Is "Mad About the Wrong Boy" any good?

[wordnat]

I've never heard it.....

Thoughts?

[woz]

It's worth a listen to. I bought it years ago and at the time was fairly impressed with it. It's not going to win any awards for originality, but it's worth a try.

Cheers.

[bronxapostle]

It's worth a listen to. I bought it years ago and at the time was fairly impressed with it. It's not going to win any awards for originality, but it's worth a try.

Cheers.

actually some very good tunes...and naturally VERY well played. you start wishing for a different singer...but, good clean fun!

[Lester Burnham]

It's not THAT bad, really ... certainly not as good as something Elvis would have written, but good enough to compete with some of the other New Wave acts of the day. There's a lot of it that sounds very Squeeze-ish to me.

'La La La La La La Loved You' and 'Lonesome Little Town' are my favorites, and 'Sad About Girls' and 'Arms Race' are also very very good. There's some crap on there, too; 'Motorworld' immediately comes to mind.

According to Brian Hinton's "Let Them All Talk", the Attractions recorded a follow-up album sometime in 1983, but it wasn't released. Anyone know if that's true? There's a lot of tenuous information in his otherwise good book, but certainly it would've been mentioned elsewhere, right? I guess they were trying to be like Crazy Horse, except they didn't really have the songwriting chops to continue beyond one album.

[Ypsilanti]

Having also never heard it, I wonder...who sings? Steve?

[Lester Burnham]

I think it's mostly Steve on his own songs, and Bruce on his (and his and Pete's collaborations). I can't say for sure, because I've never really heard them sing elsewhere, and there aren't any credits.

Also, the guitar-work must be by Bruce, though didn't Steve and Pete also play a little bit of guitar as well?

[cwr]

EC on The Attractions and "Mad About The Wrong Boy", from his 1991 interview in Creem:

A hearty guffaw greets a question concerning the extent to which the Attractions influenced Costello. "As to their instrumental abilities, my feelings toward any departed member of the group are irrelevant, really. There's never been any question about that. Perhaps the under-recognized fact of the matter is that although they are very good musicians, I had quite a lot to do with the arranging of the songs. There were sections written into the songs originally that couldn't be played any other way. I could get a bunch of bloody college students to play that music and it would sound the same!"

So those keyboard arpeggios and filigrees throughout Mighty Like a Rose have nothing whatsoever to do with former Attraction Steve Nieve's personal style?

"No. Have you ever listened to their record? Then you know full well how poor it is. How many songs have they written between them and how many have I written? Two-hundred. And they've written like three."

I do think that the most telling point about MATWB is that it was recorded in 1980, the same year that they basically sounded as good on record as they ever, ever would (on Get Happy!!). That alone sort of dooms their attempt at having a band identity apart from EC, because if they can sound like THAT with him and like THIS on their own... It's almost hard to believe it's the same group.

[johnfoyle]

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