Spike

Costello switches labels, moves to Warner Bros and makes a big-budget album without The Attractions (except drummer Pete Thomas on one track) and numerous guest stars!

T Bone Burnett is once again producing but this time it sounds nothing like King Of America...

Released Februay 6, 1989

After 2 LPs in 1986 and a b-sides compilation in 1987, Costello took his time making his next move. Feeling undervalued at Columbia Records, he made the switch to Warners worldwide, and took the opportunity to make a record that was large in scope.

EC (1989): "I always wanted ["...This Town..."] to be the opening track... It wasn't making a big-deal statement, but I do think the entrepreneur is the scourge of English and Irish and certainly Australian society."

EC (1989): "The song won't ring true in America, though, 'cause the battle there was lost a long time ago. It's almost become a virtue and you've got your entrepreneurs who are like, 'lovable eccentrics.' Like Donald Trump, or Cal Worthington."

Like Garry Trudeau, @ElvisCostello was among the first to depict @realDonaldTrump as a ridiculous & dangerous fraud, and took pleasure in dramatizing his humiliating public downfall (coming soon IRL any day now, one can hope...)

Costello appeared on the cover of SPY magazine as Beelzebub, holding a business card which displayed the actual phone number for The Trump Organization.

It does bring to mind a Costello lyric from a few years later: "It's a dangerous game/that Comedy plays/Sometimes it tells you the truth/sometimes it delays it."

The rare "sweetheart mix" is identical with the exception of multi-part harmonies singing the word "sweetheart" over the word "bastard."

Spike is another one of those Costello albums where the demos are like a stripped-down alt-version of the more ornately produced LP, which in this instance was a globe-trotting affair where different parts of a song might be recorded at different times in different countries.

Spike is a particularly outward-looking album, it feels like a collection of short stories to me. It's also his most musically eclectic LP since Trust.

"Let Him Dangle" is a style of song he had previously avoided, a story song based on true events that makes a political point:

This is a performance from the BBC special "Everything You Wanted To Know About Spike" and if you think this 2nd clip is intense, wait until the next part...

Costello's level of commitment actually takes the song to a different level compared to the album version. The look in his eyes here is ferocious:

Elvis talking about "Let Him Dangle":

This is one of the songs on SPIKE where I don't really know what's going on, but I like it anyway.

This demo has a nice vibe but is missing something pretty big that the album version adds to it...

Allen Toussaint on piano! Plus The Dirty Dozen Brass Band!

Costello talks about the way a televised nature documentary inspired some of the imagery in "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror":

It should be noted that this was a big hit album with his biggest American hit single, "Veronica."

It's a peculiar album to be a commercial success, even more bc it was propelled mainly by a song about an older woman experiencing dementia:

This was a song Costello brought (in nearly finished form) to his first session with McCartney.

The video, directed by Evan English, uses the effect of EC sometimes singing over the prerecorded track:

"Veronica" was one of the first Costello songs I was aware of, I liked it when I saw the video on MTV.

Over time, the snare drum in the album version caught my attention and it became distractingly hard not to hear it.

I now prefer the solo demo version:

This was one of the first SNL episodes I stayed up to watch live, with host Mary Tyler Moore & musical guest Elvis Costello, his ban finally lifted after over a decade in exile:

I have no memory of the second song-- did I fall asleep before it happened? Maybe. Or maybe I just remember "Veronica" bc that was the song I already knew.

"God's Comic" is overtly Costello doing his version of a Randy Newman song.

Over the years it has occasionally expanded into a 10-minute long epic, complete with multiple comedic monologues & impressions of Elvis Presley singing songs by U2 & Blondie.

As produced on the record, I think this is excellent stuff-- the music is sly & funny, never pushing too hard, and Costello's multi-tracked "dead" vocals on the chorus are strange and perfect.

This is the kind of song that makes me think he could do ANY kind of song.

"Chewing Gum," a song I intially found too abrasive-- largely due to @marcribotmusic's guitar stylings, which I soon grew to appreciate/love-- now impresses the hell out of me as a song which efficiently spells out a sordid little scenario and then pays it off at the end

"Tramp The Dirt Down" is the record's most notorious track, as angry an anti-Thatcher song as anyone wrote in the 1980s, with a chorus that addresses MT directly (albeit in character) and looks forward to a day "when they finally put you in the ground."

Costello has spoken of the song being cathartic, getting the idea out of his head and into a song. It does seem as though it comes from the place in his head from which "I Want You" emerged, the place where intense, 6-minute long psychotic character pieces are born:

Costello seemed to deliberately design the song to go too far and then pull back to something sadder and more resigned in its final moments:

From 1991, an additional section of lyrics he performed in concert that speak to the specifics of post-Thatcher England (John Major described as "the glove puppet that they put in her place / the simpering chump with the whimpering face"):

And from 1985, an early draft of the song, Betrayal, recorded with The Attractions during the King Of America sessions. (The song has a long way to go here before it finds its shape.)

"Stalin Malone" is an instrumental beginning to Side 2-- this album makes excellent use of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band...

The out-of-print Rhino edition of Spike is filled with treasures & curiosities, and the "vocal" version of "Stalin Malone" falls squarely in the latter category-- interesting, but proof that his decision to scrap the recited lyrics in this instance was a wise one:

I think "Satellite" might be the lost classic on this record. For one thing, I don't quite understand why they didn't try this out as a follow-up single after the chart success of "Veronica." I feel like it would've had the best chance of any other songs on Spike...

It's also a song which anticipates a lot about the ways that technology, sexuality & loneliness are about to intersect in the following decades. This song feels way ahead of the curve for 1989...

It's also another of EC's pre-Painted From Memory attempts to write a Bacharach song; I wish he had convinced Burt to write an arrangement for it back when they were doing concerts together.

Also: love @ChrissieHynde's harmonies!

I think this song has some of Costello's best writing:

"She went back to a pitiful compromise/he'd go back to his family/But for the matter of a thousand miles/that separated them entirely."

Costello talks through the process of writing "Pads, Paws & Claws."

Part One: what he had before he met up with Paul McCartney

The creation of "Pads, Paws & Claws"

Part Two: what Paul McCartney added to the song

I know it's easy to nitpick the choice of singles, but could there have been a worse choice of follow-up to "Veronica"?

"Baby Plays Around" was written by Cait O'Riordan with some contributions by Elvis. It is a nice song & works well on the album, but as a single? Talk about a loss of momentum! (I can't imagine this was a WB pick, so this seems like possible self-sabotage.)

"Miss Macbeth" features Pete Thomas on drums, along with about a dozen other non-Attractions musicians.

The credits on the sleeve include this note: "In Absentia: Bruce & Steve"

EC: "When I made up my mind to do Spike the way I did, I said to them, "Listen, fellas, there's four or maybe five songs on the record that we could approach, sometimes in collaboration with other musicians, sometimes just the four of us." And Steve didn't want to do it."

The Spike demos on the out-of-print Rhino edition are all so great, it's fascinating to hear him approach these songs solo compared to the big budget all-star album versions.

"Miss Macbeth":

"Coal-Train Robberies" is the songs on Spike I'd imagine would've been set aside for The Attractions.

On original release, it was designated as a CD/cassette-only track, left off the LP, (which instead ends with 2 slow/sad songs in-a-row.)

I don't know what Costello is screaming in the final moments of "Coal-Train Robberies" but I like the way he is screaming it:

Spike's last few songs include two that feel similar in vibe, although the style & the specifics are different; I always feel like he should have chosen one or the other, that including both sort of diminishes the effect of each of them.

"Any King's Shilling":

Of the two, I'd be more inclined to keep "Last Boat Leaving," which feels like more of a powerful note to end the album on.

The LP doesn't even have "Coal-Train Robberies" to break up these two songs, & it feels like Spike turns into a bleak concept album in its final moments...

Obviously, I have run wayyyy over for Day 16. Going to try to make up the time today and catch up.

"Put Your Big Toe In The Milk Of Human Kindness" (demo, written for an unnamed Disney film; REJECTED):

Spike feels like one of the major milestones in Costello's career. It's not a Top 5 EC album for me, but there are days when it is Top 10. It sometimes gets written about as if it is an overproduced mess, but I disagree with that.

"Coal-Train Robberies" (demo):

Costello returns to Late Night With David Letterman for one of his only appearances with a sit-down interview. In a few years, Dave will be at CBS & Costello will become something of a regular...

Costello segues from "Pads, Paws & Claws" into "Leave My Kitten Alone" and then segues over to the guest chairs by Dave's desk:

Costello is in good form in this interview. This is major progress compared to almost any earlier interviews in his career. He even gets a Donald Trump burn in there.

He continues to unpack "God's Comic", name-dropping Andrew Lloyd Webber & The Monkees. Then a commercial break! Then he starts analyzing the provocative Spike cover art and plugging his concert tour. They really gave him a lot of airtime for this...

I hope that @Letterman will book @ElvisCostello to be a guest on his @netflix show, with a guitar by the chair just in case he wants to play a song or two...

EC went into the studio w/Nick Lowe on bass & Pete Thomas on drums to record some fun covers to be released as b-sides, incl. the Goffin/King tune, "Point Of No Return."

A decade later, Costello would write a song w/@Carole_King which is finally coming out Oct 12th on LOOK NOW!

And this remarkable cover of "You're No Good" by Clint Ballard, Jr. which features Nick Lowe on bass, Pete Thomas on tom tom & drums plus EC on kalimba, electric guitar & drum machine ("on switch"):

Costello says he primarily associates this song with Liverpool's "mighty" Swinging Blue Jeans:

But I think Costello also surely knew of Linda Ronstadt's version, which was a #1 hit single in 1975.

(Costello had by this point publicly admitted that he had been "snotty," "ungracious," "punky and horrible" about Ronstadt when she covered his songs early in his career.)

OKAY. That is a wrap on Day 16 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello, half a day behind schedule!

SPIKE links...

Costello's 2001 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/6WCPlKBx…

Day 17: Kojak Variety

After the success of "Veronica," Warner Bros offered Costello a budget to record some material for b-sides. He realized that for the same amount of money it would take to hire a big studio in L.A., he could go to Barbados and record an entire album...

Released May 9, 1995 (recorded in 1990)

At this point, Costello was planning on making his next album with The Attractions, and was thinking of this album as a chance to make another record with some of the musicians he had been touring & recording with since 1986.

There was no timetable for the release of Kojak Variety.

It was mentioned in the Juliet Letters liner notes as an upcoming album of "favourite songs" and this 1994 Billboard article listed it in a sidebar about Costello's various unreleased recordings:

The album -- most of it, anyway -- leaked.

I bought this CD in 1994 in an Illinois record shop near Tinley Park, hours before attending my first Costello concert.

"Barbados Mega Mixes" had 13 of Kojak Variety's 15 tracks.

Costello had harsh words for the "gangsters & thieves" who had pirated his record. But there was nothing that would've stopped me from buying Barbados Mega Mixes that day. I had a solid year of listening to it before it came out legitimately, and I have no regrets!

Not that 4 "rights" undo a wrong, but I just now calculated that I have bought this album legitimately 4 times-- 1995 CD, 1995 cassette (for driving), 2004 Rhino 2-disc reissue & 2014 vinyl LP.

Opening with a false start, Costello covers Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "Strange" an especially good showcase for @marcribotmusic's guitar playing:

Screamin' Jay Hawkins' original:

This is a pretty straightforward album-- he's not deconstructing or radically reinterpreting these songs. My own preference leans slightly more towards the "popular ballads" than his versions of the R&B songs, but his enthusiasm is infectious.

"Hidden Charms" by Willie Dixon:

"Hidden Charms" by Howlin' Wolf:

"Remove This Doubt" was the b-side of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On" (as in "but she keeps him hangin' o-o-on" from "Accidents Will Happen") and it was written by Holland/Dozier/Holland.

I love Costello's vocal group harmonies on this:

The Supremes' original:

Costello's cover of Dylan's "I Threw It All Away" is a perfect match.

(Costello will later open for Dylan in concert and then co-write approx. 20 songs with 1967 Bob without the use of a time machine. More on that in 24 days.)

And here's @bobdylan performing "I Threw It All Away" on The @JohnnyCash Show in 1969:

Costello really sinks his teeth into "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy" by Mose Allison:

Mose Allison's original:

In 2009, Costello sang a duet with Amy Allison on her LP, Sheffield Streets, with her father on piano, performing his song, "Monsters Of The Id":

OOPS! I skipped "Leave My Kitten Alone" but that's ok, because that song has already appeared at least 3 times in this thread already. Also, the timeline for Kojak Variety is always confusing.

Here are The Attractions promoting the album's release on TV, in 1995:

Little Willie John's version of "Leave My Kitten Alone":

And here it is performed by @thebeatles:

One of my favorite songs on Kojak Variety is @RandyNewman's "I've Been Wrong Before."

I wish there was a way to hear Randy Newman's demo of this song, which was originally recorded by...

...Dusty Springfield!

"Bama Lama Bama Loo" as performed on Late Show with David @Letterman in 1995 (with songwriter Little Richard standing just a few feet away, sitting in with @paulshaffer & the CBS orchestra.)

Fun facts: Costello blew out his voice singing this in front of Little Richard and then struggled through a worldwide satellite broadcast concert the following night.

Also, The Attractions were joined by @marcribotmusic & @jburtonmusic for some of these 1995 appearances:

Little Richard performing "Bama Lama Bama Loo" on American Bandstand:

"Must You Throw Dirt In My Face" is one of the few songs where Costello puts a new spin on the original, to great effect, I think:

The Louvin Brothers' version:

From 1994, Costello adds "Must You Throw Dirt In My Face" on at the end of a particularly energetic performance of "Alison" backed by The Attractions. The tension builds all the way through this until it finally explodes at the end:

Drew Baker & Danny McCormick's "Pouring Water On A Drowning Man."

This was the single, although I don't recall hearing it, even on my local Costello-friendly radio station at the time...

James Carr's version:

Ray Noble's "The Very Thought Of You" is the oldest song on Kojak Variety, and one of the best known:

The first recording of it, sung by Al Bowlly:

Costello performing this song with Chet Baker, Live At Ronny Scotts, in 1986:

"Payday" by Jesse Winchester, which includes a reference to one of 15-year old @PaulMcCartney's favorite people, Brigitte Bardot:

And the original by Jesse Winchester, who would years later be a guest on EC's tv series, Spectacle:

Costello tackles another Bacharach song, this time making it slower and sadder, in a good way.

"Please Stay":

And by The Drifters:

"Running Out Of Fools" was the one song on KV I didn't hear until the official release in '95. Covering a song made famous by Aretha Franklin must've been daunting, but EC wisely chose a song that is a good fit for him. The opening line would fit right in on This Year's Model:

Aretha Franklin's version:

And another:

And another, because WHY NOT?

"Days" was not on the bootleg I owned, but it was released on a movie soundtrack prior to Kojak's release. Believe it or not, I had never heard The Kinks' original before; I heard this one first:

And this was one of the few tracks Costello really did a total rearrangement of; I was shocked when I heard how chipper the Kinks' version was:

The only "outtake" from the Kojak sessions was "Ship Of Fools," and it was never intended for KV, but for a Grateful Dead tribute album.

The Grateful Dead's original:

There was a limited edition of 200 CDs secretly distributed among the reular copies of Kojak Variety that included 2 bonus tracks from an Attractions session that happened years after KV was recorded...

"Step Inside Love" by Lennon/McCartney:

And McCartney singing it (unreleased until the Anthology series)

And the version Elvis would've been familiar with, by Cilla Black:

The 2nd KV secret bonus track is a Henry Glover/Titus Turner song called "Sticks & Stones":

The best known version of the song is by Ray Charles; the lyrical content of the song makes it hard to imagine that Costello wasn't nodding back to the events of 1979...

The out-of-print Rhino edition contains both those tracks plus many other treasures, a big chunk of which I will save for a few days from now. The bonus disc gives the album a serious run for its money...

"You've Got To Hide Your Love Away":

And by The Beatles:

"Sally Sue Brown" by Arthur Alexander

And the original:

Here's a fun moment from TV 1995:

It is funny that Kojak Variety was made bc EC thought he was about to reunite with The Attractions, then he didn't, and by the time it was released they were his band again, and then the year after that they broke up again. "I've Been Wrong Before," indeed...

That's a wrap for Day 17 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Kojack Variety links...

Costello's 2004 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The complete LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/2ThJPrLw…

I don't know if they ever actually made promotional lollipops to promote Kojak Variety, of if they just made this image for advertisements...

It was, of course, EC referencing the TV series Kojak, where Telly Savalas had his trademark lollipops (a substitute for cigarettes)...

I don't know if this is real or not, but I found this image of a promotional lollipop wrapper but it was linked to an auction that had ended. Why do I want this so badly?

Day 18: Mighty Like A Rose

This is a Top 2 Costello album for me, and on many days it is my absolute #1 favorite.

I'm not just being contrarian: I really do feel like this record shows off everything I like about EC, and in addition to that, it is a perfectly sequenced LP.

Released May 13, 1991

Here's the thing with this album: I think it's a masterpiece.

I also think that Mighty Like A Rose was received as the work of a madman because Costello grew a big crazy beard and completely exploded his image.

I feel strongly that if he had released Mighty Like A Rose while maintaining his Buddy Holly look, people would've reacted as if it was a classic return to form, or like it was IbMePdErRoIoAmL meets This Year's Model-- a sophisticated LP that still has a lot of raw, rough edges

Likewise, if he had released Spike looking like this, I think people would have said that it was a truly insane record, and its more bizarre turns would have felt more pronounced.

The album opens with a Beach Boy song dipped in acid, "The Other Side Of Summer."

I remember seeing this on MTV when I only knew him as the guy who did "Veronica" and thinking he had lost his mind. Was this a parody? Why was he now totally unrecognizable?

Of course, in time I would realize that "The Other Side Of Summer" is one of Costello's best songs, an anti-summer pop anthem that takes no prisoners, even famously going after his idol, John Lennon, with the line "was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine no possessions'?"

Here is is on SNL, performing it with G.E. Smith @gesmithmusic & The Saturday Night Live Band:

This record got a decent promotional push, I think. And it might seem stupid, but I remember being confused by how he had totally transformed himself. I was just a dumb teenager, but it was enough to distract me from the music, at the time.

The early buzz on this record- Q magazine suggesting it might be his best yet- seemed to curdle very quickly, & pretty soon this entire late 80s/early 90s era would be referred to as "The Beard Years" even though this was the only LP that came out while he was sporting a beard

In part that is because, while "The Other Side Of Summer" is a fun-sounding pop confection to open the record, there is more anger & bile in the early going of this album than there was on This Year's Model, only now it was perceived as grumpy & sour.

The 2nd track, "Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)" is a literally apocalyptic song that is actually pretty funny lyrically but is sonically kind of an clattering assault on the senses, the kind of thing that one could imagine easily turning away the casual listener.

I remember EC saying that this album had developed a reputation for featuring a lot of production trickery when much of it was actually achieved w/more "live in the studio" recording, citing that @jburtonmusic's "backwards" guitar solo was just him playing, no added effects:

I, like many, originally assumed that the crazy backwards guitar solo was Marc Ribot, not James Burton. This was a contrary album, designed to confound expectations.

The 3rd song on the album is perhaps the angriest "fuck you" song Costello has ever written or recorded: "How To Be Dumb"

It is a song basically directed straight at Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas:

This was supposed to be an Attractions album, remember?

Then those discussions fell apart.

THEN Attractions bass player Bruce Thomas wrote a novel, The Big Wheel, which was a Roman à clef about life on the road. Costello was referred to only as "The Singer."

Costello was furious, even though the novel didn't really say anything all that terrible about him; it was a betrayal.

Listening to this song knowing the full context makes it so much more brutal. He parodies BT's prose, and insults him over a dozen different ways throughout:

Costello singing "DUMB-DUMB-DUMB-DUMB-DUH-DUMB-DUMB" over the bassline and then screaming "BYE BYE!!" is hilarious, all by itself.

This is a scorched earth response to Bruce's book. He is SO mad.

Also hilarious: they would reunite to record Brutal Youth in, like, 3 years.

So far, the first three tracks of this album could easily be mistaken for the ravings of a lunatic, right? A Beach Boys parody, a post-apocalyptic rant which also has a Sting joke in it, and the angriest song of his career directed squarely at his former bass player & his novel?

If the album had continued in this vein, it would have quickly become too much ro bear. "All Grown Up," makes a sudden shift & suddenly this LP has segued from bile to empathy in one move. Almost 10yrs since IbMePdErRoIoAmL, his songwriting skills have only grown stronger:

The sequencing of this record is brilliant. The pause afforded by "All Grown Up" separates "Invasion Hit Parade" from the opening three tracks in a way that allows it to be perceived as a more reasonable commentary on a world gone mad:

"Invasion Hit Parade" was written prior to Gulf War I, recorded during the buildup of troops, & released in its immediate aftermath. Before I realized what the timeline was, I assumed the song was explicitly written about it. It has remained sadly relevant ever since.

Also, Ross McManus, Elvis' dad, plays trumpet on this track!

"Harpies Bizarre" is another slam-dunk piece of smart, sophisticated songwriting; a gorgeous melody and every line is a keeper:

Part of what I love so much about this album is the way it makes use of everything he has learned between 1977 & 1990; it is a kind of summing up, a record he couldn't have made in the late 70s or early 80s, while still holding on to what was great about his work in those years

Costello has said that "After The Fall" was "intended to be a comic song" and on more than one occasion I have seen people refer to it as his take on early Leonard Cohen:

"Georgie And Her Rival" opens Side 2; while the 1st half of the LP is dominated by a relentlessly bleak view of the world, things start to lighten in the 2nd half

It's not that everything is suddenly rainbows & puppy dogs-- there are still lies & heartbreak, but also hope

Costello has expressed regrets about the pop arrangement of this song, saying it should have been slower & more tragic; I think it is a perfect Elvis Costello pop song and wouldn't change a thing about it:

"So Like Candy" is I think my favorite of all the McCartney/MacManus songs, and I think Paul should've scooped it up for himself. It is a song that feels equal parts Paul & Elvis, in the best possible way:

This song also anchors the second half squarely in the personal realm, whereas even the most intimate songs on Side One feel like they are outward-looking, taking in the world at large. Mighty Like A Rose isn't a concept album but its song sequence has an unmistakable ARC.

An intro ("Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 2") played by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band leads into the 2nd McCartney/MacManus track on the record, "Playboy To A Man."

Some people hate this track & the weird way he sings it (sometimes, apparently, through a long, rusty metal pipe):

I think this is overtly a Comedy Song, and I think it's fucking funny. (That kind of thing is obvsly highly subjective, tho I do have some minor credentials in this area.)

"Sweet Pear" is a love song drenched in self-loathing unlike any of the many sad love songs Costello has written before or since, featuring another appearance by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band:

"Broken," a song by Costello's then-wife, Cait O'Riordan, is often singled out as somehow ruining the album, which is bonkers.

While I'd certainly be surprised if it was anyone's favorite track, I think it serves an important purpose, mood-wise, in the flow of the LP

I think "Broken" is a despairing gasp, a hold-your-breath moment that makes the final song, "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4," even more magnificent as an album closer.

Going from "Sweet Pear" straight into this would not create the same effect:

Even people who hate the album overall tend to concede that this final song is great.

One thing about how perfect I think Mighty Like A Rose is: there is an outtake, "Just Another Mystery" that I think is truly amazing, even better than several tracks on the album, and yet I cannot imagine swapping out any of the songs to make room for it:

Here's the deluxe CD packaging from 1991. It contained no extra musical content, it just looked & felt fancy. I don't know why I like this packaging so much, I think I just felt like this album was so good that it deserved something a little better than a normal jewel case.

One thing I should be clear about: I love The Beard & the overall messing with his image that took place around this album. I think it was fun. But I also think it led to a lot of lazy dismissals of an ambitious album as somehow overcooked or self-indulgent, bc he looked crazy

And the album wasn't a flop, it did alright! But the conventional wisdom in the 90s was that this was somehow a lesser period for him, which I think couldn't be further from the truth

His MTV Unplugged appearance is interesting-- some excellent performances, including the "Rolling Thunder" arrangement of "The Other Side Of Summer":

Costello was certainly capable of doing a knockout set of acoustic re-arrangements of the classics from his back catalog; instead, he mostly played songs from MLAR, along with covers from his then-unreleased Kojak Variety...

MTV didn't air this part, where Costello introduced Mose Allison's "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy" with a remark about MTV running "adverts for the army."

(I assume that MTV execs would've preferred he play a different "Alison.")

I tried uploading this full unaired MTV Unplugged a few years back, but the YouTube robots flagged & blocked it. I wish there was an easy way for people to see this widely bootlegged performance online, it's a great snapshot of Elvis with The Rude 5, his 1991 touring band...

At this point, Kojak Variety was newly recorded (relatively) but wouldn't hit record shops for another 4 years...

It's hard to tell if Costello is playing so much Kojak Variety material bc he is excited to perform it, or if he is defying the powers that be at MTV by deliberately avoiding the songs they surely must've wanted him to play...

A few years later, Costello would seemingly be much more agreeable about performing the kind of thing MTV might've been hoping for at the time:

Not sure whether MTV would've been flattered or insulted that he went out of his way to add their name to the list of big things that are about to be wiped out in the coming apocalypse:

"Bama Lama Bama Loo," unlike the other Kojak material he played that day, actually made it into the broadcast:

Costello would use the melody from "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" in the BAFTA-winning musical score he did with Richard Harvey for Alan Bleasdale's tv drama, G.B.H., starring Michael Palin.

EC had not yet learned musical notation, but that was about to change...

And it looks like that's a wrap for Day 18 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Mighty Like A Rose links...

Costello's 2002 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The full LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/3vmHAjGp…

Day 19: The Gwendolyn Letters (aka The Wendy James Demos)

We have now reached the 3RD "lost album" in the @ElvisCostello timeline (after McCartney/McManus, released 2017 & Kojak Variety, rel. 1995) & this is the one which may not ever see the light of day as an official release!

Released May 11, 1993: "Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears"

Singer/Songwriter @THEWENDYJAMES had split from Transvision Vamp & asked Pete Thomas if Costello would consider writing a song for her. She wrote EC a letter & he sent her 10 songs, w/instructions to record all or none.

EC: "Well, it was just a challenge... I didn't want to give her one song to put amongst all this cartoon punk. I was up for writing a whole album of cartoon punk songs for her. In double-quick time... It was a fun way of spending the weekend."

EC: "When I recorded the demos, I didn't make any attempt to sing them in a pristine way. I happened to have a cold, so I wasn't in any voice to sing them. I tended to double-track the vocals, so it took away the personality of the voice..."

"London's Brilliant" (b-side, 1994):

(By the way, that b-side was vinyl & cassette-only. It was never put out on CD.)

Before I go deeper into this "lost album" I should give a little context:

Wendy James recorded all 10 songs for her album

@ElvisCostello released 5 of his 10 demos as b-sides

4 of the remaining demos leaked

1 of the 10 demos remains unheard

None of the demos were included as bonus tracks for the deluxe Rhino reissue series. There was some speculation at the time that they were being saved, perhaps for a limited edition Rhino Handmade release. It never happened.

The never-leaked demo is for opening track "This Is A Test" and it sounds so much like a Costello song that you can almost hear his voice.

(ALSO: Pete Thomas played drums on WJ's album.)

EC: "It was a weekend's work on my part-- well, two days to write the songs, two to record the demos. I had a lot of fun doing it."

"Basement Kiss" (b-side, 1994):

Costello obviously has some slight affection for these songs, as a few have turned up in concert over the years.

"Basement Kiss" (live with The Attractions, 1994; released as a b-side in 1996):

"Puppet Girl" was released as a b-side and was regularly featured in the set list during his 1994 tour with the reunited Attractions:

The demo for "Earthbound" was never released as a b-side, but has floated around on bootleg CDs, mp3s & has lived on YouTube for years...

But in 2011, despite never having released a version of it himself, EC gave "Earthbound" one of the spots on his giant spinning songbook!

(I wonder how many EC diehards in the audience knew what a rare song they were hearing, the few times the wheel stopped there in concert)

"Do You Know What I'm Saying?" was released as a b-side on a promo-only CD that I think I paid what felt like A LOT of money to acquire in 1994 & it was WORTH it to have this excellent song that would never become available on a reissue.

(Also a b-side on CD & cassette single)

Costello played a fragment of this song in concert, on two occasions-- in 2012!!

I can't really think of an EC song that is similar to this one. It's a shame that it's one of his most obscure ones, barely given a release at all...

It's worth noting that 5 of the songs were co-written with @rockyoriordan, including the earworm, "We Despise You."

I feel like if these demos were issued as a 10" limited edition for #RecordStoreDay, it would be one of the most sought-after items and would sell out immediately:

"Fill In The Blanks" is another demo which leaked, but was never released as a b-side. These demos all feature Pete Thomas on drums, and Costello playing everything else, and they were recorded at Pathway Studios, where he recorded My Aim Is True.

"The Nameless One" is stream-of-consciousness Costello in Blood & Chocolate mode, written on demand at a moment's notice and never released as a b-side. Contains one of my favorite "Costello shouting" moments ever:

Actually, there are a few really fun shouted moments in this demo...

I feel confident in asserting that this is the only song to name-check both Hogan's Heroes AND Logan's Run, not to mention two famous Huckleberrys (Hound & Finn.)

@THEWENDYJAMES' version of "The Nameless One":

Costello's voice is absolutely, painfully SHOT by the time he recorded this closing ballad, and yet to me it sounds perfect. The way he audibly struggles to sing that opening line is a moment that is so fragile, it's a wonder it was caught on tape.

"I Want To Stand Forever":

These demos are more than just a footnote in Costello's career & I hope someday someone convinces him to rescue them from the purgatory of YouTube & release them all properly.

It's a short album, dashed off in a weekend, but it is kind of his "Basement Tapes" at this point...

Honestly, a 10" vinyl edition of The Gwendolyn Letters, with sleeve art by Eamonn Singer (aka @ElvisCostello) would be a perfect #RecordStoreDay2019 release (hot on the heels of the smash hit record #LookNow, in all good record shops October 12th!)

Okay, that's a wrap on Day 19 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Gwendolyn Letters links....

Album info from the Costello wiki:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

9 of the 10 original demos by EC:

The Wendy James LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/0BCKNUtr…

Day 20: The Juliet Letters

This was my first Costello album.

My friend @JeffFalzone loaned it to me the day it came out. He thought I might like it, mostly bc I liked Sondheim.

(Most of my CD collection was Sondheim & movie scores at that point.)

I listened it and went immediately over to Jeff's house to borrow his entire Costello collection on CD

I copied them all onto blank tapes, no idea what order they went in

(The 2nd EC album I listened to was Punch The Clock, which I *thought* was his debut album for some reason)

Released January 19, 1993

The Beard was gone but some undoubtedly viewed this as a crazy/pretentious next step, a "song sequence" for voice & string quartet

And it's a "concept album"! Each song is a different kind of letter!

This is the LP that got me hooked on @ElvisCostello

Rankings are tricky things, but on most days The Juliet Letters is a Top 5 Costello album for me. (Always within my Top 10.)

At first glance, an oddball album but also an album where the songwriting is less coded & more approachable than on many previous Costello albums.

"For Other Eyes" is a song that is exploring the same terrain as some of the songs on This Year's Model-- jealousy & betrayal (there's even a telephone in play a la "No Action")-- just using a different sound & style.

This is such a deeply somber starting point, but I remember listening to this song for the first time and THIS was the part where I could feel something change in me.

THIS was the moment when I became an @ElvisCostello fan:

The 2nd song in, "Swine," is already twisting the "letters" conceit in fun ways; this song is a bit of scrawled graffiti

It is also the @ElvisCostello song that in 2018 makes me think of @realDonaldTrump

Perhaps it should be played at his sentencing, w/apologies to actual pigs:

The album was sparked by an article about a professor in Verona who was answering real letters written to "Juliet Capulet" the way children write to Santa Claus.

"Expert Rites" is a song from the POV of that professor:

Paul Cassidy's instrumental coda to "Expert Rites," "Dead Letter."

This album was a true songwriting collaboration between Costello & The Brodskies, they wrote these songs together, music & lyrics being contributed by all.

The first broadly comic song on the LP, "I Almost Had A Weakness" is "an eccentric aunt's curt reply to a begging letter."

EC's defensive quote when promoting the album: "This is no more my stab at "classical music" than it is the Brodsky Quartet's first rock and roll album."

People often think this is an odd point-of-entry for EC, but I think that assumes that This Year's Model is the center of his oeuvre & everything is judged in relation to that

In 2018, TJL is no longer an outlier in Costello's body of work; it is a good example of what he does

Can you hear the Merrie Melodies reference hiding in plain sight in this song? (I didn't catch it for years, until it was pointed out to me.)

"Why?" is a song sung from a child's POV.

Costello's singing voice changed on this record, and I'm not sure why, but it would never be the same after this. (Part of it might be confidence, but it sounds like some kind of actual, measurable change occurred.)

When she began performing with The Brodsky Quartet, @bjork sang a couple of Juliet Letters songs in concert.

"Why?" is an almost comically perfect match of singer & song, I can't think of another person who would be a better fit. It almost feels like he wrote it w/her in mind.

I'm kind of surprised that more of these songs haven't found their way into Costello's setlists for shows he has performed solo or with The Imposters or Steve Nieve. He has tended to only perform most of these when appearing live with the quartet.

"Who Do You Think You Are?":

The album is highly theatrical in parts but that's a feature, not a bug. And its strangest tangents all strengthen he piece as a whole, which is rooted in a bunch of really well-written, emotionally charged songs.

Bjork & The Brodskys performing "Who Do You Think You Are?" in concert:

By the way, if you have never heard Bjork's version of "Hyperballad" with The Brodsky Quartet, it is breathtaking:

...the end of this version gives me goosebumps:

"Taking My Life In Your Hands" might be my favorite track on the album, as well as perhaps the best example of Costello's new 1993 pipes:

...and the song has a twist ending!

Costello & The Brodsky Quartet on The Tonight Show with @jayleno back in 1993 with musical cameo appearance by Denzel:

Strange that this wasn't a @Letterman appearance, but his long run of Late Show appearances begins one year after this, and after that he would only visit The Tonight Show on a couple of notable occasions...

Another broadly comedic/theatrical song, "This Offer Is Unrepeatable" is a piece of junk mail, barked and bellowed:

Costello pushing his vocal "sneer" to its absolute limit on the final word of this song:

"Dear Sweet Filthy World" is a suicide note, one of several devastatingly sad songs on this record. I'm not even sure this is the bleakest of them! The comical songs do a lot of heavy lifting in keeping this LP from becoming a drag.

Costello's range both technically as a vocalist and as an actor-through-song has grown tremendously by this point. I'm not certain that he was capable of this even a few years prior:

Starting a song out by literally singing an address might seem like it would be a joke, but this song is quietly powerful, the way it bobs & weaves as its author avoids getting to its main point (arriving at it just after this clip)...

The sting at the end of this is a gut punch.

I think I can detect an echo of one of Costello's favorite songs, David Ackles' "Down River."

Ackles' song isn't in the form of a letter, it's one side of a telephone conversation, but the effect is similar.

Here's Costello performing it with Elton John on EC's TV show, Spectacle, in 2008:

Pt 2 of that clip:

And David Ackles' original:

David Ackles' original, pt 2:

"Jacksons, Monk And Rowe" is a catchy pop single about D-I-V-O-R-C-E, specifically a person sending their signed papers to the titular law firm:

This is one of the cheeriest numbers on the record, in the tradition of recent singles "Veronica" & "The Other Side Of Summer" which contrasted darker subject matter with sunny music:

Costello & The Broskys playing the single as the 2nd song on The Tonight Show:

I really thought that this would be the first of many albums by Costello & The Brodsky Quartet. They sounds so great here. They have continued to work together, but I keep thinking a 2nd joint album will emerge someday, fingers crossed...

Elvis & Denzel & @paulapoundstone & @jayleno & The Brodsky Quartet-- For One Night Only!

(Btw, "Jacksons, Monk And Rowe" really was the single!)

B-side & album track, "This Sad Burlesque" goes from pre-election hopes to post-election blues in a way that I related to going as far back as Reagan/Mondale.

It was inspired by UK elections in 1992 & feels almost quaint now in the reality show mafia nightmare of Trump's America

But just LISTEN to the way Costello's voice quivers on "Laughter cannot dignify."

Just magical.

Another fun, lush pop number, "Romeo's Seance"!

EC (from his TJL liner notes): "In "I Thought I'd Write To Juliet" a cynical writer quotes the contents of a letter that he has received. This "soldier's letter" is closely related to one sent to me during the build-up to the Gulf War tragedy..."

EC: "I would not like to comment further, except to say that it is not included as a simplistic political gesture, either "for" or "against" anything, but rather to illustrate the predicament of the two characters in being forced to reconsider their assumed positions."

EC: "From the concluding mayhem a single note emerges leading into Michael Thomas' "Last Post." Despite its title this piece does not have any military significance. It seems to me to have a clear sense of peace, though not without strong feeling."

"Damnation's Cellar" is another 'light' number nestled in amongst some pretty emotional songs near the end. This record is very carefully put together to make sure things don't get too bleak...

This whole album hit me like a ton of bricks when I first heard it.

One of the more crowd-pleasing encores in EC & The Brodskys' live repertoire, "an old California folk song":

There was a live promo EP of them performing this at New York's Town Hall and I still remember the day I got my hands on a copy, hearing this arrangement...

Did Costello take voice lessons in the early 90s, in addition to learning musical notation??

I've never had the chance to see a concert with Elvis & The Brodskys, I hope they do another tour at some point...

A few more things before I conclude Day 20...

A haunting cover of the traditional ballad, "She Moved Through The Fair":

"She Moved Through The Fair" (pt 2):

Randy Newman's "Real Emotional Girl":

"Real Emotional Girl" (pt. 2):

Kurt Weill's "Lost In The Stars":

"Lost In The Stars" (pt 2):

Okay, that's Day 20 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

Juliet Letters links...

Costello's 2006 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/5W4cYyKU…

Day 21: The George Jones Demos

Another "lost album," this one produced by Costello as a demonstration album, on spec, for George Jones!

EC had an idea that GJ should record some non-country songs in his own style & ended up making a whole album as proof-of-concept:

Released August 3, 2004

A few of these demos trickled out as b-sides in the 90s, but all 10 tracks were officially released on the jam-packed bonus disc for the (now out-of-print) Rhino reissue of Kojak Variety

As much as I enjoy KV, I like Costello's GJ demo album even better!

EC proposed the idea to GJ directly in Interview magazine: "Have you ever considered doing an album where all of the songwriting came from outside the country area, even though you might do typical George Jones interpretations?"

EC: "There are a lot of songwriters whose work you've never touched, like Hoagy Carmichael, or someone more up-to-date, like Tom Waits."

GJ: "Hey, I've never thought of that, but that's a good idea."

GJ: "However, it would have to be the kind of material that I could transform my way, to the country style."

EC:

GJ: "Thank you. For this kind of record, I would have to have help from someone familiar about this situation, as you are, that could pick out certain types of songs."

EC:

GJ: "Great. I'll tell you what. Let's get a few songs together and see what we can do with them. I would love for you to send me a tape of some of the things you might like to see on an album like this."

EC:

If I were to rank Costello's 3 covers albums, The George Jones Demos would best both Kojak Variety & Almost Blue.

It really is Elvis Costello Sings Songs In The Style Of George Jones; that sounds like a novelty record but it is GREAT.

"My Resistance Is Low" by Hoagy Carmichael:

Jane Russell with Hoagy Carmichael in the 1952 feature film The Las Vegas Story (with Victor Mature):

Costello went into the studio and cut all 10 of these tracks in a single day, with Pete Thomas & Paul "Bassman" Riley.

It makes me wonder how many volumes of Kojak Variety Costello could record if given a month of studio time.

Tom Waits' "Innocent When You Dream":

Tom Waits' original:

On one level, it's a parlor trick, but Costello does it in a way that is so thoughtful that it transcends any sense of gimmickry. (And these were never really intended for anyone's ears but Jones.')

T Bone Burnett's "I'm Coming Home":

T Bone Burnett's original:

One of Costello's favorite songs by one of his favorite songwriters. I feel like he plays this every chance he gets.

Dan Penn's "The Dark End Of The Street":

And as performed by James Carr:

One of the few tracks to be released as a b-side in the 90s, Paul Simon's "Congratulations." This is a really outstanding arrangement for Jones.

(Costello has covered Simon several times -- has @PaulSimonMusic ever made any public comment about Elvis?)

Paul Simon's original:

One of my favorite Costello recordings, his cover of Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

EC enthused that no one but Dylan could write a lyric as good as
"Situations have ended sad/Relationships have all been bad/Mine have been like the lanes & rambles"

Of course, Dylan's actual lyric (he would realize after making the demo) is "Mine've been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud."

I love that Costello's misheard lyric is also a great line...

Costello revisits "Pouring Water On A Drowning Man" and I think I prefer this to the version he released on Kojak Variety!

I already posted James Carr's version earlier in this thread, so here's Percy Sledge's:

Gram Parsons & George Jones were the two songwriters who loomed largest over 1981's Almost Blue, so it makes perfect sense that Costello would pitch Jones on doing a Parsons song.

EC's multi-tracked vocal harmonies make this a highlight among the demos.

"Still Feeling Blue":

Gram Parsons' original:

Elvis Costello covering Bruce @Springsteen in the style of George Jones, and it's a knockout.

This was a b-side in 1996 & I nearly burned a hole in my cd-single by playing it so often.

"Brilliant Disguise":

Bruce's original:

And Springsteen's MTV version, (borrowing Elvis' trick of singing a new vocal over the backing track for the video):

Costello closes his album with George & Ira Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On?"

Peggy Lee & Benny Goodwin's version:

Costello sent his demo album to George Jones, but never heard back about it, or knew for certain if he'd received it.

A few years later, when Jones & Costello were guests on a Ricky Skaggs TV show, Jones (in Costello's words) "diplomatically failed to mention these recordings."

Not long after Costello made his pitch to Jones, @RickRubin basically did a similar thing for Johnny Cash, who had a spectacular run of final albums with the American Recordings series, often covering unexpected non-country songs in his distinctive style.

Although the Kojak Variety bonus disc is out-of-print, at least these recordings *did* get a proper official release, albeit an unusual one, nestled in amongst other bonus material.

I will never fully give up hope that @ElvisCostello's George Jones demos album will be released on vinyl, to be regarded as its own very special record.

(In an ideal world, with new sleeve art by @tonymillionaire)

cc: @warnermusic @MusicOnVinyl

I think one of the things that really makes this one of my favorite things that Costello has ever done is that he primarily did it for FUN, and because he just really wanted to hear George Jones make that record.

In a career largely defined now by his contagious musical enthusiasm, things like this and the Wendy James demos are him going the extra mile to make fun things happen.

One final semi-related item: in the late 90s, Costello often performed a bit during "God's Comic" where he would speculate about the songs Elvis Presley would've performed if he had lived, including songs by Duran Duran, Blondie & U2.

He has a knack for this kind of thing:

This tweet won't age well but here are 3 copies of Kojak Variety w/the bonus disc that has The George Jones Demos on it. (I would snap up that $25 one)

$25 (free shipping):
rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mp…

$45 (+shipping)
rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mp…

$45 (+shipping)
rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mp…

And that looks like it's a wrap on Day 21 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

No useful links today!

Nothing on Spotify. A few tracks can be found on YouTube, but you may have to really dig around to find them

Here is what Costello wrote about TGJD in his Kojak Variety liner notes:

Day 22: Brutal Youth

This was the first Costello album to be released AFTER I became a fan, the first one I got to anticipate.

I had spent he previous year immersing myself in EC's 1977-1993 discography. It was a lot. And the announcement of the new record was a big deal.

Released March 8, 1994

I had barely had time to lament the 1987 break-up of The Attractions before I was presented with a full-on reunion LP. Better yet, there wasn't a whiff of nostalgia to it; this wasn't an album of them trying to recapture the old times. It sounded fresh.

I was a freshman in college at Mizzou (mentioned a lot in Season 2 of Ozark on Netflix) and local radio station @1023BXR started playing tracks from Brutal Youth over a month early.

I managed to catch more than half of the album on cassette tape before it was released.

"Idiophone" was the original working title-- it means "an instrument the whole of which vibrates to produce a sound when struck, shaken, or scraped, such as a bell, gong, or rattle"-- and it is also the name of this instrumental b-side, with EC playing all instruments:

Another all-EC track from one of the earliest sessions is this Yeats poem set to music by EC, "A Drunken Man's Praise Of Sobriety."

This was my first Costello b-side, or the first time I bought a CD just to get the b-side. It's barely over a minute & I was not disappointed:

Though this is generally thought of as an Attractions reunion album, the full band only plays on 5 tracks, less than half of the album. They came together gradually, over the course of the sessions.

Track 2, "Kinder Murder" features just Elvis with Pete on drums:

"20% Amnesia" is almost an Attractions track, but not quite. It's Elvis & Pete & Steve Nieve, with Elvis on bass.

Featuring the great line:
"It's a dangerous game that Comedy plays/Sometimes it tells you the truth/Sometimes it delays it"

Nick Lowe then joined EC & Pete & Steve, playing bass on 7 of the album's 15 tracks

This line-up was dubbed "The Distractions" and they opened the album with "Pony St." (a song with EC overtly playing characters, much as he had on The Juliet Letters):

Before I get to the full Attractions reunion, I'm gonna take a brief tangent & go back a few years, to the 1st records I actually heard Bruce & Pete Thomas on, bc I was a John Wesley Harding/@WesleyStace fan before I ever listened to a Costello album.

"Here Comes The Groom":

Pete & Bruce played on Harding's excellent 1st 2 studio albums in 1990/91, around the same time that EC tried & failed to get the band back together for Mighty Like A Rose. Costello was, at the time, incredibly unkind in interviews when talking about Harding

"Cathy's New Clown":

The Good Liars was the name of Harding's backing band & its rhythm section was the same as The Attractions. Some would comment on a vocal similarity btwn Harding & Costello but I never heard much similarity in their songwriting styles, beyond both being clever

"Spaced Cowgirl":

I suppose another superficial similarity is that John Wesley Harding was/is a stage name, and he would eventually revert to his real name, @WesleyStace, when he began writing highly acclaimed novels (soon also using that name as a recording artist...)

Unless my eyes deceive me, that's Pete & Bruce off towards the back corner in this music video for "The Devil In Me."

Both these albums are packed with songs I really love, but of the two I think I probably prefer 1991's The Name Above The Title.

"The Person You Are":

I realize this is a sizable detour I'm taking in the middle of a packed day during a 45-day twitter thread but I thought it was worth mentioning bc there is a connection to Costello but especially bc Harding/Stace has his own distinct oeuvre that is worth exploring...

Harding/Stace only worked w/Bruce & Pete on those 2 albums but since then has made many, many fine records & excellent books & if you can ever catch his Cabinet Of Wonders shows, they are excellent. Go to wesleystace.com for more!

Here is one of my favorite songs of his:

OK, back to "Brutal Youth."

This is Elvis & The Attractions, reunited. They sound great. When I first taped this song off the radio in February 1994, I listened to it over & over again:

I could be wrong about this, but I *think* this outtake is the Attractions' very 1st attempt at a new song during the Brutal Youth sessions. Bill Flanagan wrote an account of this session & how they were struggling to get "Distorted Angel" right...

...only to NAIL the tricky "You Tripped At Every Step" on the first take!

Here is a detailed account of that session from Bill Flanagan's 1994 Musician article...

(Full article: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…)

Pete Thomas credits producer Mitchell Froom with helping make the Attractions reunion happen.

I can't believe I haven't mentioned Froom yet! He produced Mighty Like A Rose & Brutal Youth, my two favorite Costello albums.

His name as producer is enough to get me to buy a record.

Want to feel old? Elvis Costello was 39 when he made Brutal Youth.

"This Is Hell," another of the 5 Attractions tracks, is a good counter to any claim that this is purely a "back-to-basics" LP.

As a song, it would fit in better on Spike than any A's album; it doesn't sound like anything they've done before + EC's voice is different/stronger now

One of the things I love about BY is that his voice is stronger than ever, but he is still creatively using multi-tracked vocals/background harmonies all over. Early on, I feel like these were sometimes used to compensate for limitations, now they are boosting his strengths...

Costello (in 1994) talking about "Clown Strike":

"Still Too Soon To Know" (a Distractions track) was one of the few songs that was new to me on the day of release, since it was easily the least "radio-friendly" song on the album (& I therefore wasn't able to catch it on my advance cassette...)

Deborah Chessler's "It's Too Soon To Know," as first recorded by The Orioles:

I have one minor quibble with the vinyl edition of Brutal Youth -- it's a double LP but its midpoint is in a different place than on the 1994 cassette.

It really feels like there should be a break between S2S2K & "20% Amnesia."

Also, I don't know if this is a typo in the Brutal Youth vinyl gatefold cover, a bit of commentary by someone at @MusicOnVinyl or a joke inserted by Costello himself for the reissue:

If the first 9 tracks on Brutal Youth feel like a Trust/Spike-like assortment of varying styles of song, the back half of the album feels to me like an equally diverse array of deeply personal pop songs dealing w/memory, regret & clear-eyed self-reflection, both mock & serious:

Another Comedy song, "My Science Fiction Twin" takes the piss out of his own image by inventing a Costello doppelgänger who can do it all:

"His almost universal excellence is starting to disturb me/They asked how in the world he does all these things/and he answered 'Superbly.'"

Maybe my favorite track on the album, "Rocking Horse Road" features Costello imagining the domestic life he might have led if he hadn't left home to tour the world & become a rock star.

It's devastating.

Elvis & The Distractions are a severely underrated combo; their playing on "Rocking Horse Road" takes a simple song & makes it soar, somehow

My favorite 60 seconds on the album, as guitar & keyboard seem to become one sound while drums & bass skip along together, flawlessly:

Costello (in 1994) talking about "Rocking Horse Road" in great detail:

"Just About Glad" manages to find another shade of regret that is tonally 180° from "Rocking Horse Road":

Bill Flanagan, from his 1994 article about Costello: "He thinks pop fans with good ears will find it as funny as he does that the bass on the Faces-like 'Just About Glad" plays the melody line of the song, because that's what Ron Wood often does."

Flanagan, cont'd: "(He thinks it's a further hoot that the Faces always sang randy songs about getting laid and in his version the singer is relieved that he did not get laid.)"

Costello (in 1994) talking about "Just About Glad" and how it was actually Warner Bros who encouraged him to find a place for it on the album:

"All The Rage" is a "Fuck You" to all his critics, esp. those who wanted an LP like this. It feels like he is exacting revenge against anyone who wrote anything bad about the previous 3 albums: "Spare me the drone of your advice... I've heard it all before/you'll say it anyway."

And this is the ONLY even slightly negative thing I will say about Brutal Youth-- and I will almost immediately walk it back, bc this record is PERFECT & my opinion is wrong-- I kind of wish that "All The Rage" was the final song, bc this is such a perfect way to end the album:

"Favourite Hour" feels closer to The Juliet Letters than anything else on the album. And did I seriously just suggest cutting this track from the album, just so it could close with the perfect "All The Rage"? The guy who tweeted that doesn't know what he's talking about.

I do tend to think of "Favourite Hour" as a kind of postscript; EC all by himself, playing piano

I once heard him perform this in a context so weird I don't think I can do justice to the story via twitter. I have to tell it to you in person. Ask me about it if you ever meet me.

A song that didn't make it onto Brutal Youth, but is still fun to hear, "Abandon Words." Featuring the apparently unnamed line-up of Elvis, Pete & Elvis' eldest son, Matt MacManus, on bass:

"Poisoned Letter" is a fun rant that Costello stripped for parts to make two superior songs, "My Science Fiction Twin" & "All The Rage." A great example of Costello knowing that he hasn't quite gotten it right & figuring a better way...

Featuring Elvis, Pete & Nick Lowe:

EC & The Attractions reunite on Late Show With David @Letterman. I remember watching this live and then nearly wearing out the VHS tape I recorded it on:

At this point, I think I already had plans to drive 7 hours to Chicago to see them in concert. I watched this clip a lot before that, in anticipation:

Later in 1994, @Letterman did a week of shows in L.A. that coincided with EC & The Attractions west coast tour dates, so they were booked again.

I believe this must have sparked the idea that it would be cool for Dave to have Elvis on at every possible opportunity from now on...

Is "Dishonoured Jimmy" from "Kinder Murder" any relation to Jimmie from "Standing In The Rain" & "Under Lime"? Grandson of the cowboy singer?

Costello & The Attractions on Jools Holland, playing "Rocking Horse Road":

At this point, it felt like they were back together for good and nothing could possibly go wrong!

Costello plays the same song solo:

Pt 2:

From the same appearance, a sit-down guitar version of "Shipbuilding":

When Elvis Costello appeared on The Larry Sanders Show, this was my pop culture obsessions colliding in the best possible way. Larry wanting him to play "Pump It Up" was a perfect joke:

Each character's level of Costello fandom was precisely designated: Larry wants him to play "Pump It Up"; Phil brings in his copy of Trust to get signed; Beverly goes out to buy a copy of Spike; Hank has no idea who he is.
(cc: @JuddApatow)

I am giving Beverly the benefit of the doubt that she already owned Spike on vinyl or cassette:

Larry & Artie both asking the same tired question about "Alison" was the kind of joke that felt so specifically targeted to the fragment of the audience that would appreciate it, it almost felt like a private joke. "Is that about a specific person? Or a pet?"

Costello & The Attractions performing "13 Steps Lead Down" while The Larry Sanders Show falls to pieces around them:

Hank Kingsley thinking that "coconut" is funnier than "chicken" is way off:

"This reminds me of the time Angela Lansbury was on."

That's it for Day 22 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

(This one took almost 36 hours bc I recorded a 12 hour podcast in the middle. "Day 23" will begin shortly.)

Brutal Youth links...

EC's 2002 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/5BZDMsWJ…

Day 23: "Deep Dead Blue" (Live at Meltdown '95)

This was an EP that Costello put out of him & guitarist @BillFrisell performing a set of songs at London's South Bank for a music festival he curated in 1995.

Released August 14, 1995

This EP came out less than 2 months after it was recorded, as a limited edition EP. My hope at the time was that this was to be the first in a series of Meltdown 95 releases, or a prelude to a box set...

I remember reading detailed accounts of this 9-day music festival and driving myself crazy with jealousy that people got to attend all these shows. If I had an Elvis Costello time machine, it would be hard to choose between this and the 1986 tour.

Costello did shows on 5 of the 9 nights, with Steve Nieve, The Jazz Passengers, The Fairfield Four, The Brodsky Quartet, Fretwork, Marc Ribot, The Punishing Kiss Band & a last-minute line-up dubbed "The Irish All-Stars." His set with Frisell was the only one released.

It's a very low-key performance, one I honestly tend to revisit primarily for this performance of "Poor Napoleon":

Also, this very fine performance of "Love Field":

I spent the mid-90s imagining there would soon be some kind of deluxe Meltdown box set containing EC's performances, all of which I believe were professionally recorded. But I tended not to revisit Deep Dead Blue unless I was in a VERY specific mood.

"Weird Nightmare":

A few more tracks trickled out from Meltdown years later on the bonus disc for the (now out-of-print, of course) Rhino reissue of The Juliet Letters.

"Pills & Soap" with The Brodsky Quartet:

Many of the songs that Costello performed that week are songs that he has never released studio recordings of, and I assume there are some he has never even attempted or considered for a record.

"King Of The Unknown Sea" with The Brodsky Quartet

Surely of all the songs Costello performed that week, Lerner & Loewe's "Gigi" was perhaps the most unexpected:

Another "live at Meltdown" track from the OOP Juliet Letters reissue, "Skeleton" with The Brodsky Quartet:

1995 was when Warner Bros finally released Kojak Variety but that summer all I could think of was Meltdown, and all the performances I didn't get to see.

John Dowland's "Can She Excuse My Wrongs" performed with Fretwork & Composers Ensemble:

Costello's Meltdown experience led to a great many performances & recordings to come in the following years, including continued work w/The Jazz Passengers & Debbie Harry (@BlondieOfficial)

"Doncha Go 'Way Mad" (from the 1997 JP album, Individually Twisted):

Costello premiered the song "Put Away Forbidden Playthings" with Fretwork at Meltdown 1995...

Which led to this striking version-- sung by countertenor Michael Chance -- on Fretwork's 1997 album, Sit Fast:

And Costello eventually released his own version in 2006, from a 2004 concert with The Metropole Orkest:

I was very surprised when this EP was reissued by @MusicOnVinyl a few years ago. (Those editions have a tendency to go out of print and become prohibitively expensive, so if you like this one & want it on vinyl, I would act now rather than wait!)

The title track:

And that's Day 23 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

This EP isn't streaming, and there are no liner notes, but there's this on YouTube:

And here are some ways to buy it: amazon.com/dp/B017692BS6/…

discogs.com/sell/release/7…

Day 24: "My Dark Life"

Today is the one day in this 45-day thread I have set aside for a single song, not only bc it happens to be my favorite song (EC or otherwise) & my favorite record (as produced by Brian Eno) but bc I think there is enough to unpack to give it its own day

Released March 18, 1996

This was a song written & recorded for "Songs In The Key Of X: Music From & Inspired By The X-Files."

It is credited to "Elvis Costello with Brian Eno" and I remember being excited to see that it was over 6 minutes long. I was expecting something weird.

I had relocated to the UK by this time, abandoning 2 disappointing years as a theatre major at @Mizzou (see Ozark, Wyatt ref earlier ⬆️) to be part of the 1st year of students at @PaulMcCartney's just-opened Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts (@LIPALiverpool)

Unhappy with @Mizzou's theatre department and looking for a change, I spot an item in USA Today: @PaulMcCartney is opening a performing arts academy in Liverpool & Costello is going to teach there.

They are looking for American students.

Curious, I write for more info...

Long stort short, I end up flying to NYC for an audition, getting into LIPA, moving to Liverpool, eventually London, etc etc.

Look, here's my graduation photo where I am seated relatively close to 2018 #1 album recording artist @PaulMcCartney:

All this really just to say that it was a Monday when I bought Songs In The Key Of X. (New CDs came out on Mondays there then, instead of Tuesdays.)

I remember buying the CD at HMV in Liverpool City Centre after class, and heading back to my student housing to listen to it...

My friend @JeffFalzone was visiting during spring break from UCSanta Cruz & he had been hanging out in my room while I was at class

All This Useless Beauty was due in less than 2 months & THAT was the big deal Costello thing; this little X-Files song was just a fun thing, nbd...

I still remember the feeling of listening to the first 60 seconds of this song for the 1st time.

By time that strange wet blobby percussion kicked in for the chorus, I knew that unless something went horribly wrong in the next 5 minutes, I had a new favorite song & record:

There was something about the line "She'll stand on tiptoe for you in a grey and tattered tutu" and specifically the way Costello sang it that cut right through me; it felt both surprising and inevitable. (Also the alliteration of "tattered tutu" somehow avoided feeling silly)

We listened to the song and then immediately played it again. I don't even recall how many times, but it was a lot.

The song casts a spell, it hooks you in and then it doesn't let go. It's also a tremendously confident song: it takes its time bc it knows it's worth it.

The kicker arrived in the song's final 2 minutes, when Costello unexpectedly name-checked our home state while running down a list of strangely named American towns-- why Chris Carter didn't immediately pitch a Darin Morgan-penned spin-off called "Peculiar, MO" is beyond me.

Population 4,979

Costello has rarely written "sequel" songs ("American Without Tears #2" & "Under Lime" are the two examples that come to mind) but if he ever got the itch to delve fully into the world of Peculiar, Missouri, I have a hunch that song would be even stranger than "My Dark Life."

EC: "David Was, who was co-ordinating the music [for Songs In The Key Of X] rang me & said, ‘What about Brian Eno?’ I said, 'What are you, a fucking mind reader? I just met him yesterday…’"

EC: "So I called [Brian Eno] and said, 'What about one day in the studio? And whatever we do is the record…’ Because I know he likes that kind of spontaneity. One day and no re-mixing.”

From Brian Eno's published diary of that year. Costello was one among many big names Eno talked to that day:

Brian Eno's account of their day in the studio together, which Costello said at the time was the most fun he'd had in a recording studio in years:

God, Eno writing about his day with Costello is really funny. At times "miffed" and trying to distract Costello, but ultimately impressed and happy with the record they made:

EC (in 1996): "There’s a lot going on in that song, it’s about when I went to Russia last year. Truthfully, I think it has more plot than a lot of X-Files episodes. I love the X-Files, but the whole point of them is to be enigmatic.”

In 1996, Costello only played the song in concert on one occasion-- a solo version that was released on the limited edition Costello & Nieve box set. Greil Marcus wrote a whole piece just about that performance of "My Dark Life"...

GM: "Often a performance begins with the feeling that something crucial is being held back."

GM: "Then it breaks open with a full-throatedness, a cry, or a bet on drama that pays off so completely that only the vaguest sense remains that though what was held back was revealed, it somehow went right over your head…"

GM: "This spell, this displacement–this experience of being taken from one place to another, and of both places being made into nowheres–is the whole story of "My Dark Life,” from San Francisco [the 3rd disc of the Costello & Nieve box set]."

GM: “It’s 7 minutes, 13 seconds of the 26-minute, 51-second San Francisco disc–typical for the set, one disc for each city–but the song sucks you into it and then gets you lost so quickly it might be describing not an incident but a lifetime. It’s like a map of miasma."

GM: "My Dark Life” is here sung & played so slowly–sometimes so slowly that the song and its unclear but disturbing story seem to almost unravel, sometimes so slowly that each word and pause can signify the whole of what’s being said–that you lose your sense of place or time."

GM: "Yet the way Costello sings the title phrase, "My dark life…” which always slides away from the listener, the words have a strange lilt in them, a bounce that doesn’t return to the ground of music, that stays in the air..."

GM: "...and that lilt always calls the listener back to something he or she would probably just as soon not know about. There’s an echo of Costello’s little horror movie of a song “I Want You” in “My Dark Life”, but the threat is far less obvious: It doesn’t stab, it floats."

GM: "“My Dark Life” came out of a package tour Costello took to Russia, to see paintings; a trip that for him became a Michelin Guide to being in a place where you don’t belong, wondering why you don’t belong-and thus questioning who you are."

GM: "The flat, ordinary ominousness of a cold place brings out the coldness in the visitor, his own malevolence. The place wants to cast a spell on him; he’ll cast one right back."

GM: "He’ll feel superior to the people around him, to the other people on the tour, to the workers in the hotel."

“In the song, this happens in slow motion until the loathing directed outward returns as self-loathing."

GM: ""He tipped her in cigarettes,” Costello sings, then realizes that for the worker whose worth he so easily sealed as next to nothing, his gesture has only sealed his own worthlessness. “My dark life”–no, you don’t want to know."

GM: "But the singing is just too subtle, too quietly strong, to be anything but infinitely suggestive."

"And so, in your own mind, as you listen, the song seemingly bypassing ending after ending, its pace never quickening, you know everything there is to know."

Bono's reaction to the Eno-produced version was to-the-point:

"This is the fucking shit. It sounds like lounge music from Venus.”

My friend @JeffFalzone was in the audience for the San Francisco concert Marcus was moved to write at length about. You can hear Jeff's enthusiastic reaction to the mention of "Peculiar, Missouri":

(cc: @rianjohnson)

Myself, I have never been lucky enough to catch "My Dark Life" in concert.

In 2003, I came close. He went through a brief stretch where he was playing it every few shows. I caught one of the shows where he *didn't* play it...

It's amazing that Costello has played in concert 14 times over the years. It's a long song, a relatively obscure one, and one that doesn't exactly get a crowd worked up.

If I ever hear him play it, I will lose my mind.

I'm stunned that @thexfiles never actually used this song-- not in the remaining seasons, neither of the 2 feature films nor the 2-season revival.

Elvis Costello wrote his BEST song FOR an X-Files album & The X-Files never used it.

This is more baffling than any actual X-File.

Costello himself rates the song pretty highly-- it was featured on Extreme Honey (his "best of the WB years" compilation) & the soundtrack CD to his memoir, and when he posted a sort-of-tongue-in-cheek ranking of his own "Top 100" songs on his website, this made it to #12...

I'll close out the day with this unrelated clip from the Darin Morgan-penned classic, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose":

And this clip, from my other favorite X-Files episode, "Small Potatoes" by Vince Gilligan:

(Realizing now that I maybe should've been consulting Costello's memoir more for reference, but then again I am barely keeping up as is, and if you are reading this thread you should probably buy that book if you haven't already.)

Pg. 575:

And that is Day 24 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

This was one of the days I was most looking forward to. I am thrilled that it led at least a couple of people to hear "My Dark Life" for the first time.

The song isn't on Spotify, so here's a YouTube link:

Just for fun, two more Costello mentions from Brian Eno's 1995 published diary:

Day 25: All This Useless Beauty

Ok this is gonna be a long day bc I have some strong opinions about this LP, including:

A) it's great
B) every track on it is great
C) it was damaged by the exclusion of 2 songs which left it something short of the classic it coulda/shoulda been

Released May 14, 1996

This is the final Costello album with The Attractions, who will break up at the end of the 1996 world tour.

It began under the title "A Case For Song" and was originally going to be EC's versions of songs he wrote for other artists.

Some of that original idea remains in the final LP-- a handful of songs written for/with other artists + a handful of songs that don't fit that description

It was originally conceived as a double album but the final 12-song collection is only 48 minutes, his shortest WB album...

EC's 2001 liner notes (I will link to them at end of Day 25) paint a picture of perhaps his most confused approach to any album since 1984's Goodbye Cruel World

He changed his mind multiple times & almost scrapped the LP entirely

It's a miracle it turned out as good as it did!

I realize this sounds like I am building up to some harsh takedown of this album, but it's really just that I think Costello cut 2 songs from it that would have pushed this record to another level & made it harder to dismiss/forget.

(I'll get to the 2 cut songs a bit later...)

Produced by EC & @GeoffEmerick-- they hadn't worked together since IbMePdErRoIoAmL 14 years earlier-- and Costello's voice is pushed right to the front of the mix.

The LP opens impressively, with a great song EC wrote with @aimeemann, "The Other End Of The Telescope":

Costello re-wrote the lyric to this song on the floor of the studio while the band waited. (I can't say I prefer any of the revised lyrics to the original, but they have grown on me over the course of 2+ decades.)

@SteveNieve's piano at the end is lovely:

To provide some contrast, here is an unreleased "raw" take from the ATUB sessions, before Costello re-wrote the lyric. It's fun to hear an alternate version, but it also backs up EC's comments about how well Emerick & his assistant Jon Jacobs mixed the final album...

I do miss the lyric "though your wrist watch always works/your necktie never fits" which was one of the standout lines in the 'Til Tuesday version:

By the time ATUB came out, I had been listening to @aimeemann's original recording of the song for 3 years straight and while I was excited to hear Costello's version, I knew that it would be hard to top this one:

Costello's vocal cameo in the original is pretty fun, too. This song was my gateway to buying @aimeemann's I'm With Stupid-- an album I obsessed over as much as Brutal Youth-- which opened the floodgates to buying every record she made before & since.

I've always been struck by how crisp his voice on this. Listen for the "K" sounds at the ends of words, they almost sound like Pete is playing them on a snare drum:

"we won't even recall that we spo-K
words that turned out to be
as big as smo-K
as smo-K
disappears in the air..."

Seeing him performing this song on UK television, it makes me angry that this didn't become the hit single that made the album a success:

My memory of 1996 in England was that it felt like this was the moment when suddenly there was a shift & all the music magazines I used to buy as pricey imports-- Q, Mojo, etc-- stopped paying as much attention to Costello. This album was barely a blip compared to Brutal Youth.

The other Costello/@aimeemann song, "Fall Of The World's Own Optimist" came out on Mann's late 90s self-released masterpiece, Bachelor No. 2 or the last remains of the dodo, after she freed herself from the whims of record executives. It is a perfect album from start-to-finish:

EC's demo for "World's Great Optimist" was on the now-out-of-print ATUB Rhino bonus disc

This is the last LP where I have to mention an out-of-print Rhino bonus disc; from this point, I'll shift to a different lament: that most b-sides/bonus tracks are hard to find or unreleased

"Little Atoms" I believe already breaks the mold of the whole "songs written for or with other artists" thing

WOW, this album sounds good on headphones. Not that previous ones don't, just making an observation in the moment. But Emerick/Jacobs really did do an excellent job:

What a contrast between the album version & the original demo, which sounds like it is headed for a King Of America-type album:

An unreleased alternate take from the ATUB sessions, close to what would end up on the album, but a chance to hear some differences in the Attractions playing from one take to the next:

And the 2nd half of that unreleased take, with some lovely playing by Steve, who is sort of given the spotlight on this album. It's no coincidence that the first tour of 1996 was Costello & Nieve as a duo...

Costello returns to The Larry Sanders show (minus The Attractions) to sell Hank Kingsley a car:

"Elvis Fucking Costello & His Piece-Of-Shitmobile"

"Little Atoms" feat. shade thrown by Hank Kingsley ("I'm mocking him because he's an asshole.")

"Aw, save it for your limey bullshit love songs, will ya, please? You owe me money, asshole."

Costello deliberately avoided having a title track on any of his previous records, but "All This Useless Beauty" was perhaps too good to resist.

It's a wondrous track, a great example of what The Attractions are capable of bringing to Costello's mid-90s songwriting...

As a songwriter, it's also a good example of how Costello got better at writing songs that aren't as coded or easily misinterpreted. A song like this is in sympathy with some of his early songs that were occasionally accused of being misogynistic:

This was one of two songs on the album originally recorded by June Tabor:

One of the fun things Costello did to try to drum up excitement for the album was getting other artists to cover or remix the songs for his b-sides.

Lush contributed this version of the title track:

This led me to listen to Lush, especially their 1996 album, Lovelife.

"Ladykillers":

Another unreleased alternate take from the ATUB sessions, a chance to hear Steve Nieve in particular, trying out different things:

Hearing these rough alternate takes is fascinating, especially the way the final mix of the record really does differ from hearing just a straightforward recording of the band playing live in the studio:

The 4th track was written for Johnny Cash, who sadly never seems to have recorded it during the period where he recorded 1000 songs with producer @RickRubin...

"Complicated Shadows":

The album version is a strange but effective hybrid of a studio recording that morphs into a live performance from the previous year at the Beacon Theatre, when EC & The Attractions did a bunch of "rehearsal" shows to prep songs for the album:

"Complicated Shadows" live at the Beacon, August 1995, complete with explanatory intro:

I was still in Missouri at the time these Beacon preview shows happened, but I got cassette tapes of them from some guy named "Kevin" who advertised in Goldmine magazine that he sold audience recordings of pretty much every major concert in the NYC area...

This Rolling Stones-ish version that premiered in 1995 was very different from the live version I already had acquired on a bootleg CD by that time. The song went through a lot of changes from demo to album...

This is the "Cashbox" demo that I assume either Johnny Cash heard & rejected or somehow never heard. I always kind of hope that there is an attempt by JC that is somewhere in @RickRubin's vault, awaiting release someday...

Here is the first version I ever heard of the song, which is the Attractions' first attempt at it during the later stages of the Brutal Youth tour. It is sort of at a halfway point between the two arrangements, but I like this a lot:

I wonder why Cash never tried it. He had previously done two Costello songs, "The Big Light" & "Hidden Shame"-- I think this one was even an better fit for his voice & better than a lot of contemporary songs he released on those excellent final albums. It would've fit right in.

From a November 1996 Sound On Sound article, @GeoffEmerick's assistant Jon Jacobs goes into great detail about how they merged the studio take with a live recording.

It's fascinating, and I do not pretend to understand half of what he is talking about here:

"Why Can't A Man Stand Alone?" was written for Sam Moore to sing, and is I think a pretty good dividing line for people who love or hate Elvis' singing voice at its most ambitious:

EC: “It’s easy to theorize songs for people, but they don’t always work out. For instance, I wrote ‘Why Can’t a Man Stand Alone’ for Sam Moore, but he didn’t take it. Now when I think about it, the song has too many words. Sometimes lyrics can get in the way of expression."

Unadorned alternate take from the ATUB sessions, a chance to hear it minus all the (impressive) multi-tracked backing vocals:

Bruce Thomas supposedly asked for a special mix of the album before the tour with his bass part higher in the mix. I do notice his bass part a little more in this rough alternate take:

"Distorted Angel" - the first attempted & discarded at The Attractions' Brutal Youth sessions - arrives in a slower, groovier version, with yet another confident vocal by EC:

EC: "'Distorted Angel' was about almost discovering Catholic guilt at a birthday party when you are eight years old."

Listen to how far this song has traveled since EC's original demo:

And an unreleased alternate take from the ATUB sessions:

It is really something to compare the rough takes to the sound of the finished album once Emerick & Jacobs had spun their magic; I wish I wasn't such a technical dummy about understanding such things

Side 2 begins with the McCartney/MacManus original, "Shallow Grave," the last of their songs to show up on an album until the big Flowers In The Dirt deluxe edition.

I already tweeted the album version earlier in the thread, so here's an unreleased alternate take:

And another unreleased alternate take!

Another song about "vanity and the deluded manners of men," Costello considered "Poor Fractured Atlas" to be one of The Attractions' finest performances on record:

Personally, I always felt like the payoff for this song was a little muted. (Perhaps I was spoiled by hearing live recordings from the preview shows where the song ended with a bigger burst of energy from The Attractions...)

Hold up! I forgot to tell you THIS, about "Shallow Grave" a few tweets back!

Here's Jon Jacobs, explaining how they used a guitar solo from a different take! I don't understand what he's talking about, but I like reading it:

And now: here is an take of "Poor Fractured Atlas" where the band cuts loose a little bit, especially in the 2nd half (next tweet):

I used to feel confident in the opinion that they should have gone with the less restrained version of the song.

Listening to it now, I'm less certain, but I still like this:

Jon Jacobs again, talking about the vocal compression used on the album, specifically citing the next track, "Starting To Come To Me":

Is "Starting To Come To Me" the most "fun" country song Costello has ever written/recorded? I think YES, unless someone can convince me otherwise:

The final 30 seconds of this track are super fun:

An alternate take of "Starting To Come To Me" before they really nail it. Those compressed vocals on the album version really give it a kick that this more basic take is missing. It's a glimpse into how well-made this LP is, they made so many correct decisions about the sound:

The next song, "You Bowed Down" was written for @RogerMcGuinn, whose version I heard first. Costello has a heavy presence in this version, doing prominent backing vocals throughout.

For some reason, McGuinn's version feels like it has more bite to it!

Maybe it's just a matter of which version I heard first. It is Elvis in "Positively 4th Street" mode, and contains some really great cutting lines set against a jangly Byrds-type musical backdrop.

I think the main reason Costello wanted to record his own version of this was to restore the bridge to the way he wrote it, which was McGuinn's version basically straightens out to make it sound like the rest of the song...

The demo version can be tracked down on the out-of-print Rhino edition, but here's an alternate Attractions take from the ATUB sessions:

Alternate take, continued, with a totally different-sounding guitar solo by EC at the end:

August 26, 1996 -- the night before my birthday, I receive the gift of watching Elvis Costello & The Attractions appear on The Tonight Show with @jayleno & EC changes the chorus of "You Bowed Down" to "I Should Have Never Walked Back Over The Bridge That I Burned."

WOWZA.

There was buzz on the costello-l mailing list at the time that things had gone sour on tour between Elvis & Bruce. Also, that EC was mad at Warner Bros for mishandling the record, which had not sold well.

In the interview w/Leno, Costello threatened retirement. It felt crazy!

"It's Time" is a song that feels like exactly what a lot of people think an "Elvis Costello song" is supposed to be. It's angry & clever & pointed, with lines like "if you do have to leave me, who will I have left to hate?"

That said, he is very good at this type of thing:

I like his singing on this A LOT, and it features strong playing by The Attractions that doesn't quite sound like any other song by them. The fresh elements make the familiar aspects seem new...

ALSO: "It's Time" is the end of Elvis Costello & The Attractions, their final album track. I don't believe it was written about Bruce or recorded with him in mind, but it feels like a fitting end to a tempestuous working relationship.

He sounds tremendous on this:

Cutting away from the album for a second, to the final Attractions concert in Nagoya, Japan. Specifically, their 8+ minute-long performance of "Watching The Detectives":

There is a lot of energy in the recording I have of that final show, but this noodling jam is the one that sticks in my mind. They know it's the last time.

Are they having trouble letting go? Just having fun? Working through some issues? My guess is a little bit from each column.

It was a brief reunion. They made a record-and-a-half together, toured for both + promoted a 3rd album they hadn't been the band for

And most importantly, it set things up for 2/3rds of them to be reborn as a new band, but we are several days away from getting to that...

Flashing back to earlier in the year, Costello performing "It's Time" solo on Late Show With David @Letterman in San Francisco:

This is the 3rd appearance in a row where Costello happened to be in the same city when Letterman was doing a week of shows in a city other than New York...

Oh, one more very technical thing from Jon Jacobs about the way they out together "It's Time" using multiple takes:

"I Want To Vanish" is the album closer, and it features Steve Nieve & The Brodsky Quartet augmented by a few other players. I used to not really care for this song but now I really get it. I think in 1996, it didn't make sense to me. Now it does.

It was a gentle and melancholy end to an album that was he had been more than a little bit confused about while making it. And here's where I get to the two songs this album is lacking...

Imagine IbMePdErRoIoAmL minus "Beyond Belief" & "Almost Blue."

What do we think of that version of the album? Still pretty great, yeah? But undeniably missing something. Undeniably hurt by the absence of 2 of its most ambitious songs

All This Useless Beauty is missing 2 songs.

The first of these songs is a song that Costello has admitted should've been on the album: "Almost Ideal Eyes."

It was released as a b-side in 1996, and I couldn't believe it had been left off. It would've been perfect somewhere in the middle of the record:

It's a strange song, but one w/a specific energy that would've (I think) balanced the album's push-&-pull between its ballads & the rowdier numbers. I think it's an attention-grabber & a track that would've made the album stronger.

Plus, it would've fit the original "theme."

"Almost Ideal Eyes" was written by Elvis Costello specifically for @thedavidcrosby.

I've never seen him comment on what he thought of it, if he ever received it-- and if he did, why he seemingly didn't ever try to record it:

If @thedavidcrosby is just hearing this demo for the first time, or has no memory of receiving it decades ago, I'd love to know what he makes of it today, in 2018:

When I first heard this song on a cassette tape from the 1995 Beacon Theatre rehearsal shows, I thought for certain that this song was going to be one of the most remarkable tracks on the next album.

I also love the way Costello shuts down the guy yelling for "Oliver's Army":

Who know why it didn't make the cut. Perhaps it was a victim of Costello pulling away from the "songs written for other artists" angle. In any case, I think it was a blunder.

Everything about it was surprising to me; the whiplash turns from verse to chorus and back again, Steve Nieve sounding like he is referencing Taxi Driver in parts, Pete Thomas' towering drums. Costello was saying a lot lyrically, and the music was insane, in a good way:

The other missing song from All This Useless Beauty is "God Give Me Strength," which surely would've been the crown jewel of this album.

The Attractions version of this is very different from what would eventually end up in the film Grace Of My Heart & on Painted From Memory...

Personally, I think this piano-led arrangement is superior to the slower one that Bacharach would eventually devise.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if it was as simple as Costello deciding he might like to save that song for a full album with Bacharach?

This outtake from the ATUB sessions is incomplete, but you can get a sense of what it might've sounded like on the album:

Steve Nieve's bouncing piano part is so much more lively than its flugelhorn equivalent on the version that would eventually become the standard arrangement of this song...

Maybe All This Useless Beauty would've fared the same even w/those 2 songs included, but I think they would've made the album much harder to ignore.

(That's another thing that is exciting to me about Look Now: finally, EC's band gets first crack at new Bacharach/Costello tunes.)

Another few scattered items before I close out Day 25...

Part of his b-sides exchange program, Sleeper covered "The Other End Of The Telescope":

Costello returned the favor by covering Sleeper's hit, "What Do I Do Now?"

Sleeper's original version:

Tricky's remix of "Distorted Angel":

And The Imposter's remix of Tricky's "Christiansands":

Pt 2:

And Pt 3-- listen close and you might hear a familiar voice near the end...

I fell asleep before I could wrap Day 25 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello! That's it!

All This Useless Beauty links...

Costello's 2001 liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

The LP on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/4jmwlMQC…

June Tabor's version of "I Want To Vanish":

Day 26: Costello & Nieve / Extreme Honey / etc

Today, I'll be covering the period roughly during Costello's final moments at Warner Bros through his new beginnings as part of the Universal Music Group, where he will spend his next decade or so hopping around their various labels

Released December 3, 1996

"Costello & Nieve," a limited edition box set of 5 EPs, this is essentially a live double LP spread across five CDs.

It is perhaps the only major release of Costello's Warner era not yet reissued on vinyl by @MusicOnVinyl (Hint, hint!)

The Warner Bros years were especially divisive amongst Costello's fan base, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who didn't love this box set. I'm sure they're out there, but this seemed to me an especially well-liked release.

"The Other End Of The Telescope":

It covered a range of old & new material, all presented in such a clear & straightforward way. It was hard not to like.

"Just About Glad":

It is not streaming, deeply out-of-print & was sold as a "never before, never again"-style release, but I think fans would forgive a vinyl edition 22+ years after the fact.

Since @MusicOnVinyl reissued Deep Dead Blue, I'd assume this much more popular title has at least a chance

I won't go too exhaustively through this one, because I think it's best to track it down and discover it yourself, if you're interested. It is filled with all kinds of fun things, like when the San Francisco crowd shouts out this request & he plays it.

"Ship Of Fools":

There are some deep cuts and fan favorites here, including songs he only played once on the tour, and some songs he hadn't played in many years.

"Black Sails In The Sunset":

Some songs I never thought he'd ever play again, let alone release on a live album!

"You'll Never Be A Man":

There are some performances on here that threaten to become the definitive versions of those songs.

"All The Rage":

Now I'm gonna move off of the official release, to a few Costello & Nieve performances that weren't on this box set, my point being that a 2nd, 3rd & 4th volume could be assembled without breaking a sweat, and it would be just as good.

"I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea":

From a late 90s tour of Italy, when EC for some reason started performing deep cuts from Punch The Clock.

"King Of Thieves":

I feel like solo EC/Costello & Nieve releases would be a very successful archival series. I know there has been at least one bungled attempt at an archival EC concert series, but it fizzled bc they put out too much stuff fans were overly familiar with

"King Of Thieves" (cont'd):

I wonder what it would look like if there was a subscription series for quarterly or even annual releases that resembled the Costello & Nieve box set & pulled from the archives? Would that be a dead end idea for music biz reasons I typically fail to understand?

"Mouth Almighty":

Of course, such a thing is unlikely to happen anytime soon, but there are a lot of treasures in the vaults.

Case in point: Steve Nieve going berzerk in the second half of "Mouth Almighty":

Just a few more rare live tracks before I move on to the next thing of the day...

"The Invisible Man":

"The Invisible Man" (cont'd.):

Here's a Costello & Nieve live track that was released as a b-side, Costello playing "Inch By Inch" into "Fever."

It includes one of my favorite vocal malfunction-&-recovery moments on record at about the 48 second mark:

This gem is a good example of why EC's 1998-2018 period is in need of something like the Rhino reissues, but for the digital age. So many of his b-sides from this era have never been compiled & are now basically unavailable unless you really hunt.

"Inch By Inch/Fever" (cont'd.):

Flashing back just a bit: in late August 1996, Costello announces to Jay Leno that he is going to either retire or at least go away for a long, long time.

November 1996: I watch Costello perform in John Harle's Terror & Magnificence concert at London's Royal Festival Hall.

I remember thinking, "he didn't last two months."

The record didn't come out until the following spring but as far as I was concerned this meant that Costello's Leno announcement was premature.

He was back, and singing Shakespeare, no less. And he sounded fucking GREAT:

John Harle's Terror & Magnificence album features 3 tracks with vocals by Costello, words by Shakespeare and music by Harle.

"Come Away Death":

Costello had now reached the point where he was being regarded not just as a singer/songwriter but as a vocalist; not for all tastes, certainly, but with a distinctive style that didn't sound like anybody else.

2 of the 3 tracks were included on the Juliet Letters bonus disc, but I recommend listening to the full album, which, unlike that bonus disc, *is* on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/2GJN0DIt…

Costello appeared on Late Show With David Letterman FOUR TIMES in 1997.

First with Debbie Harry & The Jazz Passengers:

Then with Burt Bacharach for their debut as a songwriting duo, "God Give Me Strength" (more on this tomorrow):

The 3rd time was with The Fairfield Four, performing "That Day Is Done":

And finally, he appeared with Toshi Reagon & @biglovely1 to promote his Warner Bros exit release, a "greatest hits/best of" which included "So Like Candy":

This compilation, entitled Extreme Honey, featured a few hits, some personal favorites of Costello's (including "My Dark Life") and one brand new track, "The Bridge I Burned," which was a weird & angry track that seemed like a kiss-off to his record label, perhaps:

The track featured his song, Matt MacManus, on bass, and Supertramp's Danny Goffey on drums.

It was also intended to include a section quoting Prince's song, "Pop Life."

SMASH CUT BACK TO 1985 FOR THE NEXT TWEET

Remember this clip? Remember when I said there would be consequences???

Prince refused to let Costello include a verse from "Pop Life" on either the 1997 release or a few years later when he asked again for the All This Useless Beauty bonus disc.

I think you can hear Costello quoting from "Instant Karma" deep in the mix of the track's final minute:

Here's a strange thing, rare & never reissued: a promo CD that contained two alternate versions of "The Bridge I Burned." I lost my mind trying to obtain one of these back in 1997, until I finally got one.

The "Facino Mix":

The "Facino Mix" has some fun aspects to it, but the REALLY exciting thing was the other version...

The "Pop Lie" mix features Costello singing an entirely different lyric from start-to-finish. I can't believe this was only ever issued on a promo CD:

Costello had so many harsh words for Warner Bros that he took an entire second version of the song to express them all, and then made them put it out on a promotional CD:

One time my stereo broke while this was in the CD drive and it would only play part of the soundscape and I heard so many things that were buried deep in the mix...

And with that, Costello's decade with Warner Bros came to an end &a multi-label deal was soon announced with Polygram, which would soon enough become UMG.

Costello's first release on the label was on the soundtrack to a little film that T Bone Burnett was music supervisor on:

Produced by T Bone & co-written (very quickly) with Cait O'Riordan, "My Mood Swings" is heard briefly & faintly in the movie, on a soundtrack loaded with cool songs. The film notably features @aimeemann as a nihilist who donates her toe to a blackmail scheme.

In more "obscure promo CDs of the late 90s" news, the promo CD for "My Mood Swings" features a different take of the song!

(Even if there was a new deluxe reissue series, I'm not sure this would be included as a bonus track.)

Several years later, Costello would re-record this song for one of the Brodsky Quartet's own albums, 2005's Moodswings:

"Mood Swings"

Jumping ahead slightly, to 1998 & another film project which led to a specially commissioned Costello song...

"I Throw My Toys Around," written by Costello & Cait O'Riordan, performed by @nodoubt & produced by EC, who also contributes vocals.

I have never seen The Rugrats Movie, but honestly this sounds like it could be The Attractions. I have listened to this song a lot.

This track always makes me think that Costello should write & produce an album where he "casts" bands & singers to perform songs he writes specifically for them. Depending on the line-up, I think that is one way he could make a monster smash hit record.

It's been a hodge podge of a day, but I think that's it for Day 26 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

I have no links to liner notes, and streaming is a real mixed bag of available & unavailable, so instead here is a Costello & Nieve performance of "Sulky Girl":

"Sulky Girl" (cont'd.):

Day 27: Painted From Memory

Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach team up to write a whole album of mostly sad songs after writing one for a movie via fax & telephone.

Released September 28, 1998

There were plenty of "odd couple" stories accompanying this one, but of course most were quick to point out that Costello played "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" on the Live Stiffs tour in 1978. (Scroll back to August 30th in this thread!)

The film that brought them together was 1996's Grace Of My Heart by Allison Anders, where Illeana Douglas stars as a Carole King-ish Brill Building-era songwriter.

Elvis & Burt were tasked with writing the movie's "big" song.

I believe Costello had already written one basically perfect song for the movie when they asked him to team up with Burt. (I could be wrong about that chronology.)

Here is the sequence in the movie where @Illeanarama & @ericstoltz write the song "Unwanted Number" together:

SMASH CUT TO 2018: Costello finally records & releases his own version of "Unwanted Number" with The Imposters more than two decades later.

The new album, Look Now, drops October 12th.

Costello & Bacharach famously didn't have time to meet face-to-face for "God Give Me Strength," collaborating using phones & fax machines.

EC premiered the song in concert w/The Attractions in 1995. This is the 1st version I heard, on a bootleg cassette of a Beacon Theatre show:

AND NOW, a brief personal anecdote from 1996: I was so disappointed when "God Give Me Strength" didn't make it onto All This Useless Beauty. It really felt like that song would've been the centerpiece of that album, making it one of his major works.

But then my disappointment quickly turned to excitement when I learned that EC & Bacharach had recorded their own version for the Grace Of My Heart soundtrack, and it would be released, soon.

Late August/early September '96: @JeffFalzone & I are back in Missouri before we head back to school at UCSC & LIPA in a few days. We start calling Costello-friendly local radio station @1023BXR, asking if they have new single "God Give Me Strength."

We call every day. They don't have it. They don't have it. We keep calling.

Finally, a guy says "Oh wait. Yes, we have it. It just arrived."

He promises to play it that day.

We wait. We keep the radio on. We call late at night, and ask again. They say they will play it.

The next day, we call again. Same guy we talked to the previous afternoon.

He sighs. "I can't play it."

Not even at, like, 3 in the morning? Once?

"Look," he says. "If you want the CD, you can come to the station and pick it up. It's yours. We are never gonna play it."

We drive 45 minutes, from Jefferson City to Columbia, to @1023BXR's offices. The disc is waiting for us at the front desk. They are giving us the song.

We go to my car and listen to it in the parking lot, my discman playing through a car cassette adapter...

I will never forget listening to the slow 30-second flugelhorn intro in that car

I mean, OF COURSE @1023BXR wasn't going to play this. Not even at 3AM.

BXR played the hell out of Brutal Youth, but THIS was not gonna fit in between Deep Blue Something, Beck & The Fugees:

We both liked it, a lot, but it was much slower and more of a throwback, production-wise, than The Attractions' version felt on those bootleg tapes.

Costello's falsetto is still a shocker. It catches me off guard even now that I know to expect it:

It is still hilarious to me that a radio station gave us the CD. They wouldn't give into our demands and play it on the air, but they needed to do something to get us to stop calling.

I believe it was a "radio edit" of the song. I have the disc somewhere, still.

I was so familiar with the song by this time that I was fixated on anything that was new/different in the arrangement-- the falsetto, the ending, etc.

I also remember being surprised there were no multi-tracked self-harmonies; his vocal confidence was perhaps at its peak here:

I am still stunned that "God Give Me Strength" did not get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.

Every Academy member who didn't vote for Costello & Bacharach should be forced to listen to a playlist of these 5 songs twice a day:

The big scene in Grace Of My Heart, @Illeanarama records the song with @MattDillon watching (vocals by Kristen Vigard):

It's fun that a fictionalized Brill Building movie ended up sparking a songwriting partnership between Costello & Bacharach that has led to more than 20 songs (several yet to be recorded and/or released)...

In hindsight, "God Give Me Strength" was a huge ask. If the main character's big song doesn't live up to all the praise it's getting, the movie sort of doesn't work. Half of the trailer ended up being about how great this song is!

Two years after Grace Of My Heart, Costello & Bacharach returned with a full album of new originals.

The opening track sets the tone-- "In The Darkest Place":

I remember being surprised by the backing singers at the time, but I was totally on board from this very first track. I gave in to this record completely.

The 2nd song on the album, "Toledo," is maybe the one that sounds most like vintage Bacharach & I believe Costello has said that this one was mostly written by him, as Burt has moved on from that sound.

I think I first heard this song on a RealPlayer audio stream at like 1am...

I always feel like this song could be friends with "The Long Honeymoon" off of IbMePdErRoIoAmL:

The 3rd song, "I Still Have That Other Girl In My Head," locks it in. "God Give Me Strength" could've been a lucky fluke, a happy accident. But we are now 4 sad songs into the partnership & they are on FIRE.

One of my favorite EC appearances on @Letterman:

Oh man, THIS is the best part. I watched this over & over when it aired. The key change with that lean with the mic stand and the way the camera is pushing in-- just PERFECT.

Also watch how into it Burt is throughout.

That lean with the mic stand, and @ElvisCostello singing with full passion:

And look how Burt almost jumps out of his seat while Costello gesticulates. These two are on the same wavelength:

Elvis & Burt invited over to talk with Dave (Burt's exclamation that the all-female orchestra was made up of "beautiful women!" feels male-gazey in 2018 but EC's joke about "the Dave 'love vibe'" has aged even worse given what we now know about Letterman's workplace behavior...)

"This House Is Empty Now" feels like EC was itching to write a song in the tradition of Bacharach sorrowful house-based classics like "A House Is Not A Home" & "One Less Bell To Answer."

This bridge is ferocious.

I don't know if the phrase "Does the extinguished candle care about the darkness" is an old familiar saying, but this was the first I'd heard it.

Ok, this is arguably the first "fun" number on the record-- at least it sounds that way, until you clock the lyrics, which are at least as sad as any of the songs before or after.

"Tears At The Birthday Party":

For lack of a better word, this song feels perhaps more overtly "theatrical" -- admittedly, part of me wonders how differently some of these songs might feel if Costello played all the roles vocally, but that's more curiosity than complaint...

"Such Unlikely Lovers" is an actual, honest-to-goodness happy love song, expressing only mild skepticism about how well things are going. I come very close to not liking this song but I can't help it, I think it's genuinely too much fun not to enjoy:

"My Thief" with a spoken intro by Costello:

"My Thief" cont'd:

The coda to "My Thief" as sung on the record by Lisa Taylor:

"The Long Division" is the one song on the record that I don't much care for; I kind of assume that Costello isn't wild about it, either, since he has only ever played it 5 times when he was originally touring the album with Burt, and hasn't played it even once since October 1998

Costello's 2nd title track in a row. After avoiding them for almost 2 full decades, he has fully embraced having a title track.

String orchestrations on this one by Johnny Mandel, who worked with Sinatra & Count Basie & wrote the theme to M*A*S*H:

Here's the thing about this album-- I really think it marks a turning point, where the "oddball" albums-- Almost Blue, The Juliet Letters-- start to become the norm for EC rather than a deviation from it. His brand, by now, IS that he does what he wants, not what anyone expects

"The Sweetest Punch" is maybe the most outright "fun" song on the album, the song that could've fit in on maybe an album like Punch The Clock or something. (Also, maybe @1023BXR would consider playing this sometime?)

Maybe one of the more controversial things I'll say in this thread: I want @ElvisCostello to make a Holiday LP. It is one of the few major genres he hasn't fully tackled & I think he could make one that would be great & not annoying

This song sounds a little XMAS-y to me:

I genuinely did not expect to veer off into this tangent until I started typing the previous tweet.

Costello has enough Holiday songs to make a small EP, the most significant of which is a day-after-XMAS song he recorded with @thechieftains, "The St. Stephens Day Murders":

I think that Costello is up for the challenge, and I think if he set out to write a batch of brand new Holiday songs (plus perhaps 2 or 3 tastefully obscure covers) he would make a XMAS record that would be an instant classic.

I know some people are hating this idea viscerally. I don't care. An album of hopefully secular XMAS songs by Costello is on my personal wish list, along with at least 10 more volumes of Kojak Variety.

Here's Elvis performing Alan Hull's "Winter Song":

I didn't mind Dylan's for-charity XMAS album at all, but I feel confident that Costello's would be so good that even people who loathe XMAS albums would be at least partially won over by it, should he ever face down that particular challenge.

I am as surprised as anyone that I have landed on a XMAS theme near the end of this record, triggered only by the bells in "The Sweetest Punch."

But this was gonna come up at some point, and it's not like October 12th is that much less early than September 24th...

If I really wanted to stretch this out, I'd reach back to "T.K.O. (Boxing Day)" from Punch The Clock & I'll bet I could think of a few more if I needed to.

The thing is, I'm really just making a wish here & I'm feeling pretty optimistic when it comes to making Costello wishes...

Look Now is an album that seems to be granting several of my Costello wishes

I was a guest talking about my EC fandom on @theanthonyking & @willhines' podcast in early 2015 -- "Burnt Sugar" & "Unwanted Number" were 2 of the songs I specifically mentioned:
dontgetmestarted.libsyn.com/connor-ratliff…

Also, TOTALLY self-indulgent but I do not care: very soon, State Champion Records will be releasing a 12" vinyl LP of secular XMAS songs & anti-summer ballads I made w/@Mikeyerg & we are going to somehow gift this to Costello & get a copy into his hands.

statechampionrecords.bigcartel.com

Back to Painted From Memory & what happens to be my favorite track on it: "What's Her Name Today?"

I think this song is their masterpiece. It is so amazing on every level, the perfect blending of their two specific songwriting voices combining to make a perfect song:

I don't know if this song is as autobiographical as "Rocking Horse Road" or the later "When I Was Cruel #1," but on some level I think he is pulling from the same well of regret that those songs draw from.

It's a heavy song, in the best sense, but also achingly beautiful:

Honestly, I think that's the album closer. "God Give Me Strength" always feels like a bonus track on PFM; a song that shoulda been on ATUB w/The Attractions & then on the Grace Of My Heart soundtrack & then the 1st track on the 2nd disc of a PFM 20th anniversary deluxe box set

That hypothetical superdeluxe box set would also include the various live b-sides featuring Costello & Nieve that have never been compiled or reissued.

"In The Darkest Place":

It is fun to hear stripped down versions of these played in concert, the songs have such strong bones that even minus the orchestration they still feel powerful and intense.

"What's Her Name Today?"

This wasn't released as a b-side, but I would also put it on that superdeluxe 21st anniversary box set that would come out next year, a 6+ minute version of "Toledo" with Steve Nieve:

"Toledo" pt 2:

"Toledo" pt 3:

Any superdeluxe reissue would also HAVE to include Costello singing "Anyone Who Had A Heart":

I was lucky enough to have great seats for the Elvis & Burt concert at London's Royal Festival Hall, the same place where I'd seen him perform Terro & Magnificence and had also missed out on so many great Meltdown 95 shows. Also, my mom went to this concert with me!

If there was room for it, I might even include this 1996 version of "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" from the Costello & Nieve box set, just because it's so perfect:

This same deluxe reissue would also surely include this "making of" promotional doc in higher quality than the VHS copy currently found on YouTube:

I was spoiled by becoming a fan in the 90s, when for over a decade I was able to enjoy each album being treated to a deluxe reissue. Now, we live in the streaming wonderland where such things cannot be counted on to exist. Would a deluxe PFM be a good or bad idea, sales-wise?

And yes, I suppose this stuff is all "out there" for people who dig around for it, but it would be nice if more people had a chance to experience it. This album, in particular, is one that I feel like people have a special affection for...

I mean, honestly, it's just fun watching how much Elvis & Burt seem to genuinely enjoy working together...

I like seeing how intense Bacharach gets, and that he and Costello seem to be equally obsessive about their work:

A great clip showing how intensely Costello admires Bacharach, and likewise how impressed Bacharach is by Costello. It's no surprise that they are still writing and releasing new songs 20 years later.

I honestly am fascinated any time I see studio footage from the sessions of records I love. My mind can't make the leap that this is the kind of room where records get made, because the music takes my mind to so many more visually interesting places...

The unsurprising revelation that Elvis kept all of his "work tapes" from his writing sessions with Bacharach has the insane completist in me hoping that the eventual deluxe box set includes a huge digital archive...

I like hearing Costello talk about his songs, because he never overexplains them; if anything, his descriptions usually make the songs more intriguing...

Costello talking about Burt's effect on the lyrics:

Costello & Burt talk (in general terms, no names named) about love, and relationships:

And finally, Elvis & Burt talk about the album's title, and its unofficial subtitle:

Elvis performs Burt's "My Little Red Book":

It's getting late and I have to get ready for tomorrow/today's album(s) so I can't go nuts on this, but any superdeluxe reissue of Painted From Memory should also include Bill Frisell's The Sweetest Punch, his album of reinterpretations of the PFM songs:

Frisell made this record at the same time Painted From Memory was being made, based solely on Elvis & Burt's piano demos.

It was designed as a companion album, but I think it was not helped by being released a full year after PFM. I think it would have been more fun & exciting for it to have come out either at the same time or within a few months.

As it was, I feel like this record was sort of ignored, and didn't really benefit from the long gap between releases. A year later was too long to benefit from the original album's buzz but not enough time for the record to build up a larger following (as I think it has now)...

"Painted From Memory" sung by Cassandra Wilson (@reallycassandra):

I was so excited when this was announced and then underwhelmed by the time I finally heard it, though I grew to appreciate it eventually as a companion piece.

But honestly, I'm starting to get really tired now, so I need to start wrapping up this day and fortunately this whole album is on Spotify, so I will tweet a link at the end of this, shortly...

A couple more things: after Burt made a cameo in the first Austin Powers film, Elvis joined him for a cameo in 1999's The Spy Who Shagged Me, recording a cover of "I'll Never Fall In Love Again."

Around the same time, Costello re-entered the UK singles charts thanks to being asked to sing a cover of Charles Aznavour's "She" for the motion picture Notting Hill:

Fun fact: when recording "She," they apparently did one take where he went into full Costello/"I Want You" mode & recorded it like a raging, jealous psychotic.

How can we live in a world where such a recording has gone un-leaked for 19 whole years?

Another fun fact, at one point, Costello had songs in 2 of the 3 top movies at the US box office, missing out only on Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace.

I truly do wish he had contributed a song to that film's soundtrack:

One last thing to close out the day: in 2005, Burt wrote a new solo album where he wrote lyrics as well, and Costello contributed a vocal to the song "Who Are These People?"

It's a politically charge song written in the middle of the Bush/Cheney years, but in some ways it makes even more sense under @realDonaldTrump.

This is the [explicit] version of the song, for reasons that will become clear when it gets to the last word Elvis spits out:

Oh wait, I almost forgot: Costello returned to Letterman in 99 to promote "She."

OK, that's it for Day 27 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Links...

Bill Frisell's The Sweetest Punch on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/30S04cu5…

And Painted From Memory on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/0rhmwOfl…

Day 28: For The Stars

Perhaps the most controversial, divisive Costello project yet! EC produces an album for one of his favorite singers, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter.

But it's more than that: Costello is on the cover, where it says ASvO "meets" EC!

Released April 10, 2001

Costello basically designed the album in collaboration with her, writing songs and suggesting ones she could cover.

Half the album is songs written or co-written by EC, the other finds her singing material by McCartney, Brian Wilson, Tom Waits, etc.

Von Otter was a familiar name to EC fans who had been listening to him talk about his favorite music; he had been mentioning her for years

In 1996, they did two concerts w/the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, trading verses on a number of songs

"Every Time We Say Goodbye":

Around the same time, Costello wrote a trio of songs for her & The Brodsky Quartet called "Three Distracted Women."

Curiously, though they have been performed in concert, only one of these ("Speak Darkly, My Angel") has been recorded, and ASvO's only came out two years ago:

Costello only released one recording in the year 2000, "You Stole My Bell" for the soundtrack to the Nicolas Cage film, The Family Man.

By 2001, it had been 3 years since the last album, with a lot of touring and a few scattered songs for movies.

This album was probably the single most unexpected move Costello has made during the time I've been a fan. (No, the 2nd most. I'll get to the #1 in a few days!)

I have some opinions, of course, starting with this: the opening track, written by EC, is great.

"No Wonder":

This record got a strong mix of reactions, some loving it, many hating it. For me, it felt more hit-and-miss than I was used to for any Costello record

But the opening & closing tracks, both written by EC, made me wish he had gone full Wendy James & just written her a whole LP

"No Wonder" was such a perfectly-written song for ASvO-- it was the type of thing she likely wouldn't have recorded otherwise; also his production on that was atypical for her, with gorgeous multi-tracked self-harmonies.

Here's EC singing the song himself, in concert:

When I listen to "No Wonder" & also the closing title track, it seems to me that EC knew exactly how to write for her.

PLUS, he already had written a 3-song cycle for her, none of which are on this record! That means he basically already had 5 songs towards a fully written LP!

The song "For The Stars" feels like Costello writing his version of an ABBA song (ABBA having been an influence as far back as Armed Forces, or course) and it is a song where EC & ASvO feel well-balanced, trading verses and singing the chorus together.

I love this song:

[On some subconscious level, was this song Costello's reaction to having songs in 1999's Notting Hill & The Spy Who Shagged Me but not The Phantom Menace?]

As for the middle 16 tracks in between, I don't know if I've ever witnessed any two fans completely agreeing on which ones they liked and which ones they didn't.

"Baby Plays Around":

Kate McGarrigle's "Go Leave" is a good example of what I think a lot of this album is: Costello just wanted to hear his favorite singer approach some of these songs, and to record her singing in a more intimate way than she was used to.

EC has her record not one but TWO songs from Pet Sounds. Was there ever a moment when they considered just re-recording the entirety of Pet Sounds?

(ALSO: I would bet money that at one point Brian Wilson's "Wonderful" was under consideration.)

"You Still Belive In Me"

ASvO isn't a pop singer, but I think she does well on songs like this, aided by a lovely arrangement that sits well with her voice:

As much as I love it when Costello makes a vocal cameo, I remain unsure about him sort of rap/singing the verses in the background as the music swells at the end. I think this is a rare instance when I would cut Costello's own voice from a record.

It is impossible not to feel Costello's hand at the steering wheel on a mash-up of Tom Waits & Paul McCartney; is this what EC's dreams sound like?

"Broken Bicycles/Junk":

I think my ideal version of this record would be a fully "written by EC" album that was then reissued w/a full disc of interesting covers. But ultimately, in some ways the whole point of this album is that THIS is the record EC wanted to hear, and he manifested it into reality.

Among my favorite tracks on the record is her version of The Beatles' "For No One." (Wilson/Waits/McCartney each getting two cuts on the record)

Another high point is ABBA's "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room" with Benny Andersson himself on piano & Synclavier:

Not all tracks are as well-suited to ASvO's voice; Tom Waits' "Take It With Me" has a lovely melody but some of the lyrics ("we lived in Coney Island" "ain't no good thing ever dies") make Von Otter seem as miscast as if she were to cover "Filipino Box Spring Hog."

Both Von Otter & EC shine on "Green Song" a song co-written by Costello & Svante Henryson (who plays cello on the album):

"Green Song" cont'd:

"Rope" is one of two songs on the album that EC co-wrote with Fleshquartet which almost feel like they could've been the beginnings of their own separate collaborative album:

The 2nd Fleshquartet co-write, "Just A Curio."

I feel like these two tracks are worth revisiting even by those who hated the album the first time around. Maybe listen to them separately from the album, they have their own vibe:

It is a sign of how much this thread is drowning me that I have yet to mention @RonSexsmith!

Costello includes one of RS's great songs, "April After All":

Costello has been one of @RonSexsmith's biggest fans and advocates since his debut album came out in the mid-90s:

Back in 1996, he said of @RonSexsmith's debut: "I've been playing it all year and you could be listening to it for another 20. It's a modest and elegant gem."

He was right!

I could easily fall down a rabbit hole of just posting @RonSexsmith songs, there are so many and he IS that good.

"Strawberry Blonde":

Costello's championing of Ron is a great example of how Costello post-1979 shifted from scowling caricature to tireless enthusiast for all kinds of good music. He seems to like nothing more than sharing a recommendation for someone else's great music:

If you do nothing else today, consider seeking out the song "Seem To Recall" by @RonSexsmith. I wish more movies & TV shows would license his songs, because I feel like that is how more people would come to love his work. He's great, and I wouldn't have heard of him without EC.

Back to For The Stars, there are a few more Costello covers, including "This House Is Empty Now" from the previous album!

For The Stars almost feels like a mish-mash of these 5 different albums:

1) I wrote these for you
2) I wanna hear you sing these covers
3) now do Pet Sounds please
4) I wrote these with Fleshquartet
5) pls perform all of my songs pls

"Shamed Into Love":

"I Want To Vanish" in a nice version here, slightly different than his own arrangement on ATUB. I have a feeling this is one of Costello's songs that he will never tire of hearing other people sing:

A few years ago, I went to Tokyo to act in a short film. While there, I set myself two goals.

The first was to acquire a Japanese God-Jesus robot, as referenced in the song, "Tokyo Storm Warning."

I looked and looked, but at this task, I failed.

The second task was to find a copy of the Japanese CD edition of For The Stars, which has one extra track, the Coots/Gillespie jazz standard, "You Go To My Head."

I went to many many CD shops before I finally found an enormous one that seemed to have everything.

Including THIS:

It felt like I had traveled across the globe JUST to get this extra 19th track.

(I also had no access to a CD player or drive for a week, so I just had this disc in my carry-on luggage, keeping its secrets until I got home to import it into my iTunes.)

"You Go To My Head":

I should have gone into this earlier in this thread, but now is a good spot to pick it up: Costello's terrific track record as a producer of other people's albums.

His main body of work in this regard being a trio of albums he produced between 1979 and 1985...

The Specials (1979)

open.spotify.com/album/438rUpZv…

Squeeze: East Side Story (1981)

open.spotify.com/album/4178w40u…

The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (1985)

open.spotify.com/album/2wRH4pcI…

In all three cases, Costello's described his approach as trying to capture what was great about those bands by staying out of the way.

Forgive me for not going into more detail on each one! And also for failing to type that he co-produced East Side Story w/Roger Bechirian! ⤵️

Obviously, For The Stars was a totally different approach to producing, one where he gave himself a more prominent name-above-the-title role, curating the song selection & singing on many of the tracks.

I'd like to take another side tangent into Costello's songs being performed by other artists; Rhino issued a compilation in 1998 called Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs & Rendevouz: Songs Of Elvis Costello.

It features 21 covers by various artists, spanning his whole career...

I have posted a lot of these tracks earlier in the thread at various points, but it is well worth seeking out a copy on ebay, where it can be found for a reasonable price, currently...

Since I've already posted several clips from songs on that compilation, I'll instead post a few Costello covers that aren't on it, candidates for if @Rhino_Records ever wants to do Bespoke Songs volume 2...

"Our Little Angel" by @rosannecash:

"Oliver's Army" by @blurofficial:

"Town Cryer" by @wetwetwetuk:

"Two Little Hitlers" by @toddrundgren:

"(I Love You) When You Sleep" by Tracie Young:

"The Miranda Syndrome" co-written with @rubenblades:

"Shipbuilding" by @suedeHQ:

"Shipbuilding" by @TheUnthanks:

"Peace In Our Time" by Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine:

"Sleep Of The Just" by Marti Jones:

"That's What Friends Are For" by Georgie Fame:

"Couldn't You Keep That To Yourself?" By @UteLempersMusic:

"It's Not Too Late" co-written with T Bone Burnett:

"God Give Me Strength" by @AudraEqualityMc:

"Everyday I Write The Book" by Winston Reedy:

Back to For The Stars, briefly: if you ever see the vinyl LP of this, it seems like it was mostly made for some kind of record company event where they gave everyone signed copies.

(I once had to sell my copy for rent money, but I have since acquired another...)

One last thing: Elvis brings Anne Sofie Von Otter to Late Show with David @Letterman:

And that's it for Day 28 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello...

For The Stars on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/0fUffGyl…

Day 29: When I Was Cruel

Promoted as Costello's "FIRST LOUD ALBUM SINCE 199?"

It's billed as a solo LP but features the debut of EC's newly-formed backing band, The Imposters (which is basically The Attractions minus Bruce + Davey Faragher on bass. They had not been named yet.)

Released April 23, 2002

It had been a full 6yrs since All This Useless Beauty, and although Costello had multiple high profile gigs & projects in that time, this was very much seen as a "return."

Of all his "back to basics" records, however, this one would be the most unusual

Unlike Blood & Chocolate, Brutal Youth or the later Momofuku, this album was not in any way a "back to basics"-type sound. Costello was playing around with loops, and was looking to make a bass-heavy record with a very different sound in mind.

I tend to think of this as an especially funny Costello album, mostly on the basis of a handful of songs that are overtly comical. The lurid sexuality & desperation of "Spooky Girlfriend" make it feel to me like a less upsetting distant cousin of "Chewing Gum":

The single "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution)" has its origins in a rejected sitcom that EC & T Bone Burnett pitched to The WB (now @TheCW.) It was about a group of supermodels who are secret agents & each ep would feature a new EC song.

This was one of the songs:

This song was written with @SusannaHoffs in mind & was eventually recorded by The Bangles:

And here's an acoustic version:

It's hard to know if The Arc Angels would've been a great sitcom or a strange misfire but I feel like there must've been at least one lousy 2001-era WB show that I would happily trade for a show that gave the world a new Costello/Burnett song performed by a guest star each week

Hey, did I forget to mention that by this point Costello was a GRAMMY winner? It was for "best pop collaboration with vocals" & he won it with Bacharach.

Anyway, that's old news! Here, watch The Imposters make their debut on @Letterman:

It's the 4th Costello album in a row with a title track!

Only this time, there's a twist: there are TWO "title tracks" & "When I Was Cruel No. 2" is the one that made the album.

(More on No. 1 in a bit...)

It's a darkly comic tale that unspools over the course of 7 minutes:

The whole song is set to a looped sample of the song, "Un Bacio È Troppo Poco" written by Antonio Amurri & Bruno Canfora and performed by Mina:

Here he is performing it with The Imposters on Jools Holland. This song feels to me like the album's defining track both in terms of its overall sound/vibe (moody & dense) and its lyrical content (funny & dark.)

In addition to songs from a proposed sitcom, the album takes a strange turn with this oddly specific song from the point of view of a beleaguered public defender, "Soul For Hire":

It is one of two songs Costello wrote for a film written by @QtipTheAbstract & Darnell Martin. EC's songs were both cut but his dual acting roles remain:

He also plays a public school teacher. Other stars in the film include @maryjblige @fisherstevensbk & @HaroldPerrineau

In the UK & Japan, the album includes as its 14th track Costello's second cut song, sung from the point of the school teacher, "Oh Well":

I don't want to speculate too much in this area, but "15 Petals" seems to have personal significance that I think ties in to the following year's LP.

"15 Petals/One for every year I spent with you" arrived not long after his 15th anniversary w/Cait O'Riordan & in the past tense:

This would be the last EC album dedicated to Cait. Some contemporaneous reviews viewed "15 Petals" to be a straightforward love song but this context makes it a complicated one to delve into. (Of course, the song is the song & maybe I am stupid garbage for even going there.)

"Tart" was one of my favorite tracks on the album when it came out, especially the repetition of the chorus.

(I can't find the interview now, but in recent years I believe Costello spoke of how this song was complete nonsense.)

"Dust 2..." is not a sequel but one of two versions of a song that are separated on the album by a few tracks to create a delayed bit of titular wordplay.

I think the "Dust" songs are among the records best & most key tracks. Playful and a little morbid...

They are fun with crazy horns & guitar solos but also-- and I think this is a defining trait of this particular record-- not especially emotion or deeply felt. The style of this record sort of pushes against deep feeling.

"...Dust":

Is there a more disposable album track on any Costello record than "Dissolve"?

I have no doubt this is someone's favorite track, no disrespect intended, but I sometimes forget this song exists. A bit of noise on a very long double LP. It's not bad, actually, just not essential:

"Alibi" is an interesting song to consider. Premiered in concert on the '99 tour, it became an instant fan favorite. The 3-year wait for it to show up on a record built up huge expectations.

I was torn about this song from the beginning. "I love you just as much... as I hate your GUTS!" always felt to me like a cartoon version of the original "Elvis Costello" character.

I *like* the song, but not as much as I feel like I'm supposed to, if that makes sense...

It *is* fun, but also feels like it may be trying too hard to pile on one sick burn after another, and unlike other similar Costello songs before and since, I am just not sure that it feels like he means it this time.

Also, the song had doubled in length since its live version, without really feeling like it needed to be a six-and-a-half-minute song.

(AND it weirdly feels a little more "80s" than most of the records he made in the actual 1980s.)

Re-visiting this album now, I kind of feel like 2/3rds of this record is the perfect version of "When I Was Cruel." And it's still album-length! And a handful of very good tracks wouldn't make it to my fanedit of that album, possibly including "Alibi." (Is this a "hot take"?)

Does "Daddy Can I Turn This?" make the cut for my personal fanedit of WIWC? Yes. Yes, it does.

I'm not 100% certain that this was one of the songs written for The Arc Angels, but I *think* it was?

Here's a snippet of the demo:

I can attest that while "My Little Blue Window" might not be the most ambitious or even the best song on When I Was Cruel, it was the song that made me the happiest when this album came out.

It was the kind of Costello song I had been waiting for & needed to hear:

This album came out when I was living in Ashland, Oregon, near my friend @JeffFalzone. We drove to Portland to see EC & The Imposters in a small club where we got right up near the stage. It was amazing.

We played this song 100 times on the drive there & back!

Another fun, name-droppy fact about this moment in time: I lived in Ashland, Oregon (pop. >20k) at the same time as my pal @DarcyCarden whom I wouldn't meet until we did improv&sketch comedy @ucbtny a decade later.

(U know her as Janets, good & bad, if u watch @nbcthegoodplace)

By the way, if u haven't caught up on @nbcthegoodplace yet, take my advice & binge-watch the first 2 seasons now & do NOT google it first.

You will thank me for this.

(This message is also for @ElvisCostello, I really think you'd like the show, you have good taste in Comedy.)

Now to artfully pivot back to the album, as we have reached the penultimate track, "Episode Of Blonde"...

I think "Episode Of Blonde" is, along with the title track, one of the two marquee numbers on this record. It's bold & funny & unlike any previous song Costello has done:

Is this song in any way nodding towards "Sex & The City"? Or is that too obvious? Just asking.

It just always impresses me that Costello takes big swings like this, consistently. This song could've been really dumb & embarrassing, instead I think it is cool & smart & clever & fun:

Costello is still barking out cool lyrics as the song wanders off into the distance, as if it carries on forever but we don't get to hear it:

"Radio Silence" ends the album on an ominous note, a hostage crisis in a radio station. This track is just EC on a number of instruments with Steve on electric keyboard:

This album was recorded in Dublin, and produced by "The Imposter"-- which was defined in this instance as the team of "Elvis Costello, Ciaran Cahill, Leo Pearson & Kieran Lynch."

After quite some time calling Ireland his home, that was about to end...

The fade-out of this feels a bit like U2 to me, although I may be forcing that connection & I'm certain it has no great significance except that I've chosen to focus on it in this moment.

It's a tender moment at the end of an album that isn't especially emotional.

That has me pivoting back to the album's opening track, "45" (which I talked about wayyyyyy back at the top of this megathread) & one aspect of this record where I think it falls down.

I think the sonic approach of this LP doesn't work for more deeply-felt songs.

I wish I had the video, but I'll re-post the audio of Costello's world premiere of the song, "45" on the Tonight Show with @jayleno, to demonstrate what a whopper of a heartfelt, personal song this is. Costello tells his life story in a thumbnail sketch, and it is SO perfect:

This song, performed like this on Leno & on the '99 tour, felt like one of Costello's all-time great songs: it's about the span of his whole life; love & loss, regret, and how through it all music defined him, and saved him, again & again.

The album version, to me, feels brutalized by the When I Was Cruel sound: the electric guitar, the pounding beat, the backing vocals. It's a fun sound but compared to its original arrangement, so much of the feeling is gone. This no longer feels personal.

This is obviously all just my opinion, maybe it really worked for others, maybe many prefer this version. I just don't feel it at all in this arrangement.

Sometimes, there are live performances of it that inch back a little towards some of that original feeling, but as long as it's based on the faster, louder, more aggressive WIWC arrangement, it loses something, for me...

It's no accident the more tender songs premiered on EC's 1999 tour were held for later LPs: "I Dreamed Of My Old Lover Last Night" "Heart-Shaped Bruise" + Look Now's "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter" & "Suspect My Tears."

But "45" was time-sensitive-- by April 2002, he was already 47!

It is here that I will move to another song I feel was slightly brutalized by the WIWC "sound," the devastatingly confessional "When I Was Cruel No. 1."

As played on the 1999 tour, it cuts like a knife; yet another self-critical look at his behavior during his 1st marriage:

To me, it feels like Costello needed to cut a companion disc to WIWC that was a simpler, more direct sound; maybe a Costello & Nieve album closer in feel to King Of America? In any case, I would love to hear the demo for WIWC#1...

The studio version of "When I Was Cruel No. 1" has the same powerful lyric, but to me it feels like the heart of it has been stripped out; the beat is heavy & plodding, the vocal louder & less vulnerable.

I hate having these opinions, bc I love these songs & feel like they are among his best & most personal work. But the WIWC sound actively pushes against them, bullies them into submission; "Poisoned Rose" or "I Want To Vanish" wouldn't have survived this treatment, either.

But this brings me to a happier topic: Cruel Smile, the separate release which is sort of like the "bonus disc" for WIWC without requiring the passage of time needed for an album reissue, making WIWC one of the few 1998-present works to have its bonus tracks handily compiled...

In addition to "When I Was Cruel No. 1," Cruel Smile collects two versions of his cover of the Charlie Chaplin song, "Smile," one recorded in NYC with a full string section...

And another recorded in Paris with Steve Nieve & a smaller combo...

There are also several interesting remixes & alternate takes, including "Revolution Doll" which has a trippy "Taxman" vibe

"Honeyhouse" shows how the album's title track works with the Mina sample replace with a different beat beneath it...

But best of all is "Peroxide Side (Blunt Cut)" which transforms "Episode Of Blunt" into a throttling affair. I'm stunned that this track hasn't turned up in a movie at any point in the past two decades:

I have honestly listened to this remix more often than many of the tracks on When I Was Cruel...

"The Imposter vs. The Floodtide (Dust & Petals)"

Beyond these remixes & the b-sides, the rest of Cruel Smile is live tracks, so what we are really missing in terms of WIWC bonus material are the demos, which I have a feeling are a treasure trove...

Costello gave a boost to some up-and-coming Liverpool musicians around this time, including the band Amsterdam & Steven Kennedy, who backed him in this appearance on Jonathan Ross...

Steven Kennedy contributes some background vocals on WIWC, and Costello did the same plus guitar on Kennedy's album, Control Freak, on its closing track, "Autopilot":

And Costello recorded with Amsterdam on their cover of "Don't Throw Your Love Away":

Also, this is from decades earlier, but I'll throw it in here anyway-- Costello's cover of Prefab Sprout's "Cruel":

And Prefab Sprout's original:

Ok, that's Day 29 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Cruel links...

When I Was Cruel on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/4KimXT9k…

Cruel Smile on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/0jHxKNq7…

When I Was Cruel spot illustration by Eamonn Singer:

Day 30: North

Maybe the single most controversial record of Costello's career?

Also, his most personally revealing, and I think a contender for his best work on this side of the year 2000.

Released September 23, 2003

Though not a jazz album in the traditional sense, it reached #1 on Billboard's "Traditional Jazz" chart.

More surprising than the genre is that this is an LP that seems to draw its inspiration directly from major recent events in EC's private life.

"Arranged & conducted by Elvis Costello"

Straight away, I like this album and am struck by the fact that this is Costello flexing the musical muscles he has developed since The Juliet Letters 10+ years earlier.

"You Left Me In The Dark":

The lyrics on this record are spare, and to the point. He has learned from Bacharach, and McCartney, too. We are a million miles from the cryptic codes of Armed Forces. He's not giving up all of his secrets, but this is a completely different mode of songwriting for Costello...

It's likely too simplistic to be confident in a 1-to-1 reading of North/the reality that inspired it, but it seems clear that the 1st half is about the end of his relationship w/Cait O'Riordan & the 2nd half is about falling in love w/Diana Krall

"Someone Took The Words Away":

And look: this isn't a record for all moods. It's a rainy day LP, not meant for all occasions.

But Lee Konitz's alto sax solo at the end of this is as thrilling as anything The Attractions/Imposters have ever played, & that kind of thing doesn't get said enough about this album.

This album was shocking to me when it first came out; Costello had always been dismissive of songwriters who "set their diary to music" but this seemed like to some extent he was doing exactly that, and artfully.

"When Did I Stop Dreaming?":

That was lyrically; musically, this album seemed like the logical next step for Costello. Painted From Memory was an album where EC often deferred to Bacharach's expertise, but this was an album were all the orchestral colors were the ones Costello heard in his head.

It is fascinating to me to observe how the same themes of broken relationships & fragile emotions recur in different ways throughout Costello's body of work. The songs of 1978 were just as wounded but cloaked the pain w/rage; these songs don't need to...

"You Turned To Me":

I think some of the songs on North have been overlooked because they get swallowed up in people's impressions of the entire song cycle. "Fallen" feels like it should be a ballad other melancholy singers are tripping over themselves to cover:

I realize this is just for the promo shoot, but I'll be disappointed to ever learn that the pianos for the album sessions weren't also covered in leaves.

I can't just go with that piano & voice version, I have to post from the album, it sounds too good not to. Just LISTEN to this arrangement, especially near the end of this clip:

He has gone from a bold-sounding & very fun record in When I Was Cruel to something that is totally opposite: North is pure, genuine feeling, from start-to-finish. Emotion is its main thing.

"When It Sings" is effectively this album's end of Act I.

"Maybe this is the love song that I refused to/write her when I loved her like I used to" is one of the saddest lines on the album.

The last time Costello's personal life was at this kind of crossroads, it resulted in one of his weakest & most confused albums; this time, he was clear-eyed enough to take the opportunity to make an LP that was partly patterned after some of his very favorite records...

Costello has always cited Sinatra's Only The Lonely & No One Cares as being among his favorite albums. Perhaps part of the reason he was able to make his own version of this kind of record was bc his own life had moved on to its happier next chapter, allowing him an Act II...

"Still" is this album's "single" & features The Brodsky Quartet. It marks the beginning of the album's happier 2nd half, Costello falling in love with Diana Krall...

On @Letterman for the 2nd time in 2003!

His previous 2003 appearance was as guest host!

Pulling out all the stops with a made-to-order "Alison" spoof:

Leave it to Elvis to find an opportunity to name drop @_Raymond_Scott_! (And moments later, Sir Elton John!)

Since we're flashing back from one Letterman appearance back to the previous one, let's flash back within the flashback to Sir Elton John inducting Elvis Costello & The Attractions into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame 2 days earlier:

A few years earlier, Costello published a list in Vanity Fair of "500 albums you should own." I'll get around to it later in this thread when I have some breathing room.

Long story short: Elton John was pissed off not to have made the top 500 albums...

Costello later published an article detailing "24 hours of music" for Vanity Fair and made sure to include Elton's Tumbleweed Connection. Also, Elton was good friends with Diana Krall, so soon enough everything was smoothed over & Elvis + DK got married at EJ's castle!

Guess what wasn't smoothed over?

Costello & The Attractions were the ones being inducted, but there was no performance reunion-- The Imposters played that night instead, with Bruce watching.

Costello & The Attractions shared the stage only when it was time for speeches.

Costello lists his influences, then talks about Pete & Steve:

Costello then talks about Bruce, briefly.

This clip cuts off before Bruce steps to the mic-- if memory serves, he says "Thanks for the memories" and that's it.

Now, flashing forward 2 days, back to Late Show!

Elvis is interviewing my pal, @KimCattrall! (Coincidentally, talking about the same thing I first chatted with her about when she did ASSSSCAT monologues not too long ago: Liverpool!)

And then, guest @eddieizzard:

Then guest Mitch Hedberg:

And finally, musical guest Elvis Costello & The Imposters!

Now, flashing all the way back to the album at hand, North: "Let Me Tell You About Her" is one of the most gushingly positive love songs Costello has ever written, while also being a song that makes fun of itself for being gushingly positive:

It probably would've been too much of a pastiche to have Side One be like a "sad" Sinatra album & have Side Two be "swingin'!"

But it is a clear shift in tone & there is even a giddy quality that is new for EC & kind of refreshing.

"Can You Be True?" is a tender song, a song of hopes & doubts & fears; it's a good example of one of the strengths of Side Two-- Costello doesn't suddenly start writing about moonbeams & puppy dogs. Side One casts a long shadow even onto the sunny side of the record...

This isn't an especially flashy album, but I think it may be the best his unadorned voice has ever sounded. (When it came out in 2003, it made me wish that some of the songs on Painted From Memory could've been produced & arranged by Costello alone.)

This record made a lot of people angry, and I think that was at least partly because it came so quickly on the heels of When I Was Cruel & the formation of The Imposters. I think some fans finally got whiplash from this album.

"When Green Eyes Turn Blue":

One of the things I like best about North is that it was written as a complete set of songs, designed to be an album; no cast-offs from other, incomplete projects being shoehorned in.

I had only recently moved to New York City when North was released, and I remember it thrilled me that in the closing track he referenced the Empire State Building, which I could now see from Brooklyn apartment window.

"I'm In The Mood Again":

EC, 2009: "There's another version of North. One that I recorded when I was, if you like, at my wits' end. I went into the studio above Steinway Hall on 57th Street [in New York]. I played the piano myself. It was Errol Garner's piano, and it was practically impossible to play."

EC, 2009: "I stumbled through the songs. The result actually does sound like a man on the edge. If I'd put that out, I think the idiots who wrote those 'it's a Dean Martin record' reviews would have seen the common ground with the raw songs in my catalogue."

EC, 2009: "North wasn't all about desolation. It was also about renewal. I know that album is a very difficult listen. But North is exactly what it is supposed to be."

EC (2009) talking about North, references the song "In Another Room," released on a 2004 EP: "Now that is a song straight from life. And when I finished it, I thought, 'Well, I'm not putting that out... Because, put centre stage, it would sound self-pitying. So you bury it."

There are 3 bonus tracks related to North, all of them good. But it is shocking to me that in some territories North doesn't end on "I'm In The Mood Again," which is the perfect album closer, but instead closes with one of these bonus tracks.

I'll start with the North-iest of the North bonus tracks, the "digital download"-only track, "North."

This brings us back to the early 80s Costello tradition of having a title track that isn't on the album.

It is a happy song about moving to Canada (where Krall is from):

Revealing the literal meaning of the album's title, it also knocks away any possible defense that these songs aren't directly autobiographical.

He might as well have included the lyric, "My name is Declan/and by the way/these songs are about me.”

It would've made a fine closing track, but I think he made the right choice to make it separate. "I'm In The Mood Again" is the stronger song & closing track. Although this could've been a fun "hidden" track after like a solid minute of silence...

It's a lovely tune; this is where the emotional truth driving these sessions makes what could've felt like a lightweight novelty song ("up where the polar bears & moose & geese will play") take on greater depth. He is as committed to this as he is to the more tragic numbers:

"Too Blue" is a snazzy, jazzy number that just doesn't have a place within the proper song cycle of North. It's an upbeat number but it's "about" sadness, so it would logically fall within Side One's jurisdiction, but man would this undermine the mood of those other songs.

It could've maybe served as a bridge from the sad songs to the happy ones, but I think it was smart to make it a bonus track.

Some fun work by Steve Nieve on the Hammond organ:

This brings me to my favorite of the 3 North bonus tracks, and the one whose very existence FASCINATES me: "Impatience."

It is a track that falls within the Side Two side of things, but would feel SO out-of-place within the song cycle.

For one thing, it features The Imposters!

Not only is it an Imposters track, it also features Marc Ribot on guitar plus a full horn AND string section!

Were there other songs from these sessions like this? This honestly feels like it is from an entirely different album!

And it's great! Very, very fun.

The moment I heard this, my hopes shot up for EC to make an LP that used The Imposters this way, something closer to the production spirit of IbMePdErRoIoAmL's fully orchestrated pop, the kind of sound that would suit then-unreleased gems like "Burnt Sugar" & "Suspect My Tears."

Costello clearly holds "Impatience" in high regard; he included it on the barely-released "best of the universal years" compilation that would sort-of come out a few years later.

I wonder, did he attempt any other songs with Thr Imposters at this time? Or just the one song??

This is why it would be great if there was some kind of new equivalent of the Rhino reissues, whether that means a superdeluxe box set or subscription to an archive, or a series of limited edition releases.

EC fans know too well that each album has a shadow full of bonus tracks.

The North demos sound like an essential piece of the puzzle that are begging to be heard.

Likewise, if he attempted more than one song w/The Imposters + Marc Ribot. I'd even just love to know what the deal was w/"Impatience"-- it seems like a whole lot of effort for an obscurity

Following closely on the heels of North was a record I can't help but think of as its companion, 2004's The Girl In The Other Room by @DianaKrall. It was her first LP to feature original songs (co-written with Costello.)

The title track:

DK: "I wrote the music and then Elvis and I talked about what we wanted to say. I told him stories and wrote pages and pages of reminiscences, descriptions and images, and he put them into tighter lyrical form."

"I've Changed My Address":

Half of the album's 12 tracks are co-written originals; Costello's role as a kind of lyrics editor makes this collaboration I think different than any of his previous songwriting partnerships.

"Narrow Daylight":

If I had to blindly guess which songs Costello had a hand in writing, "Abandoned Masquerade" would be my first pick based on the title alone.

If untitled, the first line would also give it away: "The glitter on a paint and plaster face/is covering desire and disgrace."

These songs feel like Krall's, though, despite Costello's assistance. They seem in some places even more personal to her than EC's songs on North do to him.

"I'm Coming Through":

DK: "For 'Departure Bay,' I wrote down a list of things that I love about home, things I realized were different, even exotic, now that I've been away."

Beyond the songs they wrote together, Krall's inclusion of songs by Costello favorites Tom Waits, Mose Allison & Joni Mitchell feels like he had been making her mix tapes (a la For The Stars.)

"Temptation":

Krall also included what would instantly become Costello's personal favorite cover of one of his most-covered songs, "Almost Blue":

Ok, I have obviously gone wayyyyy over once again and need to wrap up Day 30 and get cooking on Day 31.

Here is Costello performing "I'm In The Mood Again" on Late Night With Conan O'Brien:

And here is 3 seconds of Krall & Costello (I think) meeting at the 2002 Grammy awards, where they were presenting along with Gwen Stefani (Alicia Keys was the winner):

I don't know if this was the occasion where Costello & Krall first met, but I remember watching the Grammys as they aired that year and thinking "three people is too many to present an award."

Ok, that's it for Day 30 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

North links...

North on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/2kXTizFZ…

Diana Krall's The Girl In The Other Room:
open.spotify.com/album/7dZFqyK7…

Day 31: The Delivery Man

The first official "Elvis Costello & The Imposters" album has its roots in some kind of narrative work that Costello had been teasing in concert since 1999, but that doesn't much matter. This is just a good record of good songs, played & recorded well.

Released September 20, 2004

When it was learned that Costello was making a new album in small recording studios in Mississippi, fans started referring to this record as "South."

Costello had been playing songs from a project called The Delivery Man since 1999. I don't know if it was intended to become a stage musical or a concept album, but his intros to various songs indicated that there was a larger narrative thread involved...

By the time this record came out, none of that mattered. Not all of the known "Delivery Man" songs were included, and at least 5 songs on the album had nothing to do with it.

Possibly more! I *think* opening track "Button My Lip" was a TDM song, but I honestly can't remember:

All that mattered was that The Imposters were now fully Costello's band on record, and they sounded great.

This song featured an apparently pricey quote from "America" by Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim:

When I Was Cruel hadn't fully felt like a "band" record, more like a solo experiment that Costello invited them to participate in. This is the band's proper, credited debut, and their chance to show what they are capable of.

Is "Country Darkness" a 'Delivery Man' song? I have no idea, and if EC thought any of that was important, he would've comminicated it.

What I do know is that it's one of the best songs on the LP. Imposters bass player Davey Faragher proves himself an asset as a vocalist, too:

This track also features John McFee (of My Aim Is True & Almost Blue) on pedal steel guitar:

"There's A Story In Your Voice" is the 1st track I know for certain to be a 'Delivery Man' song, w/Lucinda Williams (@HappyWoman9) as the voice of "Vivian."

(Vivian, Geraldine & Ivy are 3 known characters in the story, along w/the titular delivery man.)

The song is a fun romp:

I say I know for certain, and yet I immediately doubted myself as soon as I tweeted it! Maybe Lucinda is playing Vivian but it's not a song that's part of the narrative! (See, how little it matters?)

Her vocal is crazy energetic, in a good way:

The next track is NOT part of the DM narrative (and I think I remember EC indicating it was under consideration for North) but it 1st appeared on a record by singer Howard Tate.

(It is one of two songs on TDM covered by/written for soul legends.)

"Either Side Of The Same Town":

I only know of Howard Tate because of Costello, who played this song on a radio show he was guest dj-ing on in the 90s:

I highly recommend you seek out his excellent 1967 album, Get It While You Can.

Here is a YouTube playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Costello's own version of "Either Side Of The Same Town" is muscular and soulful. The Imposters sound great:

It's chaos in the Middle East as Steve Nieve goes crazy on the theremin on "Bedlam," another song that is not part of the TDM narrative but is instead outward-looking commentary on the state of the world in 2004:

OOPS, backing up: I forgot to mention that "Either Side Of The Same Town" was co-written with Jerry Ragovoy!

rollingstone.com/music/music-ne…

The title track feels like a gateway to a story that Costello never really got around to telling us:

Costello is currently developing a stage musical based on "A Face In The Crowd" after a few other musicals have failed to make it to a full production.

While I think this album is fully successful as a record, it does feel like a half-abandoned attempt at something grander...

This wouldn't be Costello's only album of the decade to be built around the husk of a work-in-progress musical/operetta. I think I am probably happier with this album "as-is" than I would've been had The Delivery Man ever become a fully-realized production...

The single, "Monkey To Man," felt like light commentary on George W. Bush, but it was undeniably an answer song to Dave Bartholomew's "The Monkey."

It was also the first Costello song in quite some time to have an actual music video:

Who is the cartoonist who designed the title cards in this video?

"Nothing Clings Like Ivy" is another TDM song, featuring @EmmylouSongbird as the voice of "Geraldine":

Emmylou also duets with Costello on "Heart-Shaped Bruise."

I was at the Ryman in Nashville for the show where he premiered this song:

"The Name Of This Thing Is Not Love" could be a TDM song! Or not!

It is also a kind of textbook "Elvis Costello" song-- and this time I mean that in a good way!

(Previously, on some later "angry" songs I felt were pushing a little too hard, I have meant that as a criticism.)

Of course, Steve Nieve's playing goes a long way towards making me like this song (The Imposters overall are just so good throughout this record.)

"Needle Time" is a swampy, blues-y rock & roll number that wouldn't be out of place on a 21st century Dylan record, which means it's harkening back of course to pre-Dylan influences.

("I wish that I didn't hate you/'least not as much as I do" feels like a rejected "Alibi" lyric)

As co-produced by @dcherring (owner of @SweetTeaRec Studios in Oxford, MS) this album has a really fun sound.

I don't know enough about music to explain why this feels different from The Attractions, but it does:

"The Judgement" was written for Solomon Burke, whose version was produced in 2002 by @JoeHenryMusic (who will produce the next Imposters album, in 2006!)

"The Judgement" was written by Costello & O'Riordan before he end of their marriage, marking the end of a decades-long songwriting collaboration that led to 13 songs, basically one full album's worth.

This feels like a fitting one to go out on:

The closing track, "The Scarlet Tide" further confuses the issue of the "Delivery Man" saga, as it features Emmylou on vocals but I don't believe she is playing "Geraldine" here-- though I could, of course, be wrong!

The song was written by Costello & T Bone Burnett for the movie Cold Mountain, here performed on the soundtrack by @AlisonKrauss:

This song was nominated for an Oscar!

Of course, Costello should already *have* an Oscar, for "God Give Me Strength."

And "The Scarlet Tide" song is great, deserving of trophies. But I must confess, I was not rooting for it to win that year...

No matter how obsessive a Costello fan I am, I simply could not root against Mitch & Mickey aka @Catherine O'Hara & @Realeugenelevy aka songwriters @MJMcKean & @_amckean for "A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow" from A Mighty Wind. It's just too perfect:

I said earlier in the thread what a "big ask" it was for Costello & Bacharach to write the song that every character in the movie raves about; the parties involved set themselves an equally difficult goal with this song in A Mighty Wind, and they NAILED IT.

I *think* this is their Oscars clip (hard to tell with all the onscreen graphics layered over it)...

Yeah, it's the Oscars. Just listen to how much that crowd loves this.

...and here it is, an equally lovely performance by its songwriters, @_amckean & @MJMcKean:

Oh well. There was no beating Tolkien that year, and @AnnieLennox!

In any case, everyone is pals! Here is Costello & @AnnieLennox on the 1985 Eurythmics track, "Adrian"!

And here is Costello as a surprise guest with Spinal Tap, singing "Gimme Some Money":

And here is Costello singing the Guest/@MJMcKean classic, "Penny For Your Thoughts" in 2007 (audio over footage from the scene in Waiting For Guffman):

And here is the same clip with its actual audio, sung by @parkerposey & Christopher Guest:

A bonus track in some regions, later included as a regular album track in a deluxe reissue, "She's Pulling Out The Pin" explores the life of a stripper vs. that of a suicide bomber. (I always forget about this song for some reason, and I almost did it again today!)

EC (2004): "['She's Pulling Out The Pin'] juxtaposes the most heartless part of our culture and the most desperate part of another culture. Two women's fates. It's just a bald telling of it. It doesn't have a judgement. They're both desperate, dead-end jobs."

The Delivery Man also had a companion EP (originally released as a 10") called The Clarkdale Sessions, featuring alternate takes and including this cover of Dave Bartholomew's "The Monkey":

This isn't from the Delivery Man sessions, but it's from around the same time and would/could be on a hypothetical bonus disc if this album were reissued now-- "Crying Time" duet with Wanda Jackson:

And here is their 2004 Letterman appearance:

Plus a tender solo ukulele performance of "The Scarlet Tide":

I think that might be a wrap on Day 31 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

(Now I can start working on Day 32!)

The Delivery Man on Spotify-- including bonus material from The Clarksdale Sessions!
open.spotify.com/album/5HYkfGVP…

Day 32: Il Sogno

"Elvis Costello's first full-length orchestral work."

Written in 2000 for the Italian dance company @Aterballetto's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, it was then recorded in 2002 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas

Released September 21, 2004

Although this was being recorded around the time When I Was Cruel was coming out, it was released 2 years later, on the same day as The Delivery Man.

This was Costello's second release on UMG's Deutsche Grammophon label.

It was also his second album in 2 years to reach #1 on the charts (North on Billboard's Traditional Jazz Chart, Il Sogno on Billboard's Top Classical Chart.)

Costello & @mtilsonthomas talking about the decision to record the score with the @LondonSymphony Orchestra:

Costello talking about the involvement of saxophonist John Harle (of Terror & Magnificence) & drummer @petererskine, who would go on to play on the following year's North:

Is drummer @petererskine the secret key to Costello's consecutive #1 albums on Billboard's Jazz & Classical Charts?

Il Sogno was recorded at @AbbeyRoad Studios, in Studio One, the same room where "A Day In The Life" & "All You Need Is Love" were recorded, along with the scores for the Star Wars & Harry Potter movies:

Last year when @willhines & I were in London, I convinced him to rent a day of studio time to record episodes of his Beatles podcast there.

He can confirm that when we briefly stepped into historic Studio One I said out loud "this is where Costello recorded Il Sogno."

Archival footage of noted author/improviser/podcaster @willhines noodling on a guitar at Abbey Road Studios, only a few hundred feet from where Il Sogno & "A Day In The Life" were recorded:

ALSO recorded at Abbey Road: this "live in the studio" performance of the Ratliff/@Mikeyerg Secular XMAS classic, "No One Wants A Pizza On XMAS Day" feat. @joelaspence on guitar:
connorratliffmikeyerg.bandcamp.com/album/no-one-w…

Back to Il Sogno-- which, annoyingly, in many fonts including twitter's, looks like "2 Sogno" instead of "IL SOGNO"-- oh wait, there it is, I'll just use all caps from here on.

Forgive me for shouting the title in all future tweets.

"Overture":

Not that I'm "qualified" to talk about ANY of these records, but I'm especially out of my depth here. All I can say is that I really do enjoy listening to the recording of IL SOGNO.

If there were to be a "single" for airplay on classical radio, I'd nominate "Puck 1":

And a marching band rendition of "Puck 1" from a 2009 Carolina Crown rehearsal in Texas:

Before I became a Costello fan in my late teens, I would say that 60+% of my record collection was movie scores. But I always feel intimidated by people with nuts & bolts knowledge of classical music. I just know what I like the feeling of.

Act One, "The Court":

I used to browse the classical section at Tower Records in London & NYC and look around at all the ppl browsing who seemed to know exactly what they were looking for, realizing that I would probably never have the time nor the energy to catch up.

Act One, "The State Of Affairs":

By contrast, the Shakespearean element of IL SOGNO is the part I find least intimidating, it gives me an easy point-of-entry for understanding/appreciating what's going on, musically; this title is as familiar as "Sam & Diane" or "Ross & Rachel."

Act One, "Hermia & Lysander":

I just don't have the language or knowledge to really judge this kind of music beyond the basic "I like this"/"I'm bored." The closest I come is being able to distinguish when parts of it are being functional (ie scoring action or characters)

Act One, "The Jealousy Of Helena":

A lot of IL SOGNO strikes me as playful. It feels like Costello is having fun with it. Ugh, maybe that's a dumb observation. I feel like I would have to listen to 1000 classical recordings before I would even begin to know what I'm talking about

Act One, "Workers' Playtime":

Let's go to two people who seem to know what they're talking about (at least certainly compared to ME, anyway): @terryteachout & @alexrossmusic both wrote about IL SOGNO in 2004...

Pushing past the "His Aim Is True" headline (which @terryteachout most likely had nothing to do with) the most striking thing to a novice like me is that the phrase "it's perfectly competent" turns out to actually be a hell of a compliment once you read the 'graph that follows:

In fact, this seems like a rave review, and a knowledgeable one (Teachout's hope that this isn't a one-off hasn't aged well, since it has been close to two decades without a significant instrumental follow-up.)

The review from @alexrossmusic is more cutting from the backhanded compliment of the headline (which I assume *is* his work, since this is a blog post, not a print article.)

Ross calls Costello's work skillful/not inept but "bafflingly trite" & "ranked with mediocre Sibelius":

Ross also demonstrates that he isn't being a snob; IL SOGNO just bored him, to the point where he stopped listening & took out a book, mid-concert.

(Oh, btw, both these reviews are of a 2004 concert w/The Brooklyn Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, not the recording with the LSO)

I was at that Lincoln Center concert in summer 2004, one of three shows that week including an Imposters show where he played all of The Delivery Man songs, months before the 2 albums would be released. My memory of the TDM show is clearer, I'll admit...

Plot-wise, Act Two is where we enter the fairy realm, and the music takes a shift towards elements of swing music & improvisation, with John Harle on saxophone & @petererskine on drums...

Act Two, "Oberon And Titania":

EC (liner notes): "I deliberately set aside modern composing methods involving computers, preferring a pencil & paper. The 200-page score was completed in approx. 10 weeks, the latter 170 pages being written against the pressures of a deadline directly into full score."

EC (liner notes): "My orchestrations may not obey certain conventions, but they sound just as I imagined them. I have learned by listening. I’m just using common sense and writing down what I want to hear. I don’t come in and pretend to know more than I do.”

I know I may have mentioned Costello's BAFTA-winning score w/Richard Harvey for the UK miniseries G.B.H. but believe it or not I have SKIPPED OVER several Costello projects in this megathread due to sloppiness/laziness/exhaustion.

I will get around to ONE of these on Day 44:

My guess is that a lot of classical/orchestral music expertise has to do with being able to spot when something is derivative and determining whether or not it is derivitive in a clever or worthwhile way.

Act Two, "The Conspiracy Of Oberon And Puck":

.@mtilsonthomas: "I think he just uses his ears intrepidly. There's a lot of jazz in this score & there are parts that sound quite impressionistic or Russian... He keeps coming back to these unusual Debussy-like harmonies that begin the piece."

Act Two, "Slumber":

.@mtilsonthomas: "Elvis has imagined the characters in Shakespeare's play having come from different worlds: from pop or jazz or classical."

Me: this one sounds like it could be the theme for a 1950s detective show.

Act Two, "Puck 2":

I think Costello may have had this specific composition in mind shortly after when he premiered this new arrangement of "Watching The Detectives" with The Metropole Orkest in 2004:

The deeper I get into re-listening to this, the less I care about my lack of expertise & the more I start responding on a gut level: "I like this."

(This part is when the love quadrangle starts to get all mixed up bc of misdirected fairy magic.)

Act Two, "The Identity Parade":

This is big & brassy & boldly melodic. I love it.

I'm gonna go ahead & pitch it: @rianjohnson, when u get around to that next Star Wars trilogy & John Williams isn't scoring it, E. Costello would probably write the wittiest SW score imaginable.

"The Identity Parade" (cont'd.):

EC: "There are elements of parody & humor in the piece, as well as passages representing confusion, jealousy, anger & turmoil. These cues have the edges, angles that I go looking for in rock & roll but the way they are achieved is utterly different."

Act 2, "The Face Of Bottom":

The way this score can veer from, say, horror to humor and back again, or on to some other feeling within a matter of moments feels natural to Costello, whose whole career and many works within it have been defined by unexpected left turns.

Act Two, "The Spark Of Love":

I would like for Elvis Costello & John Harle to work together more. I loved their work together on his Terror & Magnificence album, and I like it every time he shows up on IL SOGNO.

Act Two, "Tormentress":

I think the first thing I ever heard John Harle on (before I knew his name) was probably @michaelnyman's score for Jane Campion's film, The Piano. I don't think I had ever heard a saxophone sound like this before:

I am almost-- ALMOST-- tempted to buy this impressive-looking book he wrote called The Saxophone, published just last year. It looks fascinating. But I do not now nor will I ever play the saxophone, so it would be pointless for me to buy this book!

johnharle.com/the-saxophone.…

I'll add to my very long Elvis Costello wishlist that I would love to hear him perform "The Only Flame In Town" with John Harle performing a completely deconstructed version of the saxophone part:

I was going to say this sounds like it has a touch of "circus music" to it, but then I found myself thinking it sounded a bit like Prokofiev, and BOOM there you have it, I am starting to sound almost like I know a thing or two about classical music!

Act Two, "Oberon Humbled":

I think this part may have been what Costello was talking about when he mentioned "passages representing confusion, jealousy, anger & turmoil."

Act Two, "Twisted – Entangled – Transform and Exchange":

[Not to keep circling round to XMAS music but if/when EC does fulfill his destiny & make one of the Top 5 Holiday albums of all time, my hope is that there will be orchestrations involved w/lots of sophisticated, fun, obscure musical references]

Act Two, "The Fairy And The Ass":

This track is named after the thing I haven't been getting enough of bc I keep falling behind & staying up till 5am to work on this twitter thread!

It also sounds like a few of EC's favorite Sinatra albums before segueing into Bernard Hermann's "Taxi Driver."

Act Two, "Sleep":

It's kind of amazing that this work hasn't led to offers from Hollywood to score a film or two. Who knows, maybe it has & EC is constantly saying no to filmmakers? It feels like he would've become more of a Randy Newman by now, given his talent for it.

Act Two, "Bottom Awakes":

Imagine going back in time and telling people in 1978 that this guy will someday write a full orchestral symphony based on A Midsummer Night's Dream and it will be lovely?

It is striking that EC hasn't made another full-length instrumental piece since 2002. I wonder, did IL SOGNO scratch the itch & then he moved on entirely? It would be fascinating to hear what he would write as a pure work, not tied to a dance piece.

Act Two, "Lovers Arise":

I want the 1st part of this to be played if I ever win a major award.

I want the 2nd part to be played if I am ever in a storm at sea.

I want the 3rd part to be played if I ever awaken from a long coma.

Act Three, "The Play":

Oh, also, IL SOGNO is the one of the few major Costello albums that has yet to be released on vinyl! @MusicOnVinyl or @MFSL, what are the chances of an LP reissue?

Act Three, "The Wedding":

I think there are probably a lot of people who haven't heard IL SOGNO and assume that it's boring who would actually really like it. I hope that at least a few people exploring this thread are discovering it now & finding it to be a pleasant surprise.

Act Three, "The Wedding":

Hey, I just realized that "Puck One" has always reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on...

...it gives me the same feeling as Frank Zappa's "Dog Breath Variations" on The Yellow Shark. I assume EC is familiar with it, I wonder if he likes it or if it was anywhere in his mind when he was composing IL SOGNO, and "Puck One" specifically...

One last little thing I'll mention here, flashing back to Meltdown 1995: the world premiere of a brief orchestral work by EC called "Edge Of Ugly," performed by The London Philharmonic.

It was supposedly 3 minutes long. Anyone out there ever heard a recording of it?

Phew! That's it for Day 32 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello...

IL SOGNO links...

Liner notes:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

IL SOGNO on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/5LckeN1E…

Day 33: Piano Jazz/My Flame Burns Blue

Today we'll do another round of time-shifting, since these 2 official live records were recorded in 2003/2004 but not released until 2005/2006!

Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with guest Elvis Costello

Recorded May 3, 2003
Released July 12, 2005

McPartland hosted this NPR show from 1978 till 2011, with many episodes being released on CDs in the 90s & 00s, guests ranging from Steely Dan to Bill Evans...

My Flame Burns Blue

Recorded July 9, 2004
Released February 28, 2006

This album is maybe the closest thing in spirit to what I wanted from a Meltdown 95 box set.

I'm gonna start with the Piano Jazz record and get around to My Flame Burns Blue later in the day.

This being essentially just a CD release of a radio broadcast, it's conversation & performance. McPartland & Costello have an instant rapport:

This is such a low-key release, it really is just like you're in the room with two friends who start performing a few songs for each other.

"At Last" by Mack Gordon & Henry Warren:

Elvis talking about his dad, and also some of his other influences, including Georgie Fame:

EC talking about his ability to sing harmonies:

"My Funny Valentine" by Rodgers & Hart:

McPartland sounds genuinely surprised & intrigued by Costello.

Costello talking about his early days playing gigs, and making the transition to writing songs on the piano...

Costello & McPartland perform "Almost Blue" with Gary Mazzaroppi on bass:

Elvis & Marian talk about Chet Baker:

"We could do that!" "Let's us do one." McPartland's enthusiasm every time Costello mentions a song is infectious. She seems delighted by Costello, who seems equally pleased to be there. This feels like two pals, hanging out:

"The Very Thought Of You" by Ray Noble:

Elvis talks about being asked to sing songs that are "out of character":

McPartland: "You picked the darkest song I know."

"Gloomy Sunday" by Rezső Seress & Sam Lewis:

In the same way that The Juliet Letters was my unexpected point-of-entry for EC, I could easily imagine someone hearing this on NPR & becoming intrigued, only to find themselves 6 months later listening to "Uncomplicated."

It feels like McPartland will play any song he mentions:

I know Costello sent her a mix CD of possible songs they could do, but the vibe of the show feels very spontaneous, as if they could play anything next.

"You Don't Know What Love Is" by Gene de Paul & Don Ray:

Costello explains the concept of The Juliet Letters to McPartland; I would not be surprised if she acquired a copy to listen to the following week:

Costello talks about playing "They Didn't Believe Me" for the 1993 Brodsky Quartet tour; McPartland is game to try playing it with him:

"They Didn't Believe Me" by Jerome Kern & Herbert Reynolds:

And the 1993 Brodsky version (arrangement, by Jacqueline Thomas):

Between 1995 & the 2005 release of this broadcast on CD, I would say Costello had really redefined himself as primarily a ballad singer who occasionally returned to rowdier music...

"I'm In The Mood Again," fitting in nicely among the rest of the songs played here:

This won't be the last we hear of Costello & McPartland. But I'll get to that a little bit later...

2004! The North Sea Jazz Festival!

The album opens with "Hora Decubitus" a song with music by Charles Mingus & new lyrics written by Costello. Sue Mingus, Charles' widow, had invited EC to write lyrics for a number of his compositions in the 1990s.

This song was actually completed in September 2001, shortly after 9/11.

EC: "I could offer nothing morr than a simple affirmation of life and rejection of vengeance."

In concert, this was actually the final song before the encore; on the album it makes for a stirring opening track:

Costello wrote lyrics for 6 Mingus tunes in total, but only "Hora Decubitus" and "Invisible Lady" have been released, the latter on an album by the Mingus Big Band:

The other unreleased Mingus/Costello songs are "Jelly Roll" "Self-Portrait In Three Colors" "This Subdues My Passion" and "Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid, Too"...

At this point, the best hope is that one of Costello's concerts with The Charles Mingus Orchestra will be released, so that the full Costello/Mingus collaboration can be heard and appreciated in full...

"Favourite Hour" with a stunning orchestral arrangement by @SteveNieve:

"Upon A Veil Of Midnight Blue" is a song Costello premiered at Meltdown 95, and he has released it a few times, always as a live track. Here it is with The Punishing Kiss Band:

That version was on the Juliet Letters bonus disc, and another version was on a 1996 TV show that was released on home video. Costello clearly likes the song a lot, to keep releasing it like that!

Here it is on My Flame Burns Blue:

EC wrote the song for Charles Brown, who changed the lyrics so substantially that they agreed to make it a new song with shared writing credit, called "I Wonder How She Knows":

The original lyric by Costello:

You find your tongue so tied
Your words escape and hide
But she's so patient and kind
She's prepared to read your mind
That's all very well until you find
Because of the wine you drank
Your mind is just a blank

Charles Brown's revision of that lyric:

I guess I'm slow to think
Oooooh when I drink

This album is a fun mix of some of his more sophisticated & obscure songs from the 90s & 00s but a few of my favorite tracks on the record are shiny new arrangements of older cuts from his back catalogue.

This version of "Clubland" is terrific:

It is always fun to see Costello in front of a big band like this (like father, like son)

"Almost Blue" (arrangement by E. Costello):

"Speak Darkly, My Angel" -- the only one of Costello's Three Distracted Women songs to be recorded & released, by both Costello & Anne Sofie Von Otter:

What's the deal with those other two songs? Are they not as good? Is one of the three distracted women more interesting than the other two?

Rescued from obscurity, EC's mid-90s gem "Almost Ideal Eyes" given a fun new arrangement!

[Still curious if @thedavidcrosby ever received the demo for this song that Costello wrote for him, and if so, what did he make of it/why didn't he record it?]

I read somewhere back around this time that "Almost Ideal Eyes" was one of Diana Krall's favorite Costello songs; I like to think her opinion of this great song encouraged him to pull it out of mothballs:

Rare chance to hear a live performance of North's "Can You Be True?" with a full orchestra:

I love the album version of "Episode Of Blonde" but man it is fun to hear this expanded arrangement:

I am skipping some tracks from the album (a few of which I posted earlier in the thread) but here are clips of from a couple of kinda hard-to-find bonus tracks...

"Still":

...and "Dust":

There is a nice vinyl edition of this on blue vinyl-- but with a blank 4th side! Why didn't they add those bonus tracks???

EC: "While preparing & proposing repertoire for the collaborative album w/Anne Sofie von Otter For The Stars, I received permission from the estate of Billy Strayhorn to write a lyric for his last composition, the beautiful Blood Count."

EC: "I had become obsessed with the recording found on the Duke Ellington album "…And His Mother Called Him Bill." Listening to the human quality of Johnny Hodges’ alto saxophone, it was possible to believe that it might make a very fine vocal piece."

EC: "In the end, the song, now re-titled “My Flame Burns Blue,” did not feature at the For The Stars sessions...

"Vince Mendoza wrote this arrangement especially for the concerts with the Metropole Orkest."

Back to Piano Jazz w/Marian McPartland! Costello's first visit went so well that he returned to the show several more times, next for a live show at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in 2006.

The full ep:
npr.org/2007/04/06/150…

"I Can't Get Started" by Ira Gershwin & Vernon Duke

My guess is that it was Costello who chose to begin their set with "I Can't Get Started" since he loves that kind of joke and always has. ("Oh, I just don't know where to begin.")

"Dancing On The Ceiling" by Rodgers & Hart:

The question has been raised to me, "does Costello sometimes hold notes too long?" There is no correct answer, but I wonder if his cackle of laughter at the end of this clip has to do with how long he was holding some of those notes:

I think by the end he has struck a good balance w/r/t how long to hold the end note:

A recitation of the lyrics to Lerner & Loewe's "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" (another song from Gigi!) segues into "Blame It On My Youth" by Edward Heyman & Oscar Levant:

Costello is trying to live up to his promise from his previous Piano Jazz appearance that he would come back and only perform songs he'd never sung in public before. (He won't 100% live up to his pledge, but he comes close.)

In a very sweet gesture, Costello has returned to the show having written lyrics for a piece of music by McPartland especially for the occasion.

They talk about it here:

They talk about the title of the song ("Threnody") and what it means:

"Threnody" by Marian McPartland & Elvis Costello (world premiere + only known performance to-date)

I like it when Costello writes melodies for himself to sing that push him to his limits; there is a very interesting tension to when he tests himself like this...

Ha! McPartland basically makes the same observation, that the song is hard for him to sing.

She then makes a very nice gesture in return, announcing that she is going to improvise a musical "portrait" of him, based on what she knows of him...

"Portrait Of Elvis Costello" improvised by Marian McPartland:

"Portrait Of Elvis Costello" (cont'd):

Elvis reacts to McPartland's musical portrait of him, and mentions a time when an artist painted his portrait and made him look "like a walrus."

Was this the painting Costello was talking about? I once saw this in London's National Portrait Gallery. (Painting by Adam Birtwistle):

Costello gets his guitar out to play a song by Herman Hupfeld, who also wrote "As Time Goes By"...

"Let's Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep)" sounds like a song that would fit right in on Costello's National Ransom 4 years later:

I hope EC creates a radio show/podcast of his own at some point, something like a cross between this show & what Bob Dylan did with Theme Time Radio Hour. (We will get to his short-lived TV show in a few days' time, but I really think radio/podcast would suit him best)

Costello & McPartland gear up for his final encore...

Costello & McPartland's version of "My Funny Valentine" is significantly longer than his recorded version, and even longer than when he does it with Steve Nieve on piano:

It seems like the setlist for this show is fluid, I wonder how much of what they decide to perform is genuinely spur of the moment...

Costello has a surprise up his sleeve for the audience at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival...

Diana Krall comes out to perform "If I Had You" written by "Irving King" (Jimmy Campbell & Reg Connelly) w/Ted Shapiro:

Costello would continue his association with Piano Jazz for the final few years of McPartland's 30+ year run with the show.

In 2009, Costello would guest host a special episode interviewing the great Allen Toussaint:

npr.org/2012/08/31/112…

Costello would return again as guest host of a 2-part episode where he interviewed McPartland!

npr.org/2011/03/18/122…

Both parts of this 2-part episode feature new performances by McPartland & Costello, as well as a great many recollections about various guests she has faced on the show over the decades...

npr.org/2011/03/18/122…

Costello also participated in a documentary called In Good Time: The Piano Jazz Of Mary McPartland, which can be ordered on dvd here: filmsbyhuey.com/films/in-good-…

Watch this wonderful clip of EC & McPartland performing "Our Love Is Here To Stay" in the studio:

McPartland passed away in 2013, at the age of 95. Piano Jazz would continue on NPR for another 5 years...

npr.org/2013/08/21/214…

Here is one last thing for today, from 2005: Costello on @Letterman with Emmylou Harris, singing "Love Hurts":

And that's a wrap on Day 33 of 45 Days Of Elvis Costello!

Some Jazz & Flame links...

Piano Jazz w/Costello on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/1GwRGHvR…

Liner notes for My Flame Burns Blue:
elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

My Flame Burns Blue on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/6ZuCP20E…

Day 34: The River In Reverse

After Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans left Allen Toussaint adrift in New York City, Costello's idea for a "songbook"-type record celebrating Toussaint's music led to a collaborative album & a full-fledged songwriting partnership.

Released June 6, 2006

Recorded in the bitter aftermath of the GWBush administration's dismal failure to respond to the man-made catastrophe that drowned a major American city, Costello & Toussaint came up w/a musical response that wasn't just angry; it was also joyous & hopeful

Let me just say that even though it ends up being a lot of work to edit it down into 140-second clips, I LOVE it whenever any of these albums has a behind-the-scenes doc.

This one starts with great footage of the band recording Toussaint's "Tears, Tears And More Tears":

The River In Reverse features The Imposters with The Crescent City Horns & Anthony "AB" Brown on guitar, produced by @JoeHenryMusic.

(When you hear a piano, it's Toussaint. Steve Nieve is on keyboards.)

"Tears, Tears And More Tears" (cont'd):

Lee Dorsey's original version:

The recording of "Tears, Tears And More Tears" was re-created for the second episode of @HBOTreme (created by @AoDespair & Eric Overmyer) with Costello & Toussaint playing themselves:

Treme was just as good about its Costello details as Larry Sanders Show was ("I've got 3 or 4, 5 songs to write before midnight"):

Kermit passes up his chance to meet "that boy named Elvis":

Producer @JoeHenryMusic talking about Toussaint as a towering figure in music, and AT himself talking about his own influences:

The doc introduces the band and then teasingly shows them playing a version of Toussaint's "What Do You Want The Girl To Do?" which didn't make the album and has never been released!

(Add it to the pile of phantom "bonus discs" spanning from 1998-present.)

Flying from L.A. to New Orleans, post-Katrina, to record:

Costello recording the title track (Another title track! That's basically every major EC album since 1996!)

It's the only solo-penned Costello song on the album (and probably the angriest.)

Costello talking about the inspiring way that Toussaint responded to the tragedy of Katrina, and then Toussaint himself speaking of his hopes for the future, with a confidence that is hard not to be affected by:

One of the high points of the album, Toussaint taking the lead vocal on his song "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?":

Ack! I was wrong before, sometimes Steve jumps from the keyboards to a piano! Check the sleevenotes for accurate information, I am a terrible non-journalist and I REGRET THE ERROR

Finishing up the track and then Elvis & Allen take a nighttime drive through the French Quarter for a photo shoot:

Toussaint almost goes into a trance-like state pondering the history of the place, and his connection to the souls of the past:

Toussaint talking about his house in both the past & present tense; Costello singing AT's "All These Things":

Here's Costello singing "All These Things" back in 1986, during the Blood & Chocolate sessions:

I could watch footage of @SteveNieve watching Allen Toussaint play piano for a long time.

Costello talking about the role music plays in lifting people's spirits in hard times:

And that's the end of the doc! Again, I wish there was making of footage for every one of these albums, even just a small glimpse is fascinating...

The final 60 seconds, as Costello sings "Ascension Day"...

Which is, of course, Toussaint's music for "Tipitina & Me" which Costello then added lyrics to:

Ok, now I'll back up a bit & cover a few things that weren't heavily featured in the doc.

Opening track "On Your Way Down" dates back to the early 70s but if I didn't know that I think I would've assumed that it was one of the new songs they'd written addressing current events:

In 2006, it played to me like a karmic warning to the Bush administration: "It's high time that you found/the same people you walk on on your way up/you might meet up/on your way down"

Toussaint's version from 1972:

The 2nd track veers off-topic, as if to make it clear that this isn't a Hurricane Katrina concept album, it's an Allen Toussaint songbook LP.

"Nearer To You":

Betty Harris' version:

"Tears, Tears & More Tears" was already covered in the doc footage earlier but HEY did you know that on the vinyl edition it is swapped with "The Sharpest Thorn"?

That's CRAZY! It is a perfect "Track 3" & this destroys my feeling that the vinyl edition is usually definitive...

"The Sharpest Thorn" was the song that I couldn't get out of my head when this record first came out. (I still like it, but sometimes I like a song too much and burn out on it a little. My fault, not the song's.)

There are really only a few songs of anger & disappointment on The River In Reverse, which is mostly an album of uplift.

"Broken Promise Land" is one of the angry ones:

"International Echo" is a song that seems to exist on a continuum between "45" and "Dr. Watson, I Presume" off of 2010's National Ransom; songs where the subject is, more or less, Music, the thing at the center of EC's life & career:

Another Toussaint classic, "Wonder Woman":

Lee Dorsey's original:

Brinsley Schwarz used to cover this in concert:

Earlier this year, Costello opened his show at Brooklyn Steel with this song, and rousingly so:

While the album opened with a Toussaint oldie that felt like it might've been newly written, I think the record's closing track is the opposite: a newly-written EC/AT song that could easily be mistaken for a Toussaint classic.

"Six-Fingered Man":

I really like all of the songs Costello wrote with Allen Toussaint, but I honestly feel like this one might be the most underrated. The fade-out that ends this album is just perfect:

If "6-Fingered Man" is their most underrated, this is by far their most obscure "hiding in plain sight" track: the iTunes "album only" bonus track, "Where Is The Love?"

I already had TRIR on CD & vinyl; it took me a while (+ a gift card) to buy it a 3rd time just to get this:

"At best you are a cruel coward/
At worst you are a worthless hypocrite"

This was directed (I think) at the GWBush administration but in many ways this song has even more resonance under @realDonaldTrump:

In addition to these obscure tracks, I wonder how many other Toussaint classics and new originals were recorded but not released.

"The Greatest Love" (Japanese bonus track):

I really, really hope that all this stuff gets compiled in a big box set or made available for download at some point. He has literally 2 decades of unreleased recordings and uncompiled rare tracks like this one:

If you liked The River In Reverse but didn't see this concert dvd from the accompanying tour, I'd highly recommend it. It was a fantastic tour.

Toussaint did a bunch of new horn arrangements for classic Costello songs, and they were FUN. (This isn't from that dvd, just another pro-shot show from that tour):

"High Fidelity":

"Clown Strike":

Audio from that dvd release, one of my favorite live tracks from that tour, Toussaint's "Fortune Teller":

"Yes We Can Can":

During the 2006, there was a Paul Simon tribute concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival that Costello & Toussaint both performed at, which was released on CD the following year...

Costello & Toussaint performed @PaulSimonMusic's "American Tune":

(Costello will eventually record a version of this song and release it as a record, but we'll get to that another day...)

Costello also performed "Peace Like A River" at that concert:

Costello seems to be a pretty big fan of Paul Simon's-- have they ever interacted? I can't think of a time when they have crossed paths in any public way...

Costello's River In Reverse appearance on @Letterman was one of THREE that year!

He also appeared with Tony Bennett, singing "Are You Havin' Any Fun?":

And again, with Rosanne Cash, singing "The Butcher's Boy":

On November 10, 2015, Allen Toussaint died while on tour in Madrid, Spain.

10 days later, Costello was one of many who gathered to pay tribute to him in New Orleans:

Pt 2:

Pt 3:

Pt 4:

That is a wrap on Day 34 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

The River In Reverse is the one major Elvis Costello album that is NOT on Spotify.

No liner notes to link to, either.

Instead, I'll link to Allen Toussaint's own excellent 2013 Songbook record:
open.spotify.com/album/3DxCQL4C…

Day 35: Momofuku

Costello threatens to maybe never make another record and then almost immediately makes one, unplanned.

All it took was one guest session for Jenny Lewis' album to put him in the mood to write some more songs very quickly and make an album.

Released April 22, 2008

This was recorded in January/February & in shops a couple of months later, originally on vinyl w/download code only. (A CD edition showed up a few weeks later.)

It was only announced in March. Back then, this was what counted as a surprise album drop

EC: “I went down to do the [Acid Tongue] song "Carpetbaggers” with @jennylewis, and they were wondering how to pay me. I said, “Don’t worry about money, let’s just cut something for fun.” And we cut three songs in one afternoon."

EC: "I went home with the CD, and I thought that the tracks all sounded good. I had a song I wrote with @rosannecash, a song I’d written with @LorettaLynn, and I wrote another eight in three weeks. And we cut the whole thing in ten days.“

This album arrived after a weird year which had ended with Costello publicly emphatic that the record business had changed and he was DONE making records.

In MOJO, November 2007: "I'm not of a mind to record anymore... There's no point. In terms of recorded music,
the pact's been broken-- the personal connection between the artist and the listener. MP3 has dismantled the intended shape of an album."

EC, Nov. 2007: "And then everything is leaked, everything is stolen. So I play live, it happens in the moment. If I do a new song, I might never play it again, and if you're not there you fuckin' miss it..."

He went further, talking to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter:

"I'm through with making albums. I just don't need it anymore. What's the point of making an album with the songs in a specific order, when anyone with an mp3 player can re-set the track order?"

"When I'm doing a concert, people will actually have to listen to the songs in whichever order I put them. In the future, I"ll probably just stick to performing my songs in live shows."

(Costello would go on to make 3 albums in a row-- but this *does* describe most of 2011-2018)

2007 also saw the beginning of a new round of reissues of the early albums, their 4th time on CD.

These were shiny & new but a step down from the Rhino editions, which had great liner notes & bonus material. It felt like a miscalculation UMG's part.

There was a new "Best Of" anchoring the new reissues but it's not as if the world was lacking Elvis Costello "best of" collections by this point...

There was the promise of "themed" compilations like this one, which had a single unreleased track to torment the kind of people who would buy a whole dumb CD to get one song.

But it mostly seemed like an attempt to appeal to new listeners-- perhaps the thinking was that "deluxe" reissues like the Rhinos were too daunting for casual interest.

They then embarked upon a series of "deluxe" (5th!!) reissues-- these were kind of a nightmare!

SOME of the Rhino bonus material but not all of it! PLUS a live disc!

(The Rhinos had wisely avoided the feeling of a double-dip by pricing them reasonably but these were kinda $$$.)

Then Hip-O tried a "Costello live" series-- and bungled it by going chronologically, which meant that fans were flooded with familiar late 70s shows; the series was canceled just before it got to the stuff fans had been WAITING for.

Costello seemed to be significantly less involved in these reissues than he had been with previous ones.

He did, however, record some extremely lo-fi demos to release as bonus material in a most unusual way...

EC, 2007: "I recorded some new melodies for some of my older songs & for a gag I recorded them on just a cassette player. I didn’t have a microphone so I plugged in headphones into the tape recorder, because you switch them backwards, they work as a microphone."

"Pump It Up":

EC, 2007: "I didn’t want to be like a Luddite, so I put them on a CDR, and I put 10 of the CDRs in 10 copies of the "Best Of” record that we released in April, and hid ‘em in the shops in America, just to see whether anybody bought records anymore."

"High Fidelity":

EC, 2007: "And as nobody’s found 'em yet and it’s now September, I guess nobody buys records anymore. But somewhere somebody’s gonna get a little surprise one of these days…"

"(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea"

EC, 2007: "They’re gonna be in Wal-Mart or somewhere, and they’re gonna buy one of these records and they’re gonna discover a little free gift from me…"

"Alison":

EC, 2007: "There’s not enough fun with the business of music. It’s all very serious. The record thing for as long as it’s gonna last, it needs a little mischief put back into it.“

"Almost Blue":

Costello also did an iTunes Originals session, similarly dipping back into his catalog for some new versions of old songs to promote the new "Best Of" collection. (You can still buy this, 6 solo acoustic performances mixed in w/classic tracks & interview clips)

"Little Triggers"

His iTunes Originals session reminds me of Randy Newman's late career songbook records, and I kind of wish he would do more of these. One of EC's tours a few years ago felt like this, him revisiting every corner of his back catalog...

"Invasion Hit Parade":

Not every song from his session made the cut!

"Alibi":

I typed "solo acoustic" above, even though some of these are solo electric. Not this one, though!

"Suit Of Lights":

Another epic take that somehow didn't make the cut was this version of "So Like Candy":

Segueing into "You're No Good"...

Anyway, this iTunes session was one of the minor cool things in 2007, but the talk of no more albums also felt like a bummer, and there were a few more weird things that made it feel like a weirdly "off" year...

Costello did an ad campaign for Visa Signature-- no big deal, but one creepy thing was that for his NYC concert, there was no way to buy tickets without a VISA card. This felt gross.

I managed to get a ticket via someone else buying it for me with *their* Visa card.

At the show, there were Visa employees who would approach people to offer them this free CD but then pull it back if turned out you weren't a Visa Signature cardholder.

"Ohhhhh, I'm so sorry..."

"These are only for VISA SIGNATURE cardholders..."

"Oh, okay."

It was a weird/creepy bait & switch trap to experience on the way into a concert, and for a disc that had nothing that most fans didn't already own multiple copies of by now.

2007 was also when he showed up in a Lexus commercial (as did Krall, part of the same campaign.) This felt less gross than the VISA thing bc the ads were kinda fun, but by the end of the year with proclamations of "no more records" things felt a little sour to me...

And then BOOM: out of nowhere, he reverses himself & releases a brand new album with The Imposters. And there's no concept or theme this time, just 12 new songs.

"No Hiding Place" kicked it off with what seemed to be a rant against the modern age, especially the Internet:

Costello never really has made particularly ambitious use of the Internet as a way of releasing music; this song could come off as curmudgeonly about it but especially now it reads more like him detecting the poison before things really started to get nasty.

I think this was the only EC album since I started listening where I hadn't heard ANY of the tracks prior to bringing the record home from the shop (and in MOST cases I heard more than half or even ALL of the album in advance.)

This one he had played in concert, at the Visa gig:

"American Gangster Time" is one of those songs where I'll confess I could probably use some additional context to make sense of what's going on in the verses, but the chorus feels very 2018 now that we have a president with overt ties to money laundering & organized crime.

Momofuku was ahead of the curve in a couple of ways -- the surprise announcement, vinyl & download being emphasized over CD-- but none of that helped it fare well in 2008.

But it was FUN, letting the needle drop and hearing songs like "Turpentine" for the very first time:

One fun thing about Momofuku is that bc it grew out of sessions for @jennylewis' Acid Tongue, it ends up borrowing a lot of that record's personnel, including producer Jason Lader & on half of the album, Lewis + @MrJohnathanRice, @farmerdeez & @songsofjw as a "vocal supergroup"

Pete Thomas' daughter, @tennesseebunny Thomas from The Like, joins him on drums for a few tracks, perhaps most thrillingly on "Turpentine":

And here is The Like's cover of Costello's "You Belong To Me"

One time on a stuck train between Liverpool & London, @JeffFalzone & I passed the time by playing a game of which Costello songs would be "friends" with each other & which would be enemies.

"Harry Worth" would be friends with "The Long Honeymoon."

"I looked in her eyes
and saw barely a spark
He laughed too loud
then he drank until dark"

(Are we too deep into this thread for such obvious observations as "MAN, this guy can write a LYRIC"??)

It had only been 2 years since the well-received River In Reverse & yet this album still felt like some sort of "comeback" record mostly bc it was the 1st album in a while that didn't arrive w/a heavy backstory-- maybe his most straightforward LP in over a decade?

"Drum & Bone":

"Flutter And Wow" is another addition to the growing body of purely romantic love songs by Costello, something that earlier on in his career was a rarer find...

Back when Hip-O/UMG released the themed compilation "Rock & Roll Music," it occurred to me that they might have had more luck w/a collection of romantic Costello songs that would fit some of the most popular records he's made ("Alison" "Almost Blue" "God Give Me Strength" "She")

Side 2 of Momofuku opens with the crown jewel of this album, "Stella Hurt."

The true story of American jazz singer Teddy Grace, born Stella Gloria Crowson, and whose final married name was Stella Hurt:

With a riff clearly modeled on The Beatles' "Hey Bulldog," Costello tears into this song, which crams her whole in under 5 minutes with 90 seconds left just to tear it up with The Imposters, who sound as ferocious as they ever have.

The final seconds of this are an INTENSE sound. I don't think I even began to process this song on first listen, it was only later that I realized what a big deal Costello song it was.

SIDE NOTE: very sad to learn of the passing of Geoff Emerick; just saw this news moments after I mentioned "Hey Bulldog," which he was engineer on.

(Emerick has come up a lot in this thread bc of his excellent work as producer on IbMePdErRoIoAmL & All This Useless Beauty.)

The song "Stella Hurt" was (I think) inspired by this fascinating 2007 article about Teddy Grace in The Oxford American: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

A capsule version from a brief 2008 New Yorker piece about the song by @bengreenman:

"Swing Makes The World Go Round" performed by Teddy Grace with the Mal Hallett Orchestra:

Forgive me while I take this moment to post a small handful of Teddy Grace clips...

"Happy Birthday To Love" from the R.K.O. Radio Picture, "That's Right-- You're Wrong."

Teddy Grace recorded for Decca Records, which would eventually be part of UMG (and release the 1999 Costello/Frisell album, The Sweetest Punch. Small world, huh?)

"Crazy Blues":

"You and Your Love":

"Life Of The Party":

"Love Me Or Leave Me":

"I Thought About You":

The next 2 songs strike me as a McCartney followed by a Lennon & I have never been able to shake this feeling.

"Mr. Feathers just *feels* like a McCartney song, specifically the kind of quirky character piece that Sir Paul is drawn to. It opens with undeniably Beatle-y sounds:

There is a bit of "music hall" vibe to this one, the kind of throwback, old fashioned thing Macca loves to do.

"My Three Sons" doesn't sound specifically like a Lennon song, but it's a deeply person song, Costello writing about being a parent with an openness that reminds me of similarly revealing songs written by John...

This is probably an overly simplistic analysis but it jumped out at me the very first time I listened to it and I always think of it when I get to this part of the album...

"Song With Rose" is the first of two co-writes in a row, this one written with @rosannecash:

Costello said this was one of the tracks where the live band in the studio got up to 9 people, describing it as "a fine old noise."

"Pardon Me, Madam, My Name Is Eve" is a song co-written with @LorettaLynn more than 25 years after Costello had recorded songs written by or recorded by her for Almost Blue:

"Go Away" is a rousing closer, his 2nd album in a row not to end on a somber ballad. I sort of thought this would become a more frequent closing song at concerts, but he hasn't played it since 2009...

EC, 2007: "I’d been telling people that I was done with recording and believed it myself. This record date reminded me that it wasn’t making music in the studio that made me miserable but the nonsense that predictably follows in what we laughingly call the 'music business'..."

EC, 2007: "So I decided to change it and my mind. That’s what I do."

Gonna real quick post a few 2007 pre-Momofuku releases, some of them recorded a bit earlier...

This cover of @xtina's "Beautiful" for an episode of the tv show House, which is a solo EC track that sounds like a throwback to When I Was Cruel:

A lovely version of "Ring Of Fire" for a June Carter Cash tribute album:

And a really great guest vocal on a song by @santaolallaok for the @Bajofondo album, Mar Dulce.

"Fairly Right":

This remind me of Costello's vocal contributions to John Harle's Terror & Magnificence, that same tender falsetto that seems simultaneously confident & vulnerable:

I stumbled upon this track on Spotify, a few years back, completely unaware that it existed. I think it's a terrific track and one that a lot of people (I assume) might not be familiar with...

Costello's 2007 @Letterman appearance, promoting the "best of" & reissues by playing a couple of classic tracks:

And Costello's 2008 @Letterman, doing guest vocals with @jennylewis:

And a live performance of "American Gangster Time":

And that's a wrap on Day 35 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

Momofuku on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/5EW4siQt…

No liner notes, but this stereogum article preserves the long ago deleted statement Costello posted on his website at the time: stereogum.com/9278/elvis_cos…

Day 36: Spectacle: elvis costello with...

For two seasons from 2008-2009, Costello had his own TV show, featuring music & conversation. It ended too soon, but he got to do what he wanted for 20 episodes.

I feel like this is something that could be rebooted at any point.

In an age where there are 500 new stand-up comedy specials every month, @netflix should throw some of their $$$ at Costello & give him another run of this show.

"Musicians On Stage Doing Music."

Honestly @Letterman needs to book EC as a guest anyway & then give him a spin-off:

OR: now that @AmazonStudios is saving money by not funding the next Crisis In Six Scenes, they should use a fraction of that money so that Costello can do episodes with McCartney, Beyonce, Dylan & Carole King...

Or @HBO! It just seems like there should be some platform that is willing to finance a music talk show like this, basically a series of filmed concerts with interviews. Even if Costello just wanted to do one season, it would be worth it.

Not to start off the day on a sad note, but an example of why this show is great and should return: the late, great Jesse Winchester performing "Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding" just a few short years before his passing:

Looking at this clip, it seems a crime to not continue a show that captures moments like this. I lament that a season 3 featuring Aretha at the piano will now never happen. (I believe just such an episode was discussed but never came together.)

Today is going to be kind of ramshackle: I simply do not have time to do justice to 20 episodes of television plus bonus material in one day.

It's gonna be a grab bag of clips & thoughts & I'll just say if you like the clips there 2 seasons on dvd & blu-ray for you to discover:

From its very first moments, Spectacle was showing off what it could do: Costello & The Imposters with Allen Toussaint & @jburtonmusic performing Elton John's "Border Song."

What other TV show has the host pay such thoughtful tribute to the guest each episode? This is amazing.

Again, I'm not gonna go through all of these episodes, but just want to start by pointing out that Costello gives his guests great intros, and then this conversation with @eltonofficial is great right off the bat:

Talking about Laura Nyro's influence, @eltonofficial demonstrates by playing part of "Burn Down The Mission":

Toussaint's "Working In A Coal Mine":

President Bill Clinton was episode TWO of this show, and it's unlike any presidential interview I've ever seen.

(The #1 biggest reason for at the very least a new one-off special episode of Spectacle would be to witness @ElvisCostello talking music for an hour w/@BarackObama.)

Clinton talking about the importance of how a White House administration is "organized," how that relates to music, and how it is possible to get frozen by the stories of each day & end up not achieving your administration's goals. (Hopefully that's what's happening NOW)

Costello asks Clinton about the importance of music education:

Clinton talk about Elvis Presley, and @thebeatles:

Clinton talking about the time @ChelseaClinton gave him 6 rap/hip-hop albums for his birthday and made him take a test to make sure he really listened to them:

I wish more TV shows were this spontaneous-- @itstonybennett calls @DianaKrall up out of the audience to do a song with him.

The first line jumps out of his mouth and it's always shocking how correct it sounds, that voice:

Of course, @itstonybennett & @DianaKrall now have a new LP out together, Love Is Here To Stay:

Elvis & Lou Reed duet on "Set The Twilight Reeling."

First, it's Lou:

Then it's EC's turn:

Then the two of them go guitar crazy at the end:

Costello covering The Velvet Underground's "I'm Beginning To See The Light":

Re-visiting all these performances, two thoughts repeat themselves on a loop:

1) Elvis Costello should *always* have a TV show. There's just no reason not to give him a show, esp. in the age of #PeakTV
2) I hope he will someday record the remaining volumes of Kojak Variety

Lou Reed demonstrating the "secret chord" in the guitar riff from "Sweet Jane."

Look at Costello's reaction at the end of this: PURE JOY

"Perfect Day":

"Perfect Day" (cont'd.):

Flashing back to 1996, when for some reason Costello appeared on French TV with Lou Reed and did "Set The Twilight Reeling":

The staging of this, with Reed & Costello facing each other, is FASCINATING to me. They're like animals sizing each other up:

Ending with crazy guitar freakout and then in the final moments everything just goes BONKERS:

When @OfficialSting & The Police were on the show, Costello opened with a mash-up of "Every Breath You Take" & "Please Stay" by Bacharach/David:

The Police + EC & The Imposters blending "Walking On The Moon" with a little bit of "Watching The Detectives":

Costello & @smokeyrobinson duet on "You've Really Got A Hold On Me":

There are moments on Spectacle when, endearingly, Costello looks like he has had a wish granted by a genie:

EC & The Imposters playy "No More Tear-Stained Makeup" by @smokeyrobinson:

"Tracks Of My Tears" performed by @smokeyrobinson & @SteveNieve:

EC & The Imposters perform @smokeyrobinson's "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game":

"Don't Know Why" as performed by @smokeyrobinson & The Imposters:

"Willie Moore" performed by @rufuswainwright & Kate McGarrigle with EC, @BillFrisell & @gabrielkahane:

"Willie Moore" (cont'd):

EC performs "New Paint" by @lw3official:

"New Paint" (cont'd):

EC & The Imposters perform "Show Biz Kids" by Steely Dan:

I should've posted this yesterday, as live clips of Momofuku songs are harder to find...

"Go Away" feat. Jenny Lewis, Zooey Deschanel, Jonathan Rice, Farmer Dave, The Imposters & Tennessee Thomas:

"On Up The Mountain" by Jacob Dylan, performed with EC:

"On Up The Mountain" (cont'd):

"Straight To Hell" by The Clash, performed by EC & The Imposters w/Jacob Dylan & @tennesseebunny:

"Straight To Hell" (cont'd):

One episode was mostly taken over by @eltonofficial & @DianaKrall and they basically brought Costello back on for the encore, "Makin' Whoopee!":

"Edith & The Kingpin" by @JoniMitchellcom, as performed by @herbiehancock & Costello w/@mcbridesworld & @KarriemRiggins:

Costello released a slightly different arrangement (though his vocal is very similar) on a Joni Mitchell tribute album that he recorded in 1997 but wasn't released until 2007:

I remember reading that he had recorded this song back in 1997, and then Costello later remarked that the recording was "being held hostage by Bugs Bunny," meaning it was complicated by his leaving Warner Bros...

At the time, I had yet to listen to Joni Mitchell's album, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, and I sought it out, and "Edith" in particular. Another example of EC's enthusiasm shining a light towards other people's great music.

(By the time I finally heard EC's moody, slower, jazzier/artsier version, I had spent a decade imagine a more faithful cover but with his multi-tracked voice & distinctive delivery; it was/is hard to let go of that version in my head!)

"April 5th" written by Costello, @rosannecash, Kris Kristofferson & @johnleventhal premiered on this show, 5 years before a studio version would show up on Cash's soundcloud page, 7 years before it would officially be released...

A few years back, when Costello was posting a slightly tongue-in-cheek but not totally unserious personal ranking of his own songs, he listed "April 5th" as his #1 song (when it was still unreleased!)

It finally came out on the soundtrack/companion CD to his memoir...

Costello's Top 100 list was on his website, which has since been re-designed and all that content erased.

However, I just found a place where I was able to cobble together that list. It's fun! I will tweet it out on a different day, next week!

Meanwhile, back to Spectacle! Here's James Taylor & Costello singing together beautifully on @Carole_King's "Crying In The Rain":

...And Costello with @LauraRCantrell, singing James Taylor's "Bartender's Blues":

Season 2! Costello has a mustache! And he's covering Zooropa-era @U2 for an episode with guests Bono & The Edge!

"Dirty Day":

This wasn't broadcast, btw. It's one of the bonus features on the dvd/blu-ray.

I always really like hearing Costello cover songs by artists who are among his contemporaries; thinking about how he heard this back in 1993 & maybe part of him had the impulse to sing it then:

A mash-up of "Pump It Up" and "Get On Your Boots" that also quotes "Subterranean Homesick Blues":

"Leaving Las Vegas" by @SherylCrow with EC & Steve playing along:

Jesse Winchester's "Payday" (recorded by EC for Kojak Variety) now performed by both of them (alongside Ron Sexsmith, Neko Case & Sheryl Crow):

Richard Thompson's "Shoot Out The Lights":

I'm gonna post this full segment with EC & Nick Lowe, because it is so nice to see them together, and it feels so natural, the way they are talking.

Nick Talks about bass players he admires, and Costello talks about his knack for finding obscure songs and making them his own...

Nick talks about writing "The Beast In Me" for Johnny Cash, and his disastrous first presentation of it to the Man In Black...

"The Beast In Me":

"The Weight" feat. Ray LaMontagne, Richard Thompson, Nick Lowe, Allen Toussaint, Larry Campbell, The Imposters, Costello & Levon Helm:

These guys are having the time of their lives playing this:

At its best, this show is a pure celebration, an outgrowth of Costello's boundless enthusiasm for music.

This wasn't that long ago, and we have already lost some of the people who were guests on this show. We are lucky to still have the music they made.

Just a few more Spectacle clips before I wind down the day and a new day begins...

Bruce Springsteen performs "The Rising" with Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan, EC & The Imposters:

"The Rising" (cont'd):

Bruce & Elvis having fun playing "Sam & Dave":

I think that's it for Day 36 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

I realized that I have skipped over a lot of DVD stuff during this thread, although there is also a lot I *didn't* skip. I don't have time for regrets!

Day 37: Secret, Profane & Sugarcane

Before Momofuku even hit the shops, Costello went into the studio for 3 days and made another album!

Produced by T Bone Burnett-- their first full album together since Spike!!-- this was EC's 1st record for Hear Music, the Starbucks label...

June 2, 2009

Given prominent point-of-purchase display space at Starbucks, this album became an unlikely hit, his highest charting debut in America since Get Happy!!

It was also another inexplicably coherent album carved from the bones of a semi-finished project.

4 songs from an unproduced chamber opera about P.T. Barnum, Hans Christian Anderson & Jenny Lind

2 songs written for Johnny Cash incl. one that was already on a Costello album

1 leftover from the unfinished Delivery Man project

This album *should* be a mess!
It's not, somehow

Why only 4 of the 10 songs from his unfinished chamber opera, The Secret Songs?

They had been performed in concert form in Denmark & Copenhagen, commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera, but the promised full production never happened.

After one minute of dramatic noise, P.T. Barnum enters, singing "American Humbug."

This is Costello performing in the concert version, but I wish it had been @RealHughJackman & still kind of hold out hope that maybe Barnum can be his new Wolverine, a role he keeps revisiting:

I mean, it's been over a decade so I kind of assume this project is dead, but then again-- if @RealHughJackman suddenly expressed interest in reprising the role of Barnum in an unproduced chamber opera by Elvis Costello, I'd imagine the pieces would quickly fall into place, yes?

I do wonder why Costello didn't just release the full-length piece. This 9+ minute long opener would be a pretty fantastic opening track for an album. I would've been down for this as its own thing. This Barnum stuff is dynamite:

And then the Jenny Lind intro is its own terrific thing. You can hear a motif that will reappear in the song "Red Cotton," which made it onto the album:

This is just a concert version, obvsly, but the songs are fully realized. Unlike The Delivery Man, which always seemed a little nebulous to me, I feel like this is a stage project that was close to really becoming a full-fledged thing.

I must admit, this is the first time I'm giving these recordings a proper hearing. I think I got this cd-r at a time when there where shinier & more immediately appealing Costello things going on, and I dismissed them unfairly.

These songs are really good.

"My Toy Theatre":

Despite the inclusion of 4 of these songs on Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, I think I'd have to classify The Secret Songs as another "lost" album, maybe better described as an unrecorded one.

These songs are lengthy, winding things, at 9 & 7 minutes...

"My Toy Theatre" (cont'd):

Of course-- repeating myself-- as someone whose point-of-entry was The Juliet Letters, I am probably slightly more inclined to be excited by this stuff. Pre-Costello, it was mainly movie scores & Sondheim in my CD collection.

"My Toy Theatre" (cont'd):

I'm gonna cut away from The Secret Songs and return to it in a bit, or else I'll never get around to the record at hand!

The point is, he took 4 of those songs, a pinch of Johnny Cash, a dash of The Delivery Man and a few other things, and BOOM, he had an album.

"Down Among The Wines & Spirits" quickly became one of my favorite opening tracks on a Costello album, despite it not really making much of an impression on me at first. I warmed up to it fast.

No Imposters-- it's a whole new band of American musicians, to be dubbed The Sugarcanes.

This would lead to a lot of comparisons to King Of America (with Momofuku as its reverse-order Blood & Chocolate) but also to people erroneously referring to this as a "bluegrass" album.

"Complicated Shadows" returns to its original "Cashbox" arrangement; Costello clearly felt that it deserved more of a hearing than it got as a b-side or bonus track.

"I Felt The Chill Before The Winter Came" is another song co-written with @LorettaLynn, and another great song title. Another great, sad song to add to the ever-growing mountain of them that Costello has had a hand in:

"My All-Time Doll" is a song that I listened to over and over when I first heard it but then I cooled on it for some reason. I still like it, but sometimes a "go-to" track loses that status either through overplaying or for reasons more mysterious & unexplainable...

"Hidden Shame" was written for & recorded by Johnny Cash, and fans were familiar with Costello's demo from a Rhino reissue bonus disc, but EC clearly had unfinished business with these songs and needed to put them out this way:

It will perhaps forever remain a mystery why Costello's "Complicated Shadows" went unrecorded by Cash during his @RickRubin years, but he did a fine version of "Hidden Shame" on his album Boom Chicka Boom:

"She Handed Me A Mirror" is the 1st of the 4 "Secret Songs" on the album.

EC: "'She Handed Me A Mirror' is a song for any misfit in love with an unattainable woman.”

While that may make it sound like Costello has written an anthem for incels, the song has a specific context...

EC: "Andersen fell in love frequently. He was a Romantic fellow of the first water. Although he was besotted with Lind & they were even friends, the tale is told that when he asked why she could not return his love, Lind handed a mirror to the strange & repulsive looking author."

Although, scratch that-- the song *is* totally about 19th century "friend-zoning" in the form of an especially cruel sick burn.

"I Dreamed Of My Old Lover Last Night" is one of the Delivery Man songs that strangely did not find a place on the Delivery Man album.

I'm glad he waited: this is my favorite recorded version of a TDM song, a high point on this album, and of Costello's decade.

In particular, @jimlauderdale1's close harmonies give this track an especially haunted quality. I had heard live recordings of this song but was completely knocked out by the album version...

"How Deep Is The Red" is the 2nd of the "Secret Songs" and the 2nd absolute knockout track in a row.

Costello is writing what feels like a song that could have existed a long time ago, but with touches that feel modern without being anachronistic. It feels both old and new:

I love the way this song hangs on as long as it possibly can. It's a variation on the slow burn ending of "I Want You" but servicing a different blend of emotions:

A strikingly different rendition of the song from one of the Secret Songs performances, sung by Gisela Stille.

Just a totally different song. Wordplay the feels modest & affecting in Costello's recording feels somehow wrong delivered with the full power of an opera singer...

Also: I don't really know what I'm talking about, but it feels like Costello's lyrics are wasted on this kind of singing, where the voice is closer to being an instrument. It doesn't feel like the question "how deep is the red?" is really being asked, if that makes sense.

"She Was No Good" is the 3rd of 4 "Secret Songs." It's strange that they make up almost 1/3rd of the record without feeling like they dominate the album (at least in my hearing of it.)

I like all of these songs & am kind of amazed that they don't derail the record.

It holds together surprisingly well as a start-to-finish listening experience, even though as I pick it apart it is a very strange thing to cherry pick 4 songs from such a specific work like this

I'm trying to imagine a world where Costello didn't record The Juliet Letters but instead recorded 4 or 5 of those songs for Brutal Youth. Would that have been weird?

The Secret Songs version of "She Was No Good" is pretty close to the feel of the way he does it on the record:

"Sulphur To Sugarcane" feels like the core of this album, to me. It's a funny, lighthearted song, a Comedy song. But I always feel like this is the big number that somehow holds it all together and makes it all click.

It also just feels like a song Costello really likes a lot.

There are heavier songs on the record, certainly-- we'll get to one of them in a second-- but this song gets top billing over all of them, for me. This and the opening track feel like the two songs that I hold in my head most prominently when I think of this record.

And while the T Bone connection drew a lot of superficial comparisons to King Of America, I actually think this song could be friends w/several tracks on My Aim Is True, although I'd argue that by this point EC is comfortable enough in his own skin to embrace the cornier aspects

It's also easy to imagine this song being friends with "God's Comic" and "Put Your Big Toe In The Milk Of Human Kindness."

EC: "‘Red Cotton’ imagines P.T. Barnum reading an Abolitionist pamphlet while sewing red-dyed scraps of Lind's garment, even as he confronts the burden of guilt attached to its very threads."

OOPS, I forgot to mention that EC included little descriptive cut-lines for each of the songs in the booklet:

("P.T. Barnum Reads An Abolitionist Pamphlet While Manufacturing Souvenirs Of The “All-American Tour” - From “The Secret Songs”)

I'm not certain that learning that this song was from P.T. Barnum's POV makes it more or less easy for the casual listener; after all, in The Secret Songs, the character was given a 9-minute long intro telling us all about who he is-- this song sort of throws us in the deep end

(In some ways, maybe the song works better knowing less about its specific context and allowing the listener to fill in more of the blanks themselves...)

I'm gonna go back and catch up with all those little cut-lines just to have them in the thread:

“Down Among the Wines and Spirits” (Former-Champion Prizefighter Discovers His Name Printed Just Above The Liquor Licensee)

“Complicated Shadows” (Bravado Falters In The Eternal Chiaroscuro)

“I Felt the Chill Before The Winter Came” (Inclement Weather Foretells Of A Betrayal)

“My All Time Doll” (Term Of Endearment Borrowed From The Ancients)

“Hidden Shame” (The Terrible Confusion Of A Life-Long Petty Criminal)

“She Handed Me a Mirror”(Jenny Lind’s Response To H.C. Anderson’s Romantic Overture - From “The Secret Songs”)

“I Dreamed of My Old Lover” (Dissatisfied Woman Fears Talking In Her Sleep - Geraldine’s Song From “The Delivery Man”)

“How Deep Is the Red” (Profane Adaptation Of Pious Song Performed By Acclaimed Nightingale - From “The Secret Songs”)

“She Was No Good” (Eyewitness Account Of Barnum And Lind’s “All-American Tour” of 1850)

“Sulphur to Sugarcane” (A New Song For The Old Campaign)

“The Crooked Line” (The Bough Of The Family Tree Bends Near The River Of Rough Damnations)

This was supposedly written for a movie & rejected, and the speculation was that the movie was Walk The Line:

I'm trying to imagine what it would take for me to be making a movie and to REJECT this song, written by T Bone & Elvis. I cannot picture a scenario in which this would happen.

“Changing Partners” (A Constant Waltz)

The album closes with a nice low-key cover of this song by Larry Coleman & Joe Darion:

Now, to a few non-LP tracks...

"Dirty Rotten Shame" had been in the running for All This Useless Beauty, now it finally came out on a single 13 years later:

"Femme Fatale" by Lou Reed:

But the major non-album track from these sessions is "What Lewis Did Last," a sequel to the traditional song "Ommie Wise":

This song should've been on the album.

It sounds great, it FEELS right for the album, and it doesn't deserve to be THIS obscure.

Great twist ending to the song, too:

A few more of The Secret Songs that didn't make it to this album, although who knows if any of them were attempted at any point...

"He Has Forgotten Me Completely":

"He Has Forgotten Me Completely" (cont'd):

"The Misfit" sung by Gisela Stille.

"The Misfit" (cont'd):

"Illustrated Lady":

"Illustrated Lady" (cont'd):

"The Famous Artificial Bird":

"The Famous Artificial Bird" (cont'd):

2009 @Letterman appearan

One final thought: this had Costello's best sleeve art in decades, by the great @tonymillionaire (as mentioned earlier in this thread).

Ok, that is a wrap on Day 37 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

Secret, Profane & Sugarcane on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/3nF9hKtb…

Day 38: National Ransom

Costello had recorded 2 albums in quick succession-- the 1st a surprise release that sold poorly, the 2nd a surprise hit thanks to being on Starbucks counters + the added publicity of his TV show.

He was inspired to write & record a double album.

Released October 25, 2010 (international) & November 2, 2010 (US)

This wasn't a sequel to Secret, Profane & Sugarcane but I think one can safely call it a follow-up: T Bone was back, along with The Sugarcanes (blended with The Imposters now) & a new @tonymillionaire cover:

It should be said perhaps right up top that this ends up being the last Elvis Costello album initiated by Costello himself until this year's return with Look Now.

But I don't think this was intended to be a finale at the time, and it certainly wasn't presented as such:

This is pure speculation on my part, but here goes: I think the Starbucks-fueled success of the previous record gave Costello hope that there was a way for him to make records & get them to an audience, and this album is him taking full advantage of the opportunity.

However...

What a difference a year makes: things were changing within Starbucks & Hear Music & the prominent point-of-purchase display treatment that was given to Secret, Profane & Sugarcane was no longer a thing by the time this LP came out.

National Ransom was left to its own devices.

National Ransom came and went so quickly it was almost as if it didn't happen, despite EC really getting out there to promote it.

Here he is on @Letterman:

And here is a 2nd, web-only song for @Letterman:

Elvis Costello was promoting this album so hard he even showed up as a musical guest on @Morning_Joe , a show that DOES NOT HAVE MUSICAL GUESTS.

(I tried to find the full clip of this appearance-- can you help me out here, @JoeNBC?)

Title track! (After two albums in a row without one!) It always feels to me like the cover art primarily relates to this song, which itself feels nearly ripped from the headlines after the economic crisis of 2008.

"National Ransom":

Each song on the album is given a parenthetical with its date & location)

This one's is (1929 to the Present Day)

I love the dueling guitars of Marc Ribot & Jerry Douglas near the end.

ALSO: do you hear an allusion to a classic EC track in here, or am I hearing things or?

I assume it's no accident that Costello's big takedown of the greedy pigs who tanked the economy would contain a musical allusion to the song "You Belong To Me":

My memory of 2010 is that Costello went everywhere he possibly could to promote this album; it seemed like he was evidently very proud of it.

The promises back in 2007 to retire from making records would kick in once this record failed, I think largely because he really gave it his all.

A double LP of all-new songs, and it barely registered as a blip.

"Jimmie Standing In The Rain" instantly registered as one of the songs Costello was proudest of; he sang it every chance he could, and it is a song he keeps returning to in concert.

The new album, Look Now, opens with a track that is a sequel to this song! That's how much he loves it!

And I cannot pass up this opportunity to flash-forward to next week's new Costello record & its mind-blowing opening song, "Under Lime," which instantly became one of my all-time favorite @ElvisCostello songs:

This song has everything I want from a new Costello song. For one thing, it genuinely surprised me. Every twist and turn in this song caught me off guard. And it's not like any song he's done before, but it is friends with some of his very best songs:

Will we get a 3rd chapter of Jimmie the show biz cowboy? I sure hope so. He is 2-for-2 with these, so far...

Speaking or cowboy Jimmies, here is Costello singing "Sweet Mama Hurry Home" by Jimmie Rodgers:

By the way, the parenthetical for "Jimmie Standing In The Rain" is "(Accrington - 1937)"

From the original press release:
"All members of The Imposters & The Sugarcanes feature in a wide variety of groovy new combos with guests Vince Gill, Marc Ribot, Buddy Miller and Leon Russell"

There is no track with all 3 Imposters playing together!

"Stations Of The Cross":

You need some kind of chart to keep up with the shifting line-up! Davey only plays on one track-- with Pete but not Steve.

(It's worth noting that this is kind of how Costello wanted to use The Attractions back on Spike, but Steve refused. A lot has changed since then!)

This track features Steve & Pete but no Davey! Plus a couple of The Sugarcanes + Marc Ribot!

The date & location for this one is:

(In An Undisclosed Location, Possibly New Orleans, 2005)

“A Slow Drag With Josephine” (Under The Napoleonic Code – 1921)

Whistling solo by Costello:

“Five Small Words” (Tucson, Arizona, 1978)

A song that made its debut on the previous year’s Sugarcanes tour, this is the only track on the album to feature Imposters’ bass player Davey Faragher.

“Church Underground” (Utopia, KS, 1915 To The Garden of Allah, Hollywood, California, 1947)

EC: "Tracing the life of a nightclub singer from obscurity through infamy to a harsh final redemption."

“You Hung the Moon”
(A Drawing Room In Pimlico, London - 1919)

EC: “a song about a séance held in 1919 as a family struggle with the loss of a soldier executed for desertion in the First World War."

“Bullets for the New-Born King”
(Somewhere In Central America - 1951)

One of the sparest tracks on the album, with just voice, guitar & bass, this is "a song in the voice of a regretful assassin."

“Dr. Watson, I Presume” (Wilkesboro, North Carolina – 2007)

EC: “When I was first introduced to Doc [Watson], he took off into a testimonial or homily about his life and work, the things his father had taught him and lessons taken from scripture."

EC: "He may tell a lot of people these things but they rolled around my head for good while. I didn’t immediately decide that any of this should appear in a song. Then one day the song arrived, all in one piece, in just a matter of minutes."

EC: "Things that I had heard that day had become entangled with various old rhymes and notions; a dedication to the visible sign of invisible grace. At best, this is what we are striving for, accepting that we fail most of the time."

This is one of the best songs on the album, and possibly one of the best songs he has ever written, full stop.

"I Lost You”(On The Road To Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa – 2009)

Co-written with @jimlauderdale1:

“One Bell Ringing” (The London Underground – 22nd of July, 2005)

Date/location refers to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, an unarmed man shot 7 times by London police who mistook him for a fugitive involved w/failed bombing attempts 2wks after London Underground bombings

EC: “The song simply tries to summon up an atmosphere of dread in which a terrible misjudgment might occur. There are beautiful, soothing images right alongside those of a fate that might befall any innocent man or woman..."

EC: "Here’s an innocent man who cannot understand why he is mistaken for a threat. There simply isn’t some convenient moral on which to conclude."

EC: "All mere songs can do is offer these received images in juxtaposition and you can make use of this arrangement of words and music as you wish. I don’t have any snappy slogans or violent solutions to propose but I think we all have a lot of questions."

“The Spell That You Cast”
(The Castle Hotel, Richmond - 1965)

From the press release: "Costello’s own Gibson tenor guitar trades off in the solo with Mike Compton’s mandolin on a beat combo tune."

And that's all there is to say about this track! It just is what it is:

“That’s Not the Part of Him You’re Leaving”
(On The Road Between Dismal and Discouraged. Right Now)

This LP is loaded w/what feel like pretty major songs, all newly written for this album. So many of his 21st century LPs involve him re-purposing songs written for other projects & then winding up as part of a record. I think that makes this LP worthy of special consideration.

“All These Strangers”
(On a narrow bed. At the last moment.)

EC: “He is a man who has been left by his lover for a more dangerous man and so, to compete with his rival, imagines himself the worst he can be, a gunrunner, a dissolute painter, a brigand after dark."

EC: ""Even in his wildest imaginings,he ends up in a defeated army, sitting in a locomotive yard without any boots.

"As to the music, this was the very last piece recorded in Nashville. The band had barely finished writing out their numbers charts when we hit 'Record.'"

EC: "This is the kind of high wire act that doesn’t always come off but on this occasion, everyone was simply listening to a story & responding. It is one of my favourite ensemble performances on the record.”

“My Lovely Jezebel” (Everywhere Until Either 1938 or 1951, According To Some.)

Co-written with Leon Russell & T Bone Burnett:

“A Voice in the Dark”
(On a Radio Hat - 1931)

Concluding the album with an upbeat number, one of many that feel like it could've been written 70 years earlier.

As if writing a double LP wasn't impressive enough, there is actually another half album's worth of material beyond this!

"Poor Borrowed Dress"

Another song co-written with @jimlauderdale1:

"Condemned Man"

Most of these tracks were released on the National Ransack EP; truly, it feels almost arbitrary which songs made the album and which ones didn't.

In particular, at the risk of darkening the album, I personally would've swapped out "Condemned Man" with one of the lighter numbers. But maybe that would've really thrown off the balance! I just think this song shouldn't be so obscure...

"Big Boys Cry" by Eddie Raven

I kind of wish that "I Don't Wanna Go Home" had made the album, simply because it is an unreleased song dating back to "My Aim Is True."

Then again, if he had closed out National Ransom with a song from 1977, it might've felt more like a "final album" and I don't like that at all!

Japanese bonus track, "I Hope" (Bobby Charles/Stan Lewis):

One of the strangest EC releases is "The Return Of The Imposter," a slowed-down alternate version of "National Ransom" which he seems to have created his own YouTube channel specifically for, under the name "jimmyquickly."

The account has 21 subscribers:

This album's muted impact seemed to be the final straw for Costello, who would soon make reference to the album having been "deleted."

I think he knew he had made a major record, and not enough people cared.

There will be albums in the next few years, but they won't be instigated by Costello. His focus from this point will primarily be the stage (and the printed page).

And who could blame him? He'd made one of his best albums and the world had shrugged. It was time for other things.

That's it for Day 38 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

No liner notes for this one, although here's hoping we'll get a deluxe 10th anniversary edition in 2 years' time...

National Ransom on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/7lbH259x…

Day 39: The Return Of The Incredible Spinning Songbook / Pomp & Pout / In Motion Pictures

Today, I'm going to focus on a few strange releases: a live box set which should've been an easy win but ended up a disaster, and two compilations that make very little sense.

The Spinning Songbook concerts of 1986 were legendary-- in part because they were just one crazy idea amid 5 different tours he was doing all at once.

When Costello decided to bring back the big wheel, I secretly hoped it would lead to a big deluxe box set.

The resulting set, when it arrived, was so vastly overpriced that Costello publicly distanced himself from it, encouraging people to buy a recently released Louis Armstrong box instead.

The list price for the release was reported as high as $340-- even the discounted Amazon version was over $250 when it first came out.

This was for a single CD, a DVD, a vinyl EP w/4 songs on it, a hardcover book, a poster, an autographed bookplate & a limited edition postcard.

The CD/DVD combo, when it finally came out, had a list price of just under 30 dollars, meaning that the book/poster/vinyl EP/etc cost over two hundred dollars!

Do I own this? Sure, I eventually got a copy. It's nice. They are usually still overpriced, but I snagged one once when it dipped down from "criminally insane" to "quite unreasonable."

"Pump It Up (6/8)" from the vinyl EP:

It's a shame that something that should've been fun ended up becoming a weird price gouge; fans were left feeling like the standard release was less than and that the superior edition was completely out of reach.

"Busted":

The set itself-- putting aside the price tag-- was fun but less fun than it shoulda/coulda been. It felt like they took an unpredictable tour and made an unimaginative live set out of it. So many familiar songs culled from a tour loaded with surprised!

"Brilliant Mistake"

There are some gems; but it also feels like there could've been a way to give fans more unexpected cuts from the tour; in the digital age, access to every song played on the tour would've made the super deluxe version feel like less of a rip-off...

UGH I mistyped "filled with surprises" as "filled with surprised" above. SO many regrets in a twitter thread this long, which I have so often been doing at like 4 in the morning.

"Radio Radio":

Anyway, as I was saying, while it's great to have ANY professionally filmed/recorded Costello concert, a set like this probably could have leaned a little bit more towards the obscure stuff.

"What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding?":

Just LOOK at all the songs played on this tour: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

This concert is a bit too brightly lit for this to rank among the most intense performances of "I Want You," regardless of how well they perform it here:

"Everyday I Write The Book" is a track I'd actually count as a good choice for this set-- despite it being on of his biggest hits, it's not a song he *always* plays in concert, and when he does, it doesn't always sound like this:

And there *are* some good tracks that are not songs he always plays on every tour, like Nick Lowe's "Heart Of The City":

Or The Rolling Stones' "Out Of Time":

And it is great to hear the Momofuku track "Stella Hurt" performed. This is a good, solid set. I think maybe it would've helped if maybe the CD & DVD had totally different setlists, instead of having quite a bit of overlap.

And the packaging for the price gouge version *is* nice. If not for whatever record company shenanigans led to making it ridiculously unaffordable, this woulda been a characteristically nice off-year release from Costello.

Speaking of unknown record company shenanigans, what to make of Costello's *other* 2011 release?

Pomp & Pout: The Universal Years was issued on February 8, 2011 in the U.S. & March 25 in the Netherlands.

Or maybe it was 2010.

Or maybe it was never released at all!

Try looking for a copy online-- on ebay, all that is listed now is some t-shirts without tags listed as "Elvis Costello Pomp And Pout Famous Musician Menz Black T-Shirt."

Not a single CD to be found, currently.

And yet it IS real. I somehow stupidly acquired a copy even though there is no real reason to own it except the collectors' disease.

The most interesting thing to report about it that cannot be gleaned from info online is that the inside cover of the booklet features this photo by @jessebdylan from the video shoot for "45" with EC holding a box of KIX cereal while The Imposters stand in the background:

Also, as was true of I believe all of the Hip-O reissues and releases of roughly a decade ago, detailed instructions for how to acquire Elvis Costello ringtones.

The weird thing about Pomp & Pout is that it was about to come out, reviews of it were published, but then it didn't come out. Or maybe it came out in Canada? But if so, not in enough quantities that you could easily find a single copy for sale on any given day?

Weird, right?

But guess what? Unlike, say, The River In Reverse, you can currently find Pomp & Pout on @Spotify in the U.S.

So it is basically more of a playlist than an actual record, for all intents & purposes.

It is a weird era to compile, but this is a pretty solid playlist. It has a couple of genuinely unexpected tracks that are worthy of being included, and it makes a strong case for the high quality of his decade with UMG.

As these things go, these 3 collections would make for a nice overview of 1977-2008.

Pomp & Pout notably contains no liner notes by Costello, though his song selections obvsly tell us a certain amount about what he thinks was worth compiling.

But what are we to make of the 2012 EC compilation that *was* released, In Motion Pictures?

"15 songs featured in blockbuster & cult films, personally selected by Elvis himself. The films include E.T., The Godfather Part III, Notting Hill, The Big Lebowski & Grace Of My Heart."

This is a strange collection, put together with evident care, but it is hard to know who it was designed for. Dedicated fans likely had almost all of this music, but it would be hard to imagine what a casual listener would make of any of it.

The one track that was most likely to have escaped many fan's attention was the most recent, "Sparkling Day" from the 2011 motion picture, One Day.

This song, written specifically for that movie, features EC & The Imposters plus a string section.

I'll make note again w/r/t my excitement for next week's Look Now that I have been dying to hear more of The Imposters augmented by orchestration like this, doing pop songs. "Impatience" and this were two records I love the sound of.

It features lengthy liner notes by "Moon Conway" one of Costello's National Ransom-era aliases, a "theatrical agent & publicity advisor to the stars" who refers to EC as a "client."

It is 11 full pages of text, some of it quite funny, and written with care.

This is the kind of detail that seems tailored more for a devoted audience than for someone casually purchasing a CD in 2012. (Someone who doesn't especially need more copies of album tracks from Armed Forces or Blood & Chocolate by this point.)

The liner notes are also filled with references to songs that probably should've been included but weren't.

For instance, this doesn't include "The Scarlet Tide," the song he was nominated for an OSCAR for!

How does one make a compilation of "songs for movies" & omit the one that was nominated for an OSCAR?

The sleevenote also references the song "Party Party" (which he hates) written for a film of the same title; he makes a joke about it being "erased from the catalogue."

And the thing is, while it is interesting to note that a character from E.T. at one point sings "Accidents Will Happen," that fact is JUST as interesting even if the original song isn't taking up space on the soundtrack.

Meanwhile, there *are* soundtrack songs by Costello that have yet to be properly released, such as his cover of @YusufCatStevens' "Sitting" as heard in @rickygervais' 2009 film, The Invention Of Lying.

Why has this never been released in any form?

Another soundtrack favorite of mine, "Bright Blue Times" (from the 1998 Channel 4 film Soft Sand, Blue Sea) was unreleased at the time of this soundtrack and would have taken up SO little room while making this collection more appealing fans who already own most of these songs:

Ok, that's it for Day 39 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

All 3 of these weird releases are on Spotify!

The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook:
open.spotify.com/album/2bWrv4GC…

In Motion Pictures:
open.spotify.com/album/2VNMoSXY…

Pomp & Pout:
open.spotify.com/album/3sBhhA2F…

EC: "There was really no plan in my mind to make any more recordings after National Ransom, because quite honestly, and not to be morbid, I know that I don’t have an endless amount of time left, and I was trying to divide it up for the best of my mental and emotional health."

EC: "The plan was to just pursue my vocation as a performing musician, which I do really well, and that’s how I make my living. I couldn’t honestly justify the time away from my family to make records, even at that high level."

EC: "National Ransom has The Imposters and The Sugarcanes on it, the two best bands I’ve ever worked with, you can’t actually work with any better musicians."

EC: "On top of that, there’s the best producer in the world [T Bone Burnett] who happens to be my friend, as close as a brother, and it’s difficult to imagine ever trumping that. It was one of the two or three records of mine that I will always value above all others."

Day 40: Wise Up Ghost

After the disappointing response to National Ransom, Costello was lured back into the studio by The Roots & their producer @StevenMandel.

Mandel invited EC to record a song for a still-to-be completed Squeeze tribute record-- "Someone Else's Heart."

SM: "it was the first time I was in the studio with Elvis, recording his vocals & thinking ‘Oh my God!’ & stuff like that..."

Mandel: "The session kind of established that Elvis was great with The Roots, live & also in the studio. So to me, that was sort of the impetus to say ‘Ok, let’s do a full record.'”

Costello & @theroots first performed together on Late Night with @jimmyfallon in 2009, bringing "High Fidelity" back to its pre-Armed Forces arrangement. It is especially fun to watch the way @questlove looks at EC throughout. This is the beginning of something NICE:

EC's creative partnership with The Roots would also shift him away from his frequent @Letterman appearances for a few years-- between 2010 & 2014, EC was absent from Late Show, his biggest gap since 1994! Only 2 more Dave appearances left (until he shows up on his @netflix show!)

2009 web-only performance of "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea":

In 2010, during Costello's blitz of promotional appearances for National Ransom, he showed up to perform "Stations Of The Cross" with The Roots & John McLaughlin:

This was while EC had access to both The Imposters & The Sugarcanes, and could've summoned any combination of the two; this was a clear signal that he had really enjoyed playing with The Roots:

I don't have the video for this, only the audio, but at that same taping, EC & The Roots returned once again to Get Happy!! for this version of "Black & White World":

In 2012, for "Springsteen Week" on Fallon, Costello joined with The Roots to perform 2 songs by the Boss.

"Brilliant Disguise":

...and "Fire":

Cut to 2013, and news that Costello & The Roots have secretly made an album together, after hours at their home studio in the Late Night offices at 30 Rock!

"Walk Us Uptown" was the first thing heard from the collaboration, and it was exciting:

After decades of Costello partnering with elder statesmen of popular music (McCartney, Bacharach, Toussaint) or seeking to shine a light on artists he admires (Von Otter), this album is perhaps the first time the dynamic is reversed, with Costello as the revered figure...

Much of the album involves twisting and peeling off elements from older Costello songs, sampling or re-arranging them to create something new.

The beautiful "Tripwire" is a new song built on a sample from "Satellite" off of Spike:

Featuring backing vocals by @dianebirch, whose records are also well worth checking out...

Here is a song from @dianebirch's album that same year, Speak A Little Louder.

"All The Love You Got":

"Stick Out Your Tongue" is a good example of the album's approach, in parts-- "Pills & Soap" blended with the title track from "National Ransom."

(Is it blasphemy to say that I actually prefer this to the original version of "Pills & Soap"?)

Another callback to the political edge of Punch The Clock, "Cinco Minutos Con Vos" is a kind of sequel to "Shipbuilding" featuring guest vocals by Marisol from @lasantacecilia:

This song is also built over the music from that early version of "High Fidelity" that Costello performed with The Roots in 2009!

Costello would return the favor by appearing on @lasantacecilia's album, Treinta Dias, produced by LOOK NOW producer @SebastianKrys!

"Losing Game":

"Wake Me Up" mashes up "Bedlam" from The Delivery Man with the title track & "Broken Promise Land" from The River In Reverse:

"Refuse To Be Saved" is a reworking of "Invasion Hit Parade"-- it's the 3rd track on the record & the 1st to use elements from his back catalog, and it's an impressive choice; a deep cut from a severely underrated album, a signal to hardcore fans that they are not messing around:

It's interesting how many of the old songs they pull from are from the politically charged/social conscience end of Costello's oeuvre. (And how there are more quotes from Mighty Like A Rose and North than there are from the first 5 albums, cutting out any nostalgia element)...

"Sugar Won't Work" opens with a sample from "You Left Me In The Dark" off of North but after that is a totally new EC/Questlove/Mandel song:

"Come The Meantimes" is another original-- and one of my favorites on the album-- with no ties to EC's back catalog (it is built instead on a foundation of the Glass House track, "I Don't See You In My Eyes Anymore"):

This song was another fun discovery in the wake of listening to Wise Up Ghost!

Glass House, "I Don't See You In My Eyes Anymore":

"(She Might Be A) Grenade" is essentially a new version of "She's Pulling Out The Pin" and includes a musical quote from "Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)":

EC: "'Wise Up Ghost' is a lot of static coming in from the ways of the world, mixed up with something very personal, which was my father’s passing. Those images inside the song that describe his room in the nursing home in his last months."

Yet another title track! And this one really earns its status.

It feels like maybe the best example of what is great about this album-- built on an orchestral sample from North's "Can You Be True?" in a way that makes it hard to go back to the original without thinking of this:

It also feels like maybe the best example on the record of The Roots really making a meal of it. (Scroll back two tweets and listen to how it arrives at the 60-second mark and really delivers.)

Deluxe editions confuse the hell out of me, in terms of what I am supposed to consider the proper "ending" of the album.

"If I Could Believe" is definitely an ending song, and a good one:

Yet I never really think of this as the true ending to the album, thanks to the extra tracks at the end. Two of them ("Can You Hear Me?" & "My New Haunt") feel like bonus tracks, but the last one feels like the true final track.

"If I Could Believe" (cont'd):

EC: "And then, in the very, very end of the record, they sent me another piece of music, which I sat at home and recorded sitting at my kitchen counter. This song, called “The Puppet Has Cut His Strings,” is a literal description of my father’s last days."

EC: "I had gone from assuming that we should speak with an outward-looking perspective to the world. And then, [at] the very end of the deluxe version of the record, there is this one song that is probably [one of] the most personal things that I’ve ever written."

EC: "I think it’s to Quest’s credit that, when I sent it to them from my computer and went to the studio the next day to record the vocal again, he wouldn’t let me do it. That’s the record."

EC: "Just by sheer luck the little filtered recording of me singing all alone to my computer microphone happened to work on that one occasion. It wouldn’t work nine times out of ten, but it did for that song."

There was a special Record Store Day EP called Wise Up: Thought that featured 7 remixes.

This "Menahan Street Band Rework" of "Tripwire" strips away the sample from "Satellite."

It makes me wonder, purely as a thought exercise, what it would have been like if they had continued to rework every song until all the quotes & references were replaced with new material?

I feel like in some cases, people who take a dim view of this album think of it as too much re-hashing of old material, and overlook how much of the album is totally new.

"Walk Us Uptown (Antibalas Rework - Chico Mann Edit)":

In any case, I think the LP is stronger because it is in dialogue w/his older material.

ALSO: this RSD EP is hit-and-miss for me, the kind of thing where I'm glad it exists but I rarely revisit most of it.

"Cinco Minutos Con Vos (Karriem Riggins Remix Featuring Black Thought)":

I was lucky enough to be at the Brooklyn Bowl concert the night before Wise Up Ghost came out.

You, too, can feel like you were there, by watching the full show, recorded for radio & filmed up close:

Here is a FRAGMENT of an epic 13-minute "I Want You":

I feel really grateful that Costello & The Roots found each other and made this record; I also feel really greedy, because I want them to keep hanging out and making more records together. I hope they will.

Top of my wish list would be for them to do a quick & easy volume of Kojak Variety: between Costello & @questlove & @StevenMandel, my guess is that the biggest challenge would be narrowing down the list of songs to cover.

"I Found Out" by John Lennon:

Here's a recording from earlier in 2013, a Prince tribute concert at Carnegie Hall where EC & The Roots performed the then-still-unreleased "Moonbeam Levels":

I feel like the next time EC is in NYC with a free evening, this would be worth committing to a studio version, along with longtime EC favorite, "Pop Life"...

Even putting aside my wish list of songs for them to record, I would love to hear Costello & @questlove just TALK about Prince for an hour on Skype.

Ok, that is a delayed wrap on Day 40 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

No liner notes yet, but hopefully Mandel & Questlove & Costello will each pen lengthy ones for a 10 year anniversary reissue in 2023

Here's the Deluxe Version of Wise Up Ghost on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/artist/5uaPSAp…

Day 41: Lost On The River

This one ticks a lot of boxes: it's a supergroup side project, a 2nd post-National Ransom record *not* initiated by Costello, and partly a lost album.

The short version: Costello writes songs with 1967 Bob Dylan without using a time machine.

Released November 11, 2014

Basically, a bunch of unused Dylan lyrics from 1967 were found; Bob gave 'em to T Bone Burnett to do whatever he wanted, and T Bone quickly assembled a supergroup: Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, Marcus Mumford & Costello

The group was confusingly named "The New Basement Tapes" which sounds more like it should be the name of the album/project; it was released around the same time Columbia finally issued Dylan's complete Basement Tapes recorded w/The Band (which is/was also confusingly named)

I think the idea was that the release of all the original Basement Tapes would boost the profile of this album, but I think it may have had the opposite effect and overshadowed them a bit.

EC wrote the music for 5 of the 20 tracks that have been released, but of course, as soon as he was sent the lyrics, he went ahead & wrote music for every single one he was given.

"Married To My Hack" is fun but feels like the kind of song Costello could write in his sleep:

Dylan's handwritten lyric has an unfinished last line: "Just gimme a bottle and the"

Costello completes it: "gimme a bottle or someone to throttle"

Here is Costello's version of the title track (another title track!!):

It actually reminds me of Costello's cover of Nick Lowe's "Egypt," recorded for a tribute album back around 2001. They feel like they have the same vibe:

Here's Mumford & Giddens' version of the title track. I'll go ahead and admit that while Costello wrote music for my Top 2 favorite tracks on the record, the other 3 of his probably rank in the middle somewhere, as everyone involved is making a good showing throughout.

Here are the 2 Dylan/Costello tracks that absolutely *make* this album for me...

The 1st is a nailed-it-in-one-take wonder, perfectly tailored for the sound of this supergroup; an epic jam worthy of the two songwriters' names.

"Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street)":

I have to say-- and it may be that I TRULY don't know what I'm talking about here-- I have no idea how Costello made a song this good out of these 2 pages of lyrics. I look at these & I do not see the makings of a song. He did a superb job editing & wrangling these into shape:

It's an unusual song, to be sure-- if it reminds me of any Dylan at all, I suppose it brings to mind some of that joyful chaotic sound of Desire-era Bob, although maybe someone else hears something different in it. But I love it.

The other song is "Golden Tom - Silver Judas" which Costello turns into a song that would be right at home on Dylan's first post-Basement Tapes LP, 1967's John Wesley Harding:

Honestly, it's songs like this one that have made the longer gap between albums tolerable, because when he *does* release a new recording, it feels substantial. This is a song that could have found a home on a number of his albums and would've been a highlight...

Here he is performing the song with @LarkinPoe when they were his opening act on tour. (He's struggling with his voice here but carries the day with another stellar whistling solo):

The album is a group effort; the music-writing is fairly evenly shared, and everybody plays on everybody else's songs. And they supposedly recorded everything that everybody wrote, which means there are Costello/Dylan versions of each one of the found lyrics.

So, I'm gonna be a myopic fanboy jerk about this, putting aside all of the group/team spirit on display and lament that, in this world, there exists an entire album's worth of songs written by 1967 Bob Dylan & 2014 Elvis Costello that has yet to be released.

A proposed 2nd volume from these sessions has yet to materialize, and I'm not sure that the first one sold convincingly enough for anyone to be in a hurry to put it out.

I wish they would.

Here is mid-90s Costello joining Bob to sing "I Shall Be Released":

"Hidee Hidee Ho #16" has music co-written by Rhiannon Giddens & EC, and is sung on the record by Giddens:

Not only was that not the only version of "Hidee Hidee Ho" to make the album, Costello himself seems to have written more than one of this song.

Here is a very fun take that made it into the "making of" doc:

And listening to the playback:

Costello's own version of "Down On The Bottom" in concert:

Again, there are fully finished studio recordings of all of these sitting on hard drives somewhere, awaiting release (hopefully, someday)...

"Santa Cruz" a lyric that didn't make the album in any form at all!

Considering that it took twenty years for Costello's brilliant song with Carole King to get a release date, it is fully possible we might see a total environmental catastrophe before the remaining Costello/Dylan songs see the light of day...

The New Basement Tapes on Ellen, playing Mumford's excellent "Kansas City" with EC on piano:

I think this is really great. Also, I do *not* play piano but I think I could reasonably fake my way through the piano part Costello is playing here on national television:

TNBT put on a one-off concert at the time of the album's release, since a full tour would likely prove impossible to coordinate with everyone's busy schedules.

"Golden Tom - Silver Judas":

I really can't get enough of this song. It is a modest and simple tune, to match the lyric, but it is honestly everything I could've hope for from a Dylan/Costello pairing:

Ok, some stray assorted/semi-related things:

From the previous year, this outdoor performance of Springsteen's "Ghost Of Tom Joad" blended with Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi" performed, outdoors for some reason, by Costello + @MumfordAndSons:

A few prime clips of Costello doing classic Dylan...

From Spectacle, "I Threw It All Away":

From a tribute album, his solo take on "License To Kill":

In concert, a rare performance of "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again":

"Wallflower," in concert with Diana Krall:

2014 also saw Costello return to @Letterman for what turned out to be his penultimate appearance. This time, he premiered a brand new song, which remains unrecorded!

"The Last Year Of My Youth":

I was hoping to post some clips from the "making of" doc in the thread for Day 41, but:

A) I ran out of time
B) couldn't get the footage ripped from my blu ray, nor find it online
C) I'm exhausted & starting to get sloppy

But it is available online if you wanna order it!

FWIW, Costello hates the film and seems to have special contempt for its director, whom he accused of inventing melodrama to make the doc more interesting...

Here is a clip from the audiobook of Costello's memoir-- it begins with criticism of director Sam Jones, and then transitions to an anecdote about bumping into Bob Dylan while making the record, and that's as good a place as any to end the day...

And that's it for Day 41 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

Lost On The River on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/2d25Dhlk…

PLUS: Track-by-track commentary by T Bone Burnett:
open.spotify.com/album/2NseoUei…

Just to reiterate one last time: there exists a full-length album's worth of songs by Dylan & Costello.

We have 5 of the songs, let us hope that the rest of this music Shall Be Released.

Day 42: Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

Costello writes a book! A giant non-chronological memoir w/no index, including fragments of unpublished fiction.

[The record playing here is a single by @thestrokes where EC sings on the live b-side; it has nothing to do w/the book!]

Here's a marvelous Instagram ad by @theodelaney from back when the book was released; it's filled with the kind of sharp details that signal to Costello fans that the people promoting this know what they're doing:

I will post a few things from this book today, but honestly, I will only scratch the surface and if you are still looking at this megathread 42 days in, you likely already read the book or you are going to, yes? I mean, you should!

Or listen to it, as read by "The Author":

It's 18-and-a-half hours of Costello not merely reading his book but acting it out and doing character voices when needed.

Here is the Dedication, Epigraph & the unexpected opening paragraph of Chapter One:

Instead of posting a million clips from the easily downloadable audiobook, I'm gonna post some clips from the feature film documentary that I think serves as a terrific companion piece & primer for diving into the book, 2014's Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance...

It almost feels like this film was designed to set up the book, the way it opens with Costello talking about writing it.

Testimonials by Paul McCartney & Emmylou Harris:

It would have been nice if the full cut of this film had been available at the time the book was being released, simply because the big advantage the film has is that it can actually play some of the music Costello is talking/writing about...

Instead, there was a soundtrack CD, which is a well-curated companion disc, although unavailable on streaming, which instead has playlists people have made which include not only Costello's selections but also other music he mentions in the book: open.spotify.com/user/dardecome…

Although the soundtrack does have this early demo for the otherwise unreleased song, "I Can't Turn It Off":

Elvis visitd his childhood neighborhood & reminisces about watching his dad perform when he was 7 or 8:

EC talking about getting records as a perk of his dad's job; some fascinating behind the scenes footage during the most recent Spinning Songbook tour:

EC talks about the first song he learned to play on guitar (a Fleetwood Mac song):

Talking about clothes, and then pivoting to discuss the death of a teenage friend, and musings on mortality:

Costello's early days as a singer/songwriter, including his intense @JoniMitchellcom fandom:

Today will be a day full of pivots; from his memoir to the documentary film that preceded it and now to his writings for Vanity Fair, specifically 3 very interesting pieces he contributed in the early 00s.

In 2004, he interviewed Jon Mitchell at length: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

Before that, Costello contributed a list to @VanityFair of 500 albums you should own: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

And here is a not-quite-complete Spotify playlist based on his 500 LPs, with over 10,000 songs: open.spotify.com/user/12854279/…

In between those two VF pieces, he curated a 24 Hour Playlist, starting at 5AM: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

This Spotify playlist is much more manageable, at less than 700 songs:
open.spotify.com/user/12854279/…

Starting out as a songwriter, sending tapes of Flip City out and getting rejected:

Signing to Stiff Records & writing all of My Aim Is True while working as a computer operator:

Costello performing 1975's "Poison Moon" in 2014:

Stiff Records and the adoption of his new name, "Elvis Costello":

Costello moving quickly from My Aim Is True to working with The Attractions and wanting to "try stuff" musically that Nick Lowe had his doubts about at first:

1978 Costello in "let's make people uncomfortable" mode:

Costello talks about the "revenge & guilt" character and the way those early years got out of control:

Fascinating to hear Costello talk about the way he pulled from his various musical influences on those early albums:

Costello talks to @smokeyrobinson about the time he & The Attractions took dance lessons; also, how he ended up making records simply because it was time to:

From Trust to Almost Blue:

Hit singles, from "A Good Year For The Roses" to "Everyday I Write The Book" (here rescued by @RonSexsmith):

Being asked about writing "political" songs; the self-proclaimed "best lyric" he had ever written (up to 1983, anyway):

I mean, this film is in so many ways an abridged rough draft of what the book ends up being. Costello talks about his grandfather, also a musician:

Liverpool memories, from unwanted boxing lessons to The Beatles' "Penny Lane":

I never tire of watching/listening to Sir @PaulMcCartney (of recent Billboard #1 album #EgyptStation fame) & @ElvisCostello talk about working together. I really, really wish they would do it again sometime. Or do a small tour together!

Seriously, I could watch all of the footage of McCartney unpacking his creative relationship with Costello:

Costello talks about Mighty Like A Rose being darker and angrier than the early albums; and about the way he found America disorienting at first, back in the early days:

Like his memoir, the doc isn't strictly chronological, it jumps around-- here from we loop back to King Of America, working T Bone Burnett & the likes of Ray Brown:

Then shifting back again, from King Of America to his interest in classical music & his work with The Brodsky Quartet:

Here's something I've never seen elsewhere, and it's a treat-- @SteveNieve unpacking "The Birds Will Still Be Singing" and enthusing about Costello's songwriting:

Costello & The Brodskys talking about their working relationship; EC speaking with evident pride at the end of this clip w/r/t what they achieved together:

This section, leading up to talking about his collaboration w/Bacharach-- I could just watch THIS as its own TV show: Elvis Costello Talks About Records.

I actually hope that if he does another book, it is just him writing about his favorite music the way he talks about it here:

Costello's eyes light up when he talks about working with Bacharach. It makes me happy watching how enthusiastic he is about it.

ALSO: footage of him absolutely nailing it singing "God Give Me Strength" while strolling through the audience:

From Burt to Emmylou, Dave Rawlings & Gillian Welch:

This part of the doc-- about NORTH and his relationship with Diana Krall-- features almost nothing but clips I already included independently earlier in the thread! Apologies for the redundancies...

And then the doc quickly moves on to Allen Toussaint-- even in a 90 minute expanded version of this doc, it has to move quickly to fit as much in as possible...

This part of the doc, with Allen Toussaint talking about Costello, is especially moving to watch now that Toussaint is no longer with us.

He sums up what's great about Costello elegantly:

A glimpse at how Costello uses his phone to record demos when needed, specifically the song "Moon Is High":

What is "Moon Is High"? Oh, it's one of the songs Costello wrote for the TV series @Nashville_ABC! Did I not mention that? Believe it or not, I am skipping past TONS of stuff along the way in this thread...

Here's another song Costello wrote for @Nashville_ABC, "A Twist Of Barbwire":

Costello plays a recording of the Jesse Winchester song, "Quiet About It" which he was working on when he received word that his father was dying...

The way that music seems woven throughout his life makes it more than mere vocation; it is a calling, a deeply rooted family tradition, connected to his most important personal relationships & is a source of comfort in difficult times. Hearing him talk about it is bracing:

A splendid re-arrangement of the song "Mystery Dance" while EC talks about how he still finds new meaning in his older songs:

And then, some final thoughts as EC listens to "Cinco Minutos Con Vos":

There was a hour-long version of this that aired on Showtime, but I can't imagine what they cut out-- even 90 minutes has to skip over so many things to paint a bigger picture...

Back to the topic of the day-- Costello's book-- a mere 49 tweets later, here is a fun snippet of Costello talking about the time he ran into Alice Cooper at AIR Studios during the recording of IbMePdErRoIoAmL:

Costello describes being in Amsterdam, getting his photo taken by Anton Corbijn (the one used on the cover):

The time in 1983 when @ElvisCostello was mistaken for @billyjoel in an elevator at the Allentown Holiday Inn:

(cc: @theanthonyking)

Hearing Costello enthuse about Sinatra is the way Costello's own fans enthuse about him:

Of COURSE Costello toured with a portable record player and a stack of melancholy LPs...

Perhaps inspired by Dylan's Chronicles, EC's book often lingers on songs or albums one might not expect.

I know I did not expect more pages about the recording of Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice" than about the making of This Year's Model.

Part One:

Of course, it is his first experience meeting and working with Allen Toussaint, so it's really more of an Allen story than a Yoko one...

Part Two:

Part Three: Allen Toussaint produces The Attractions

Part Four: "Broccoli"

I realize I'm mostly just posting the name-droppiest clips from this book, but that's partly because those parts are so much FUN.

For instance, BOWIE:

One of the charms of the audio book is that Costello does all these voices.

Here, he plays Mae Axton, who co-wrote "Heartbreak Hotel," with a bonkers Elvis Presley story:

There is a fair amount of top notch Bob Dylan content in this book. Here, Elvis & Bob struggle trying out "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love & Understanding?" as a potential concert encore:

Elvis & Bob attempt "Tears Of Rage" in concert and this story is so much fun:

The idea that Infidels could've been a Bob Dylan & The Attractions record produced by Elvis Costello breaks my heart a little. I would've loved to hear that...

Elvis & Bob hanging out is funny to me, especially when they get locked out of their own venue:

In addition to including the documentary film & his Vanity Fair pieces today, I think it's probably a good place to include a fun/funny thing Costello did a few years back when someone else was ranking his songs online.

EC saw this and started posting his own rankings.

They were on his website but have since been deleted.

I'm gonna post them from 99 counting down to 1.

These seem to be both tongue-in-cheek and also kinda legit. Costello is having fun with it, clearly.

Ok, here we go: Elvis Costello Ranks His Top 99 Elvis Costello Songs:

99. No Wonder
98. No Star - "1975. Unrecorded"
97. Bullets For The New-Born King
96. Pills and Soap
95. Clubland
94. Hoover Factory
93. Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head
92. Sulky Girl
91. Basement Kiss

90. Favourite Hour
89. Just A Memory
88. This House Is Empty Now
87. You Tripped @ Every Step
86. Toledo
85. Tart
84. I’ll Wear It Proudly
83. You Little Fool
82. Harry Worth
81. This Year’s Girl

80. Human Hands
79. All These Strangers
78. Poisoned Rose
77. Someone Took The Words Away
76. Black Sails In The Sunset
75. Pump It Up
74. Big Tears
73. Dr Watson, I Presume
72. Heart Shaped Bruise
71. Black And White World

70. Party Girl
69. Episode Of Blonde
68. Ghost Train
67. Dirty Rotten Shame
66. She Handed Me A Mirror
65. For The Stars
64. What's Her Name Today?
63. Veronica
62. A Voice In The Dark
61. I’m In The Mood Again

60. American Without Tears
59. New Amsterdam
58. Lipstick Vogue
57. Brilliant Mistake
56. Accidents Will Happen
55. So Like Candy
54. Still
53. That Day Is Done
52. Tokyo Storm Warning
51. All The Rage

50. The Scarlet Tide
49. Oliver's Army
48. Bedlam
47. Tramp The Dirt Down
46. Stranger In The House
45. Motel Matches
44. In The Darkest Place
43. The Long Honeymoon
42. Love Field
41. King Horse

40. Watch Your Step
39. Talking In The Dark
38. Alison
37. Shot With His Own Gun
36. Little Triggers
35. Watching The Detectives
34. Stations Of The Cross
33. The River In Reverse
32. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror
31. Sleep of The Just

30. Red Cotton
29. All This Useless Beauty
28. Riot Act
27. 45
26. All Grown Up
25. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
24. My Three Sons
23. London's Brilliant Parade
22. I Want To Vanish
21. Beyond Belief

20. When I Was Cruel No. 2
19. New Lace Sleeves
18. Fallen
17. Indoor Fireworks
16. Almost Blue
15. God Give Me Strength
14. Country Darkness
13. Ascension Day
12. My Dark Life
11. Man Out Of Time

10. In Another Room
9. I Want You
8. High Fidelity
7. Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4
6. Poison Moon
5. Shipbuilding
4. Jimmie Standing In The Rain
3. The Birds Will Still Be Singing
2. Suit Of Lights
1. April 5th

"April 5th" was not only included on the Unfaithful Music soundtrack CD, it was performed by EC & Rosanne Cash at an appearance at BAM promoting the book:

If you didn't catch any of his book tour appearances, you can watch some of them in their entirety online:

Another full-length book tour appearance, with audience Q&A:

Some of these "Days" bleed way over due to exhaustion or malfunction. In this case, it was the previous tweet that just wouldn't send.

I am not done with Day 42 yet, but I will be soon...

"When I Write The Book/Everyday I Write The Book" on BBC's The One Show:

And now, we have finally reached it: Costello's final appearance on Late Show With David @Letterman, performing "When I Write The Book/Everyday I Write The Book":

Of course, if @Letterman is filming a new season of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction for @netflix, this feels like the perfect time to film a full hour with the guest who has already been on his show 27 times...

OK, that is it for Day 42 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

I highly recommend Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, either in paperback or audiobook format.

ALSO: here is a page with links to all of Costello's self-penned liner notes, articles, essays, etc: elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php…

Day 43: Lupe-O-Tone, VINYL & More

Today is mostly gonna be about the weird little releases that have happened since Costello "stopped making records."

(In a couple of cases, it involved EC making small batches of records to sell at his shows or on his website.)

(I'm gonna be jumping around chronologically today, mostly between 2011 and today, no rhyme or reason.)

Costello's 2010 retirement from making records didn't mean no more records-- he still said yes to invitations, and occasionally did small things for fun.

Like this one:

This 10" single appeared at his merch table during the 2017 tour; only ten copies would be sold per show, one per customer, and they often wouldn't appear until the show had already started. Limited to 500 copies, total.

It's a song Costello wrote & recorded for a UK film back in 1998 but has never released on its own. He played this once on Irish radio and my cousin taped it for me:

The 10" version is a new mix, minus the vibraphone and a little longer.

The b-side, "Bright Blue Dub" is a longer version with some noodling:

I have always liked this song-- when for a period of some years I ran a Costello fan website, I named after this, one of his most obscure & lovely songs.

Here is the one time he played it live, in Italy in 1998:

If you ever happen upon a copy of this, my advice would be to snap it up! I rarely see any copies listed for sale, anywhere...

The Lupe-O-Tone label first appeared during National Ransom, and Costello returns to it anytime he wants to self-release something...

In 2010, Costello had 78s made of a few songs from National Ransom in limited runs of just 25 copies each.

They had zero exclusive content & YET every now & then it gnaws at me that there is no chance in hell that I will ever acquire copies of those two rare Lupe-O-Tone 78s.

The only Lupe-O-Tone limited title currently in print is The Imposter's version of @PaulSimonMusic's "American Tune" produced by @StevenMandel & performed with @theroots.

While supplies last at lupe-o-tone.com...

Arriving on Independence Day weekend in the first year of a vile criminal presidential administration, the record is a small, hopeful gesture in the midst of an ugly time:

And arriving during a period where Costello had no contract with any label and was not generally making records, a release like this means a lot.

I don't understand the various inside jokes that make up the label for the b-side, a solo track called "Lucky Dog."

No idea who "Sgt. Larry Singer" is or if L.E. Singer is the same person (or if he/they is/are any relation to Eamonn) or what other releases are on 4-Tet Records

I like the song, though. Costello was playing it in concert back in 2010, so maybe it was in the running for National Ransom/Ransack?

"Lucky Dog":

Unlike the earlier, VERY out-of-print "Bright Blue Times" 10", Lupe-O-Tone thankfully made "American Tune/Lucky Dog" available digitally, so that more than a few hundred people can enjoy it!

Here it is on Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/0XA827Df…

Costello also seems to rarely pass up the chance to record songs for TV & Film, presumably bc it's on their dime & he doesn't have the same level of hassle as he would when making his own albums.

@vinylHBO provided us with 2 new Costello tracks in one season!

"Backstabbers":

By the way, @vinylHBO stars my pal @GriffLightning (of Amazon's @TheTickTV) and I am suggesting that this could be good casting as @ElvisCostello at some point:

Elvis in Straight To Hell
Griffin in Vinyl

They both naturally veer stage left in group shots, neither objects to bad hair, facial or otherwise, if it's right for the character:

Admittedly, this is more of a straightforward cover than I might've expected from Costello if he had done it on his own and not as part of a period TV series, but I am not complaining, I love hearing him sing this song:

It's a song he used to do in concert, as an intro to King Horse on the Punch The Clock tour.

I goddamn LOVE this:

Proud of myself that I posted a clip of Costello doing "Backstabbers/King Horse" on Day 10... and it was a DIFFERENT VERSION, so I didn't repeat myself, in this instance.

#yourewelcome

However, I *did* double-post the @vinylHBO version, but this is the first time I'm posting The O'Jays performing it, on Soul Train. This is one of my favorite songs of all time:

The other Costello track from @vinylHBO is "Point Of No Return" by Jim Ford:

Madr famous by Bobby Womack:

Jim Ford's original, which was released posthumously:

Not to be mistaken for the previously referenced Goffin/@Carole_King versiom, which @ElvisCostello covered back in 1989!

Here's the Georgie Fame version of that one:

And because it's too good not to mention, have you heard the just-released Costello/King classic, "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter" from the album LOOK NOW, dropping less than 48 hours from now?

I have been listening to a live version of this song for almost two decades and it is so thrilling to finally hear a studio version that really delivers:

Another pair of guest vocals for HBO, this time in two different seasons of @BoardwalkEmpire...

From Season 2, "It Had To Be You" featuring Vince Giordano & The Nitehawks:

And "I Surrender Dear" from Season 3:

And this flashes us all the way back to 2004, but here is EC singing Cole Porter's "Let's Misbehave" in the movie De-Lovely:

I regret not been making enough GIFs during this thread.

From 2013, Costello does guest vocals on "Funny Little Tragedy" by @govtmuleband

The fruit-on-fruit violence in this video is genuinely shocking:

I accidentally/exhaustedly skipped over both a Steve Nieve opera and a musical by Stephen King & John Mellencamp that EC sang on. Will you forgive me? I just can't cover ALL of it.

Here, Costello sings a song written by @SteveNieve for his 2013 album, ToGetHer:

Meanwhile, here @Sting sings a Costello/Nieve composition, "You Lie Sweetly":

A more recent guest vocal is on the song "Dio Come Ti Amo" by Domenico Modugno, on an album by Vega produced by LOOK NOW producer @SebastianKrys!

Costello guests on @LorettaLynn's 2016 album, Full Circle, singing on the track, "Everything It Takes":

A couple of performance from a 2017 Leonard Cohen tribute concert...

"Bird On A Wire":

"The Future":

From 2011, Costello making a surprise appearance with @thestrokes that ends up as a b-side, "Taken For A Fool":

"Taken For A Fool" (cont'd):

This year, Costello added music to lyrics by Johnny Cash for the album Forever Words, the song "I'll Still Love You":

One other significant release that ties in to both Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink & the film Mystery Dance is the dvd/blu-ray Detour: Live at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. If Mystery Dance was the prelude, this film is the aftershow party:

It supposedly got a theatrical release but I never found a screening in NYC so it seems like it must have been pretty covert. Here's the trailer:

"Blame It On Cain" feat. @LarkinPoe (notice the Lupe-O-Tone branding in the background):

"Watching The Detectives" -- no matter how many times he plays this in concert, it always wins me over. Even if my first reaction is, "oh, this one again" he knows how to sell it, and it is undeniably one of his most resilient songs:

This is techically another preview of Day 45, but it didn't feel that way at the time-- the end of 2017 brought us a brand new Elvis Costello & The Imposters track, out of nowhere, for the movie Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool.

"You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way":

This song, snubbed by The Academy, was the kind of orchestral ballad that I had been wanting to hear since "Impatience" in 2003. Produced & orchestrated by Costello, this either put him in the mood for Look Now or he was already there by this point...

Seriously, Costello's Oscar snubs, when they occur, baffle me. He hadn't put out a high profile song in YEARS at this point, and he *campaigned* for it, to not even snag a nomination...

Funny to note that Costello was edged out by someone else's P.T. Barnum musical, one with a different take on what Barnum was all about:

In any case, "You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way" could've easily been a one-off, another work for hire before he went back out for another round of touring without a new album while he workshops his musical based on A Face In The Crowd...

The main thing this new song made me think/hope was that it would spark an album exactly like what, by all indications, LOOK NOW seems to be: the 2018 sound of Costello taking the next steps from IbMePdErRoIoAmL & Painted From Memory, using everything he's picked up along the way

The Imposters' work on songs like "Impatience," "Sparkling Day" & "You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way" has made me eager for a whole album with that approach. It seems like I have gotten my wish!

In the case of "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter," I have left a digital footprint of wishing for it that goes back quite a while.

A few tweets, from earlier this year, 2017 & 2015...

I located an embarrassing # of message board posts where I'm basically *wishing* for LOOK NOW to be made, describing it as "my dream album" & specifically hoping for both "Burnt Sugar" & "Suspect My Tears."

These are among the least humiliating posts, from 2018, 2014 & 2009:

I realize that referring to "an embarrassing # of message board posts" might seem weird in the middle of a 2000+ tweet thread; I should clarify that that's just a self-deprecating turn of phrase, I am neither embarrassed nor humiliated by my enthusiasms

Oh, and here's another recent endeavor, from 2015-- the song "Forbidden Nights," written for Darlene Love:

Costello performing a more melancholy rendition:

Elvis & Darlene performing it together, a return to the new Colbert-hosted Late Show:

Before I wrap up Day 43, I should maybe talk for a bit about Costello's decades-long yet-to-be-fulfilled ambition to produce some kind of a stage musical. He has come close, and is perhaps now closer than ever. But so far, it is a rare creative goal that has eluded him...

EC, 1993: "I've written a musical play. It should be produced next year. It's about the afterlife: God melts in the bathtub and comes back to haunt people in the water system; they drink, and he gets in their bodies. The title has changed several times."

That was from Rolling Stone, and I remember reading it when I had been a fan for, like, 5 minutes. The original Juliet Letters CD booklet mentioned (IIRC) a project commissioned by the Nottingham Playhouse. I recall thinking we would see a Costello stage musical within 3 years.

From PUNTER magazine, 1994: "There's talk of a play with music for Nottingham Playhouse (no definite dates yet, but the theatre has received an Education Award to produce the work)"

Then, in an interview with Billy Bragg in 1996:

BB:Have you ever fancied doing anything like writing a piece that’s a play with songs?

EC: Yeah, actually I did. A couple of years ago..."

EC: "I got commissioned for one pound, because I didn’t want the burden of a real commission to write, for the Nottingham Playhouse, which is still in the works..."

EC: "Unfortunately I realised that once I’d written one draft - old clever clogs here wanted to write the play, the libretto, the music and orchestrate it! I wasn’t prepared to compromise, which means my abilities as an orchestrator would have to keep pace. You can’t."

EC: "I wrote this song on Brutal Youth called ‘My Science Fiction Twin’, taking the piss out of myself for this tendency to try and do everything at once."

BB:Was it a play with songs?

EC:"I was trying to find a new form which hadn’t been thought of yet."

BB:Everyone thinks that as soon as you say you’re going to do something that’s not a record, it’s got to be a musical or a rock opera or something shit.

EC:"Yes, that’s the problem..."

EC: "I wanted to have something that wasn’t quite like anything else in as much as everybody tries to do that. Then there’s the musical style that dominates the West End, which obviously conforms to the template."

EC: "And we’ll probably never be free of the Lloyd Webber sugar or the revival mania."

Somewhere, on a cassette tape, I have a recording of EC in 1986, reading a short story called "How Joe Soap Got Into Everyone."

I dunno if that was the seed for his God Melts In The Bathtub musical, but I figured it was all over when he started talking about The Delivery Man...

Then when The Delivery Man became a non-narrative album blended with non-TDM songs, I figured he had moved on to The Secret Songs, his Hans Christian Anderson/P.T. Barnum/Jenny Lind show

Then *that* became scraps for another album, just like his sitcom The Arc Angels had been used to fill out When I Was Cruel a few years back. The unfinished/unfulfilled projects were starting to add up...

Then Costello & Bacharach were teaming with Two And A Half Men/Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre to make a Painted From Memory musical...

AND Elvis & Burt were also working on an Austin Powers musical with Mike Myers!

I get why a melancholy Painted From Memory musical might have been a hard sell for Broadway, but the fact that we don't yet have this is shocking to me.

And that brings us to A Face In The Crowd.

If you've seen a Costello concert in the past few years, the odds are good that you've heard him play a few songs from this, a musicsl based on the film written by Budd Schulberg & starring Andy Griffith...

I have a good feeling that this might be the one to actually, finally happen. I have heard whispers about workshops happening in NYC, and a musical about a power-hungry narcissist on TV tricking a mass audience with his lies might be just the thing for 2019...

If you go into this stream of a 2016 concert, you can hear a live version of the song "American Mirror," which seems like it was designed to be a big song in A Face In The Crowd:

wnyc.org/story/elvis-co…

I think I may have even forgotten one or two of Costello's unrealized stage productions along the way.

My hope is that if one of them can click, it will also revive some of the abandoned ones.

It's so weird that he has come so close so many times now.

Ok, that's it for Day 43 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

No links & no liner notes for today's grab bag of various releases!

Hey, 24 hours from now I will be listening to LOOK NOW from Elvis Costello & The Imposters!

P.S. tho I realize that this insane megathread is probably professionally disqualifying, I *am* available for any NYC-based workshops for A Face In The Crowd or ANY other Costello-penned stage projects that might be looking for an actor w/comedic chops: connorratliff.ucbcomedy.com

Day 44: Pete The Cat

Costello lends his voice (both singing & speaking) to an animated children's show on Amazon Prime. Diana Krall does, too. They play Pete The Cat's mom & dad.

I'll be honest: when I was starting this 45 day thread, I had mapped out roughly what the topic for each day was, and it looked like this was actually going to be more of a thing.

The trailer made it look like Costello & Krall were writing new songs for it:

But other than EC singing the theme song, this is the only other music track that they appear on.

It is not the kind of song that requires the vocal talents of Costello & Krall. (That's not a criticism, just an observation-- no one said, "we need amazing singers for this one!")

If he didn't have a major new album coming out, I might be concerned, looking at this track list and seeing no songs written by Costello.

28 tracks and he didn't offer to give them a song? I'm frankly shocked that he didn't write & record one by accident.

Costello & Krall did voices for the Pete The Cat New Year's special and now they are series regulars. Since it's a show with music, it is surprising that their musical talents aren't being used more, but this does lead to my theme for the day: will EC ever do a children's album?

Earlier in the thread, I made my best pitch as to why I'd wish for a Costello XMAS album. This is the other semi-dreaded genre I'd love him to tackle, for similar reasons: it's a challenge, and I think he'd make a great one.

His & Krall's involvement in Pete The Cat point towards an inclination, at least, to be open to the idea of making a children's record.

And Costello has already tested the waters quite successfully on @sesamestreet in 2011 with "Monster Went & Ate My Red 2":

And there are songs in his back catalog that, at least musically, would be right at home on a collection targeted at younger listeners or an All Ages-type record.

One of Costello's first purely instrumental works was the soundtrack to the Rabbit Ears version of "Tom Thumb," which he composed in 1993 but which wasn't made widely available until 2007!

Is this the only link between @JohnCleese & @ElvisCostello?

(It's the second orchestral score EC has done for a member of Monty Python, since he co-wrote the BAFTA-winning music for GBH starring Michael Palin!)

"Tom Thumb" is available on DVD (and you can also find it for rental on Amazon Prime Video.)
amazon.com/dp/B0091915KA/…

Costello's rendition of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" on Frasier also nods toward the kind of energy & verve that would be well-suited for an All Ages endeavor:

Not specifically a "kids' song" but a song I most definitely would've LOVED as a kid...

Here is @ElvisCostello filling in for @jtimberlake and performing "Please Mr. Kennedy" in concert w/Poe Dameron & Kylo Ren (aka Oscar Isaac & Adam Driver)

cc: @rianjohnson

From "Please Mr Kennedy" to "Please" by @U2 (simply because this thread is nearing its end & I forgot to include it on an earlier day when it would've made more sense):

It's only a couple of hours now until Look Now drops on Spotify, and the physical packages, containing vinyl & CDs & various sundry items, are all en route.

45 days goes by fast and yet also I no longer recall a time when I wasn't tweeting this thread.

I am the thread, the thread is me. There is no difference anymore. I saw this building and thought, "that building looks like Elvis Costello."

Do you think that building looks like Elvis Costello?

Hey, I haven't yet mentioned the Season Two opening titles for The Deuce, which feature a new mix of "This Year's Girl":

Anyway, I think that's probably it for Day 44 of 45 Days of Elvis Costello!

No links or liner notes, just this very unexpected and nice response from Elvis himself today:

Day 45: Look Now

"It’s so funny to be seeing him, after all this time, making a great cake of an album that doesn’t really sound that much like any of the 30 before it."
--@ChrisWillman, Variety

The full album (deluxe edition) on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/album/7dvbHsQb…

16 tracks.

This is the album I have been waiting for since 1993, and the Imposters album I have been hoping for since 2002. I really like Costello's description of this as "uptown pop."

I am mid-listen now, still on the ones I've already heard. Not skipping ahead!

I'm on "Unwanted Number" now-- hard to believe I first heard this over 2 months ago! (Well, over 2 decades if you count the Grace Of My Heart version!)

Here is me listening to the radio premiere of this in July, on an exercise bike in Washington, D.C., where I was doing a show:

OMG Costello's Beatlesque "I Let The Sun Go Down" is the Brexit song I was not expecting and OF COURSE there is more than a passing reference to Elton John here.

So far, maybe the most danceable number on the record, and a guaranteed high point of any wedding reception for people with this last name:

The songwriting team of Bacharach & Costello has still got it!

Broadway & West End investors: please reconsider both the Painted From Memory & Austin Powers musicals & give them your stupid money.

This album has a big, big sound while also sometimes getting very quiet and personal. It is a nice push & pull tension throughout...

If I may get all think-piece-y for a sec, it occurs to me that this album in places flashes back to a sound that late 70s Costello might've been seen as a reaction against; much like how later Dylan albums often celebrate the music that early Dylan was supposedly destroying

Do my ears decieve me, or is this the FUNKIEST The Imposters (or Attractions, for that matter) have ever sounded??

Bacharach/Costello for the win.
The Imposters are astonishing.
Costello's vocals are perfect on this.

Technically, this is the end of the album (tho the deluxe has 4 more) and it is as dramatic a closer as "Under Lime" is an opener.

Elegant!

Costello singing French! This *is* fancy uptown album!

Costello is Bacharach's apprentice; he studied under him like one might under, say, a blacksmith or a cobbler and he learned from the master. There are so many songs on this that you could've tricked me into thinking were co-writes with Burt.

I am of course super familiar with this nearly year-old track by now, but still happy to hear it, cuz it's great.

HaHaHAHAHA

2369 tweets, over 15 hours to read and that's if you don't stop to play clips or follow links

I believe if you factor in the links and the clips, the 45 Days Of Elvis Costello megathread takes approx. 45 hours to experience.

(Somebody feel free to fact-check this.)

I have received my CD copy today, which is really just a formality-- I own all the other albums on CDs, so it would feel weird not to have this one, too. (I will likely not play it until I find myself in a rental car or visiting my parents & driving their car.)

I was hoping to conclude today with a pic of the deluxe green vinyl and various items that come with it, like the nite light, knitted cap & socks. But it looks like these will arrive at a later date, alas, too late for this 45-day thread.

I forgot to mention Costello's appearance on The Simpsons, along with many other omissions. Here, look: there's the Simpsons EC action figure (next to a Jeff Goldblum toy whose shoes I have considered painting red to make him a Costello.)

This was fun, and exhausting. Thank you to all of you who have interacted with me along the way or expressed enthusiasm.

And for those of you who have hated this, I hope you muted me long ago and are not even seeing this tweet.

I have listened to the new album 4 times already and I suspect I will be getting to know it for a long time and enjoying it for the rest of my life. It is a thing of beauty in a particularly ugly time, and I am grateful that it exists.

FWIW, I took Columbia Records' 1982 campaign ad for IbMePdErRoIoAmL and fixed it for 2018. @ConcordRecords, remember: an exclamation point is better than a question mark! Leave the questions to the characters in the songs...

#45DaysOfElvisCostello
#ItsTime

End Of Thread.