Elvis Costello
You would be hard-pressed to call Elvis Costello (AKA Declan McManus) punk per se. But like a number of his contemporaries such as Ian Dury and even Wreckless Eric, punk was a wide church in 1977/78 that encompassed anyone with a punk look (short hair, sharp clothes, attitude), sneering vocals and some spiky songs and Elvis certainly had that.
A computer operator he was in a failed pub band Flip City that got him nowhere. But the winds of music were changing and Stiff Records was an early DIY label that had signed The Damned in 1976. By early 1977 he was signed to the label as well.
Arguably the New Waves’s most potent songwriter and easily the movement’s most mysterious. Elvis Costello rescue from complete anonymity in 1977. …Costello exploded onto the scene with a force equaled only by the sheer incongruity of his ungainly Buddy Holly-cloned physical demeanor.
…[He]…hawked demo tapes of his songs around the record companies to no avail. Finally as the first applicant to a talent ad placed by the barely christened Stiff Records, Costello, horn rims, three-button mohair and insect paranoia visage replete with bulging eyeballs – found his niche and was put into the studio under the production aegis of Stiff acolyte and artistic mainstay Nick Lowe.
“Love… I don’t even know what the word means…Revenge and guilt are the only emotions I can understand,” he claimed to the NME and the quote became an immediate lynchpin for his leering foreboding persona.
Backing up the venom were the hallmarks of a startlingly powerful songwriter capable of matching a ferocious perspective with music that borrowed fearlessly from the best hook line shots from 60’s rock, with all manner of irrepressible modern sleights of hand.
While you’d struggle to call his first album in any way punk, its influence exerted itself on the masterful My Aim Is True album where Elvis joined forces with the Attractions and a number of classic hits followed including I Don’t Want to Go To Chelsea and Pump It Up.
By the time of his more commercial third album Armed Forces, he was coming into his own as a writer/performer and with expanded musical horizons that enabled selling New Wave to the US and opened the doors for the later indie college scene and circuit.
There’s a lot of stuff there but I suggest caution. Below are some suggested highlights but don’t let that stop you from making your mind up for yourself. He comes good when he gets The Attractions as his backing band IMHO and By the time you get to Pump It Up it sounds just like what Americans would accept as sanitised new wave.
Watching The Detectives / Blame It On Caine / Mystery Dance
(Stiff October 1977)
I sometimes wonder if The Police took this song and built a career on it. It’s a brilliant mid-paced track with tautness and tension set to fantastic lyrics – “She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake.” Written after Elvis sat up all night listening to the first Clash album which he initially didn’t like.
I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea / You Belong To Me
(Radar February 1978)
This song is so jagged, sharp and spiky that it cuts and pricks. Even the solo is slightly dissonant in this stop start ska inflected song about Costello’s trips to Chelsea and the Kings Road. He now has The Attractions as his regular backing band,
Pump It Up / Big Tears
(Radar April 1978)
C’mon who can possibly not like this? Supremely catchy, bouncy and uplifting. Ok so it sounds like watered new
Oliver’s Army / My Funny Valentine
(Radar February 1979)
Lifted from his third album Armed Forces it’s another classic. The song’s sound and arrangement is so glossy and radio-friendly it could have Abba singing it over and you wouldn’t notice it and Elvis’s singing is again quiet and understated. The band acknowledged a debt to Abba’s Dancing Queen for the keyboard part.
But then there’s the lyrics. It was all about the troubles in Northern Ireland and witnessing while there British soldiers, who were virtually kids and musins on war and mercenaries. The song lyrics also contain the phrase “white nigger”, which radio stations still play.
There’s a kind of satisfaction of having people hooked by the tune dancing and idly singing the lyrics without realising the darker significance.
This Years Model
(Radar March 1978)
Look I struggle with this as an album, but love the singles off it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s chock full of tunes and Costello is an assured and mature songwriter already. Plus The Attractions are a shit hot backing band. Picks are obviously the singles but also check out Lipstick Vogue and Night Rally.
The Stud Brothers Probably because of his ostensible pub rock connections (Nick Lowe, Jake Riviera, Stiff, ballads like “Alison”), Elvis Costello is not often mentioned synonymously with punk stalwarts like The Sex Pistols and The Clash. He was also always too much of a self-conscious iconoclast to ever align himself with even the vaguest notion of A Movement, especially one that was to prove as eventually rigid and prohibitive as punk.
For these reasons, “This Year’s Model” is not thought of as a classic punk album, like “Never Mind The Bollocks . . .” or “The Clash”, though it homes in on the self-described targets of punk’s clamorous animosities with the startling accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. Inspired by the neurotic exclamations of the mighty Attractions and Costello’s own foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria, “This Year’s Mode!” is one of the most ferociously spiteful records ever made, a non-stop barrage of gratuitous violence, Elvis venting his spleen in every conceivable direction. He was articulate, too, which gave a greater point to his vindictiveness.
While most of his punk contemporaries merely ranted and occasionally raved, stamping their feet and making vaguely threatening gestures against apathy, corruption and oppression, Costello’s loathing was precise. He dissected the onerous failings of the objects of his wrath with a clinical, clear-eyed venom — the fascism of fashion on “(1 Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea”, the repellent narcissism of rock celebrity on “Hand In Hand”, corpulent decadence on “Living In Paradise”, the slothful indolence of the music business on “Lip Service”, emotional servility on “Lipstick Vogue” and the thuggish intimidation of the National Front on “Night Rally”. Pop! The Glory Years, Melody Maker
If you were lucky enough to be a winner and call in for the free single you would have a version of Neat Neat Neat by The Damned which sounds like Gene Vincent is singing it!
TalkPunk
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