Welcome to the working week (Elvis Costello) (LP 2184 - 2186)

Elvis Costello  My Aim Is True (Vinyl, Universal Music Group, 1977) ***  

Elvis Costello  Armed Forces (Vinyl, Radar Records,   1979) ****  

Elvis Costello  Spike (Vinyl, Warner Bros., 1989) ***  

Genre: pop rock 

Places I remember: HMV; work-mate at Marbecks (Ness) gave me her copy of Armed Forces; Real Groovy Records for Spike.  

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Watching The Detectives (My Aim Is True)

Gear costume: Goon Squad (Armed Forces); Veronica (Spike)

Active compensatory factors: I backtracked and bought a new copy of My Aim Is True while living in Caterham at the end of 2017.

It's a tentative debut in some ways. So assured on Alison, Sneaky Feelings, Watching The Detectives (especially that one), yet there are some wobbles around those stellar songs.

Second album, This Year's Model, has been reviewed on my blog already. He hits his stride more consistently on that one.

And so, to Armed Forces - his third album, and a huge quantum leap in two short years. He sounds self-assured and mature - in full possession of his powers throughout the album.

Ten years later, and I wasn't too keen to track his further development. But then he got together with Macca to write some tunes (for the under-rated Flowers In The Dirt) and a few also appeared on Spike. Veronica being the stand-out hit.

It's a pleasant enough album with some nice moments but the eighties production on a couple of tracks lets it down a tad.

Where do they all belong? I'm not a huge fan outside of these albums, but I like to revisit them for various reasons and they trace his career trajectory nicely.

Pump it up (Elvis Costello) (LP 656)

Elvis Costello and The Attractions  This Year's Model (CD, Hip O Records, 1978) **** 

Genre: Punk/ Post Punk 

Places I remember: JB Hi Fi (Palmerston North)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea

Gear costume: Pump It Up

Active compensatory factors: I am not a huge Elvis fan - there's only this, and the Armed Forces and Spike records in my collection. Spike for the McCartney link, Armed Forces was given to me by a shop girl at Marbecks Records, and so This Year's Model is the only Elvis album I've bought for it's own sake.

Elvis' second album, and first with The Attractions, is an adrenaline rush of post punk enthusiasm: No Action; Radio Radio (this re-released CD edition includes it); Pump It Up; and Lipstick Vogue are all hard and fast post punk, rock'n'roll blasts. No difficult second album syndrome at play here.

Nick Lowe was the perfect producer for this 1978 collection of songs. He provides the pop sheen that I love.

Where do they all belong? As stated - Armed Forces and Spike to come when we roll around to the vinyl side of my collection again.

Will you sing (Kamasi Washington) (LP 279)

Various The Best of 2018 (CD - Mojo cover mount, 2018) ***

Genre: All over the shop - there's jazz, rock, power pop, indie rock, world, and more

Places I remember: Free with Mojo #302 

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Elvis Costello - Stripping Paper. Each time I heard this it got better and better!




Gear costume:  Kamasi Washington - Will You Sing

Active compensatory factors: I'm wary of best of year sampler collections. But I trust Mojo. So I went into this with pragmatic high hopes.

Some heavy hitters make an appearance: Elvis Costello is in good form on Stripping Paper; Ry Cooder; Cat Power, Christine and the Queens, and Kamasi Washington are on it in more ways than one. 

Everything Kamasi seems to do is massive and Will You Sing, positioned at track 8 is epic! A mountain of sound!

Overall the CD's like 15 tracks from my ipod shuffle and works somehow by throwing disparate sounds together. 

Where do they all belong? Not sure 2018 has been a stellar year musically but Will You Sing seems to represent the possibility of producing order from the chaotic world of 2018.

With the way you look i understand that you are not impressed (Elvis Costello) # 90

Elvis Costello 1 Accidents Will Happen 2 Alison/ Watching the Detectives (Radar, SAM 90, 1978)

This is a weird one - live versions of these three Elvis classics recorded at Hollywood High School of all places.

For a while there I was, once again, going to blame WEA NZ for their hilarious incompetence with 'accidents' misspelled on the sleeve as 'adcicents' (bottom right), but the sleeve seems to have been designed that way on purpose. Geddit? Accidents will happen. What a jolly jape eh.

I must confess I am not much of an Elvis fan. I only have two of his albums - Armed Forces was given to me by a co-worker at Marbecks and I bought Spike because of the Macca connection, being as it was a kind of companion album to Macca's wonderful Flowers In The Dirt.

This single was included with the Armed Forces album. No idea why. The album is a strong one with Oliver's Army being a great song.

He's a good song writer, of that there is no doubt - these three songs are all fantastic songs. I'm not that impressed with the solo piano version of Accidents but Alison is a hard song to muck up and Elvis does a pretty good version here (sadly couldn't find it on youtube though).

So why haven't I bought more of his stuff? The adcicents thing sums it up. He's a smart arse! Too clever by half! I just do not warm to him. There it is. A peculiar, non scientific bias.

Hidden gem: The weirdness continues as the A side features two songs but the B side only has one.