"POOF! Imagine that, a world without music critics...'Elvis

[johnfoyle]

Thanks to mcramahamasham for posting this , along with all the other 'notes , in another thread here - I'm posting them individually for easier access.


MY AIM IS TRUE

It was dark when I awoke. I could hear the rats scuttling across the rehearsal room floor. It was just as I had been warned. If the lights went off, the rats came out. Feeling for my shoes, I edged to the light-switch and illuminated the drinking party passed out on another ragged sofa. I tried to get back to sleep with lights on. I was going to make a record the next day.
I was down at Headley Grange, a Swansong/Phonogram safe-house that that had previously featured in the rural adventures of Led Zeppelin. It was not exactly a scene of baronial splendour. However, it was, serving as home for Clover, a Marin County band tempted to England by Stiff Records founders, Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson.
In 1976 I was operating an I.B.M. 360 computer in an office next to a lipstick factory. My duties included printing out invoices for the moustache waxes of the occasional Duchess who visited the company’s West End salon. Some of the work was more tedious.
I’d already had my demo tapes sent back by most of the record labels in London. Recently, I’d attempted a few impromptu auditions in the offices of startled publishers. They tolerated my "have-I- got- a song-for-you" act with fixed smiles but still found time to take calls from their wives or bookies in mid-performance.
Since 1970, I’d been playing the clubs and pubs of Liverpool and London in semi-pro bands or as a solo singer. I’d even been into small demo studios on a few occasions but had little to show for it. My most recent audition tape had been cut in the bedroom of my flat on a borrowed Revox reel-to- reel. D.J. and writer, Charlie Gillett had played a few selections on local London radio and was talking about cutting single for his Oval label. Then I read about Stiff Records opening for business.
I told my boss that I had to go home "sick" and traveled on the Tube a few stops to the Stiff Records office. A charming girl opened the door and politely received my hand-written tape box and that was that. No big interview, no audition, no cigar-chomping mogul.
Bizarrely, back at the Tube station, I actually ran into Nick Lowe, then Stiff’s sole recording artist. I’d been a fan who bugged him at gigs since running into him in Liverpool at "The Grapes" public house in Mathew Street, opposite "The Cavern". That was back in 1972. Now he asked when I was "going to tread the boards again". I told him about my tape and went on my way.
The Alexander St. office quickly became a place were I went after work or instead of work. The Riviera/Robinson team not only ran Stiff but they managed Graham Parker and the Rumour. They were also attempting to launch the Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds group, Rockpile. There was a state of constant war with Swansong, Mr. Edmunds’ record label, who didn’t quite see things the same way. Upstairs, the Blackhill Management office had connections to Pink Floyd and Peter Green. They were also looking after Ian Dury. It was, to say the least, a volatile place. Filing cabinets took a terrible hammering from winkle-picker shoes and the glazier had to be called when a fraught telephone negotiation concluded with a full bottle of strong cider being hurled through the plate glass front door.
Initially, Stiff were interested in me as a songwriter for Dave Edmunds. Nick Lowe had taken a shine to my demo of "Mystery Dance" but Dave was proving harder to convince. I was put into a tiny 8-track studio in North London called Pathway to cut a version of the song. Clover’s John McFee and Mickey Shine played guitar and drums with Nick taking care of bass and the production. When it came to the piano overdub Nick stood poised with a drum stick to run down the keys while I hammered out very rudimentary chords. We also cut "Radio Sweetheart" with McFee on pedal steel guitar. I realized that most of the songs on the tape that had aired on Charlie Gillett’s radio show just didn’t speak up enough to be heard.
Each time I arrived at the Stiff office I had another bunch of tunes to present. At one point it was seriously suggested that I share a debut album with Wreckless Eric, supposedly in the style of the "Chuck meets Bo" release on Chess. I just happened to visit Pathway on the day of Wreckless’ first session. While Mr. Lowe took him round to the pub to build up his courage, I cut enough new demos to make nonsense of this idea.
I started to phone in sick again to my day job, so I could rehearse at Headley Grange and then travel up to London to record. We were able to cut all of My Aim Is True in a series of six, four-hour sessions at a cost of about £1000 pounds.
Pathway Studio was no bigger than the average front room with a control booth barely able to contain two people and the 8-track mixing board. Nick Lowe was now the full time producer. We had the full Clover line-up – minus the singers, Alex Call and Huey Lewis - jammed into this tiny space. John Ciambotti was on bass and Sean Hopper played keyboards in addition to Shine and McFee. I was pinned behind an acoustic baffle with my amp and a vocal mike. It was rather like recording in a telephone booth. Overdubs were barely an option. Everything is heard pretty much as it was played.
I’d found both of Clover’s earlier releases on Liberty Records at a second-hand shop in south London. One of them came without its sleeve. I’m not so sure that they had heard any of records that I had been listening to recently. Their rehearsal shorthand for "Red Shoes" was "the one that sounds like The Byrds" and the group picked up the feel of tunes like "Sneaky Feelings", "Pay it Back" and "Blame it on Cain" with ease. Perhaps they were not quite so sure what was going on in songs like "Welcome to the working week", "I’m Not Angry" and "Waiting for the end of the world" but they were recorded before we could worry much about it.
In a time when guitar solos could still last for days, John McFee was only given a few bars of "Blame in on Cain" and I’m not angry" in which to step out. For "Waiting for the end of the world" he played a fuzz-tone pedal steel guitar but his most memorable contribution is in the introduction and fade of "Alison". Other than that Nick Lowe made sure that nothing unnecessarily fancy got on to the tape.
When I think about how Nick produced this record I have a mental picture of a big cloud of Senior Service smoke and his arms waving wildly about the tiny control booth. He was emotional, hilarious, incredibly enthusiastic and generous, though I certainly wouldn’t have embarrassed him by saying any of this at the time. He was just being "Nick". Whatever he was doing, it worked.
All of this was pretty new to someone living in the suburbs. I got most of my musical ideas from records. With a young family to provide for, I didn’t have the money for going to clubs. The morning after the Sex Pistols created outrage by swearing on national live television, I was in a commuter train carriage full of scandalized tabloid headlines and high blood pressure.
Something was supposed to be changing. I spent a lot of time with just a big jar of instant coffee and the first Clash album, listening to it over and over. By the time I got down to the last few grains, I had written, "Watching the Detectives". The chorus had these darting figures that I wanted to sound like something from a Bernard Herrmann score. The piano and organ on the recorded version were all we could afford.
I wrote "Alison" and most of these songs late at night, singing sotto voce, so as not to wake up my wife and young son. I didn’t really know what they sounded like until I got into the studio. I had based the chorus of "Alison" on the Detroit Spinners’ "Ghetto Child" but I don’t think I mentioned this at the session. The faster tunes often came to me when riding on the Underground, particularly "…End of the world", which was a fantasy based on a real late night journey.
"(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" was written on the Inter-City train to Liverpool between Runcorn and Lime Street stations, a journey of about 10 minutes. I had to keep the song in my head until I got to my Mother’s house where I kept an old Spanish guitar that I had had since I was a kid. The lyric is a funny notion for a twenty-two year old to have written.
There was at least as much imagination as experience in the words of this record. Whatever lyrical code or fancy was employed, the songs came straight out of my life plain enough. I hadn’t necessarily developed the confidence or the cruelty to speak otherwise.
Stiff Records had followed up Nick Lowe’s "So it Goes/Heart of the City" with pretty regular releases but over the next few months I wondered whether they would ever issue one of my tracks. Not having a band or being part of either the New York or the London punk scene I had to wait while they issued various singles and E.P.s by The Dammed and Richard Hell - not to mention Plummet Airlines and The Pink Fairies - before the catalogue got to "BUY 11".
"Less than Zero" was a song that I had written after seeing the despicable Oswald Mosley being interviewed on B.B.C. television. The former leader of the British Union of Fascists seemed unrepentant about his poisonous actions of the 1930’s. The song was more of a slandering fantasy than a reasoned argument.
I continued with my computer job after my first single came and went without troubling the charts. I’d been given a new name: "Elvis Costello". It sounded like a dare. People had weirder names than that in those days. I didn’t give it another thought until August 1977. It also seemed that the squarer I looked the better the camera liked it. The cover image of this album was one of the few usable frames as the rest of the session reveals how comical the whole knock-kneed stance seemed to the photographer and subject.
The single release of "Alison" was also a commercial failure but it was finally agreed that "My Aim is True" would be released in the summer of 1977. I was asked to quit my day job and turn professional. The "management company", Messrs. Riviera and Robinson, said they would match my less than spectacular office wages. My record advance consisted of £150, a new cassette tape recorder and a Vox battery powered practice amp. I took some of my new found wealth and bought back a copy of "Hard Day’s Night" that I had recently been forced to sell to pay the gas bill. About three weeks later I was on the cover of a music paper - an overnight success after seven years.
Now the process of recruiting a band could begin. I was helped out at the auditions by Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar - the rhythm section of The Rumour. We played the same two songs from "My Aim is True" for several hours as the good, the bad and the ugly candidates displayed their talents. Before this drove us to do something rash, we learned a couple of brand new tunes. By the end of the afternoon they sounded good enough for a session at Pathway to be scheduled. One of them, "Watching the Detectives" later became my first serious chart single and was obviously not included on the original U.K. release of "My Aim is True". The newly discovered, Steve Nieve - still going under his family name of "Nason" - added the organ and piano parts at an overdub session a few weeks later.
Although the microphone levels were set very "hot" to create the unique drum sound of "Detectives", we went into a version of "No Action" before any adjustments could be made. This take has been missing for several years but having finally come to light, the listener may enjoy it in all its distorted glory.
There were only three proper out-takes from "My Aim is True". The first is "Radio Sweetheart", my professional recording debut and a track originally intended to be my first single on Stiff Records. The second is an early version of "Living in Paradise" - also thought to have been "lost" until recently - which was re-written and recorded with the Attractions for "This Year’s Model".
The final out-take is "Stranger in the House". This was left off the album, as including a country ballad was not thought to be a smart move in 1977. The track was later given away on a free single with "This Year’s Model" and a duet version the song was recorded in Nashville with George Jones in 1978. It was released several years later on George’s album "My Special Friends".
The remaining tracks on the second CD come from the years leading up to "My Aim is True". "Imagination (is a powerful deceiver) now sounds to me like a very early attempt to write a song like "Alison". This is a "pre-professional" recording made with the band Flip City on a seven-track board - one track was always malfunctioning - at Hope and Anchor Studios, Islington, sometime in 1974/75. There is no personnel listing for the session but it is included with thanks to the former band member: Mich Kent (bass), Malcolm Dennis and Ian Powling (drums), Steve Hazelhurst (guitar) and Dickie Faulkner (percussion) together with the sound and management team: Mike Whelan and Ken Smith.
The rest of the tracks come from a home demo recorded sometime in late ’75 or early ‘76. This bedroom tape has picked the name "The Honky Tonk Sessions" after the Charlie Gillett radio show on which most of these songs were first broadcast. Despite the sharing lyrics and titles with later songs, the style of the writing is utterly different to that of "My Aim is True".
Listening now to these blatant imitations of various American singers and songwriters is like looking at embarrassing old photographs. I hadn’t really found my own voice. However, you might be able to tell which records I had in my collection. I certainly learned quite a bit while shamelessly attempting to copy Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael, John Prine, Lowell George, The Band and many others. It was just part of my apprenticeship.
-Elvis Costello

________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

"My Aim Is True was recorded at Pathway Studios, Islington in a total of Twenty four hours studio time and at a cost of 2000 pounds. As I still had my "day-job" these sessions had to take place on "sick days" and holidays during late 1976 and early 1977. The musicians were members of the Marin county band Clover, who could not be credited at the time due to contractual reasons. The producer was Nick Lowe, who I had met, unlikely as it may sound, in The Grapes public house, opposite The Cavern, Liverpool in 1972. After the failure of two single releases ("Less Than Zero" and "Alison"), Stiff records nevertheless decided to release the album and asked me to "turn professional" and find a band that would become the Attractions. At the subsequent auditions I was assisted by Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar from The Rumour, but after playing "Alison" and "Less Than Zero" for the 20th time it became essential to do something in order to relieve the boredom".
"Having gone to the trouble of learning two brand new songs, it was this line up which recorded a version of "No Action" (Now sadly lost) and "Watching the Detectives" to which Steve Nieve later added Piano and Organ."

EXTENDED PLAY:
"RADIO SWEETHEART" and "STRANGER IN THE HOUSE"
"Two of only three "out-takes" from My Aim Is True (The other, a version of "Living in Paradise", is also lost). "Radio Sweetheart" Was my first "professional recording", was originally picked to be my Stiff Records debut single. Having been pushed onto the b-side by "Less Than Zero", it was also left off the album due to a difference in sound: It was the only track cut at the sessions to prominently feature an acoustic guitar! The case of "Stranger in the House" is more obvious. Despite John McFee's use of a pedal steel guitar on the album, the inclusion of a "Country Song" was thought to be commercial suicide in 1977".
"Stranger in the House" was given away on a free single with the first 50000 copies of This Year's Model and was later released on the 10 Bloody Marys and 10 How's your Fathers and Taking Liberties compilations. It also served as a demonstration record for George Jones, with whom Elvis sang on George's My Special Friends album.
"IMAGINATION (IS A POWERFUL DECIEVER)"
"A "Pre-Professional Recording" made by Stiff Records co-founder Dave Robinson on the unique 7-track machine at Hope and Ancher Studios, Islinton, sometime in 1974/75. It features the band Flip City. There is no personnel listing, but it is included with thanks to all long-term band members: Mich Kent (bass), Malcolm Dennis or Ian Powling (Drums), Steve Hazelhurst (guitar), and Dickie Faulkner (percussion). (Also Mike Whelan and Ken Smith)".
"MYSTERY DANCE"
"Another "Pre-Professional Recording" made in my bedroom and later broadcast for the first time by Charlie Gillett on his BBC Radio London programme "Honkey Tonk". We discussed recording it for Charlie's Oval Records label, but before this could happen Jake Riviera heard the song on a tape which I hand-delivered to Stiff Records on the day they opened for business with the release of Nick Lowe's "So It Goes". Although it was the first (and only) demo Stiff had received, I became the second signing to the new label".
"CHEAP REWARD", "JUMP UP", "WAVE A WHITE FLAG", "BLAME IT ON CAIN", "POISON MOON"
"Pre-Professional recordings" from the same bedroom session as "Mystery Dance", most of which were broadcast by Charlie Gillett.
"Despite the presence of familiar titles and lyrics which re-appear in later compositions, this group of songs are in a radically different style to those on My Aim Is True. With hindsight I must confess that I am uneasy with my blatant imitation of certain American singers and songwriters. However to be truthful I learned a great deal from trying (and failing) to copy such artists as Randy Newman, Hoagy Carmichael, Lowell George, John Prine and The Band. Even though some of the names became unfashionable in 1976, and I abandoned this particular borrowed style in favour of the more direct sound of My Aim Is True, I hope the listener will be amused, one way or another, by these steps in my apprenticeship."

[johnfoyle]

A Costello fanzine tells me , without source, that the recording sessions for MAIT finished on Jan. 26th 1977 - so it's 30 years old today.

[johnfoyle]

So, what else happened in Jan .77?

Jan.26th was a Wednesday ( another 'sick' day for Elvis?!?!) -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977#January

* January 1 - Queensland abolishes Death Duties
* January 10 - Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
* January 10 - Ocean Park opens in Hong Kong.
* January 15 - Kälvesta air disaster: A Swedish airliner crashes into a residential area of Stockholm, killing all 22 on board.
* January 17 - Gary Gilmore is executed by firing squad in Utah (the first execution after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the USA).
* January 18 - Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
* January 18 - Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, near Sydney, leaves 83 people dead.
* January 19 - U.S. President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino (aka "Tokyo Rose").
* January 19 - Snow falls in Miami, Florida (despite its ordinarily tropical climate) for the only time in its history. Snowfall has occurred farther south in the United States only on the high mountains of the state of Hawaii.
* January 20 - Jimmy Carter succeeds Gerald Ford as the 39th President of the United States.
* January 21 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders.
* January 23 - Roots begins its phenomenally successful run on ABC.
* January 24 - Massacre of Atocha during the Spanish transition to democracy.
* January 27 - Record company EMI sacks the controversial United Kingdom punk rock group the Sex Pistols
* January 29 - Actor Freddie Prinze dies from a self inflicted bullet wound.

Some gigs on Jan 26th -



http://www.bigozine2.com/archive/ARrari ... abber.html

Talking Heads
Jabberwocky, Syracuse
Live on January 26, 1977.


http://www.geetarz.org/reviews/misc/ry- ... st-dvd.htm

Ry Cooder - Rockpalst - Hamburg, Germany - January 26, 1977



President Jimmy Carter had a busy day-


http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/docum ... 12677t.pdf

[johnfoyle]

Hmmm..... I think Jeff has a few more copies of MAIT than I have -



http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=235529

(extract)


Jeff Wong's photo of his Elvis Costello collection (just the one part I guess?--ha!) is probably the coolest thing I've seen as a testament to musical insanity. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but it produced a similar effect. Thank you, Jeff.

[johnfoyle]

This cutting from a 1980's E.C. book seems to confirm the January 27 1977 (not 26 as earlier stated) completion of MAIT -




Good to see the 8% vat was paid - that £3.20 was badly needed , I'm sure!

[johnfoyle]

This Squeeze site has photos from Pathway studios in 1976 -

http://packetofthree.com/po3/html/pathw ... 976_5.html

including this -



The controls

photograph copyright Lawrence Impey 2005

[johnfoyle]

Blog assessment of MAIT -

http://www.benigncomedy.com/2007/08/cos ... lison.html

[johnfoyle]

http://www.songfacts.com/int/2007/07/al ... -5309.html

Clover's Alex Call

Interviewed June 6, 2004

(extract)

SF: I think it's fascinating that you guys were in Clover and somehow you end up on Elvis Costello's first record. What's the story?


Alex: Clover got together in the late '60s. It was 4 of us, we made 2 albums on Fantasy - we were buddies with Creedence Clearwater Revival. We got dropped, and then Huey Lewis and our keyboard player, Shawn Hopper, joined the band and we kind of made another run at it. In the mid-'70s, we were going down to Los Angeles a lot and playing a club called The Palamino. The Palamino was this great Country and Western place. We were more of a Rock band really, but we kind of were Country. At one gig, Nick Lowe was there with Paul Carrack. Nick had been in the band Brinsley Schwartz, and The Brinsleys were big fans of the early Clover albums. So one thing led to another, and Jake Riviera, who was Elvis' manager, signed us to come to England, and we signed with Phonogram over there, which is Mercury here. Elvis Costello was at that time Dec McManus, he was using his real name. He was just this mild-mannered, meek little songwriter who would hang out around Stiff Records, which was our management office. Elvis once said, "Man, I wish I could sing like you." He went to cut some demos, and they used Clover. Huey and I did not participate in those recordings because they had no need for us, but I remember they went and cut at this little place called Pathways - a little 8-track studio so small that all you had just enough space to play your instrument. They went in that first session, and in one session they cut "Alison" and "Red Shoes" and "Less Than Zero," these classic songs. I remember hearing them at this Rock 'n' Roll house we lived in outside of Headley, South of London called the Headley Grange House. John McFee brought back a reel-to-reel tape on one of those old Wollensak tape recorders. He played this stuff, and I mean, I was ready to quit after hearing that - it was so astounding. They did like three 8-12 hour sessions, and that was My Aim Is True, that album. That is a classic record, just unbelievable. So that was our band, and we were managed by the same guys and we hung out a lot with Nick. Nick produced a lot of our early sessions there. We made 2 albums with Mutt Lange, and nothing happened with the band. We came close in England to breaking a single, but it didn't work and we ended up breaking up.

SF: So you and Huey didn't play on the album but the rest of the band did?

Alex: Yes, it was John McFee, John Ciambotti, Shawn Hopper and Micky Shine, who was our drummer at the time. Shawn Hopper is Huey's keyboard player. Elvis was the singer-songwriter, so he played rhythm guitar and sang, which was my job, and they didn't need a harmonica player. Huey didn't sing in those days. He sang a little, but primarily he played harmonica. We had long hair and we wore lots of leather gear.

[johnfoyle]

Nik Dirga blogs -



http://spatulaforum.blogspot.com/

(extract)

Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True.

I did a story a few years back where I profiled the drummer on this album, a guy who calls himself "Mmicky Shine," believe it or not. One of the coolest parts of interviewing this rather distracted hippie-type guy was seeing a gold record of "My Aim Is True" hung high on the wall of his loft. This debut – another winner in a year full of first albums – didn't feature the Attractions, but a side band called Clover that actually ended up with Huey Lewis and the News. Anyway, while some of Elvis' later albums were more refined, I always had a soft spot for this debut, which is far more cynical and cruel than the Sex Pistols could imagine. Tunes like "Alison," "Blame It On Cain," and "Mystery Dance" are like daggers in song form. Amazing stuff and still one of my favorite discs.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08060/861197-42.stm

Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA

My Generation Review: Elvis Costello 'My Aim Is True'

Friday, February 29, 2008

By Annie Maroon, 16, junior, Greater Latrobe High School, Latrobe

Later this year, on July 28, the versatile Elvis Costello will perform at the Post-Gazette Pavilion with the well-known new wave band The Police.

More than 30 years ago, in the popular music scene, Costello was something of an odd man out. Punk bands like the Sex Pistols received lots of media attention, but pop bands like The Eagles still ruled mainstream radio.

Costello and his music did not fit either mold, although he has said that his 1977 debut album, "My Aim Is True," was influenced by The Clash's first album. On The Clash's debut, however, the band was angry about the state of the government, while Costello directed his venom toward women who had wronged him. His results were mostly brilliant.

From the upbeat opener, "Welcome to the Working Week," it is clear that Costello's music owes more of a debt to '50s-style rockers like Chuck Berry than nihilistic punks like the Stooges and the Sex Pistols.

Pinning down his exact influences is difficult, because his music is rather quirky, with a diverse range of sounds from song to song. "Mystery Dance" twitches with nervous energy and frustration, while "Alison," his best-known song, is deceptively mellow, almost like a country ballad. The album even produced a minor hit with the reggae-influenced "Watching the Detectives."

Guitars and drums are usually secondary to Costello's famously clever lyrics. He tends to focus on the flaws in himself as well as others, and practically sums up his existence in the first two lines of "Red Shoes."

In that song, he declares, "I used to be disgusted / but now I try to be amused." He discusses skinheads and fascism in "Less Than Zero," but the most memorable moments on the recording come when he discusses his less-than-satisfactory love life. He lashes out at an unfaithful girlfriend in "I'm Not Angry" and laments other romantic disappointments in "Mystery Dance," one of the most memorable songs on an album full of standouts.

Most pop songwriters write about the extremes on the spectrum of emotions: the joy of love or the pain of rejection. Costello is one of the few artists who talks frankly about the shades of gray, the specific and very real feelings of distrust and alienation.

His honesty is part of what makes Costello's songs unique and may also be a reason why he never really became a successful mainstream artist.

"Alison" was the closest he came to a hit single, although he has continued releasing generally well-received albums every few years since 1977. Costello has experimented on later albums with soul, jazz and other types of music, but none of those efforts are as impressive as "My Aim Is True." Although it is not really a "punk" album at all, the record deserves its place of honor next to The Clash's debut and other classics of its era.

[johnfoyle]

Long, well illustrated account of the publicising of MAIT -

http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2009 ... -was-true/

[sabreman]

Great find!

[johnfoyle]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/16831 ... -costello/



Counterbalance No. 116: Elvis Costello's 'My Aim Is True'

The 116th Most Acclaimed Album of All Time would like to go to Spain or somewhere like that, with its two-tone bible and its funny cigarettes; its suntan lotion and its castanets. Counterbalance is waiting for the end of the world.

Friday, Feb 15, 2013

by Jason Mendelsohn and Eric Klinger

[johnfoyle]

Interesting.

Ten minutes after I posted this here , Elvis' official site linked it, running it with a provocative headline -

http://www.elviscostello.com/news/poof- ... ankers/391

[Jack of All Parades]

Provocative headline be damned--
Thank the world for perceptive critics. The good ones open perspectives within a piece, help to frame the discussion and appreciation of it and proselytize for its continued relevance. A very strong album debut still after all these years and I appreciate their reminder of this fact.

[docinwestchester]

Interesting.

Ten minutes after I posted this here , Elvis' official site linked it, running it with a provocative headline -

http://www.elviscostello.com/news/poof- ... ankers/391

Coincidence?

I think not.

[johnfoyle]

Just checking back , the feature had been online for c.5 hours before I saw it & relayed it & then , as I noted, it got relayed by Elvis' site. Glad to be of service!

[verbal gymnastics]

No doubt personal thanks from Elvis is on its way to you

[wardo68]

Those of you looking for an insomnia cure will be thrilled to know that I've started revising my all-too-brief-in-retrospect reviews of EC's albums on my blog. Up first: My Aim Is True. Read it all here:
https://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/20 ... -true.html