1978 , This Years Model sleevenote

[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.

THIS YEAR’S MODEL

It was the 12th of July 1977. One week after quitting my day job, I found myself at a disused R.A.F. base outside the Cornish village of Davidstowe. The only structure that was not derelict doubled as the local dancehall. We were using it as a rehearsal room. In two days I would be playing in public for the first time with my new group, The Attractions.
The keyboard player, a 19-year-old student from the Royal College of Music, was easily the most impressive candidate at the auditions. He had asked to stay to hear the other players and later been discovered curled up asleep among the amplifiers, having quietly demolished a bottle of sweet cooking sherry. He was obviously the man for the job. His family name was Nason, which most people misheard as the more common "Mason", but we soon started calling him "Steve Nieve".
The bass player was a few years older than the rest of us. Bruce Thomas had played in a number of recorded bands and had plenty of road and studio experience. He had a fondness for venturing up the neck of his instrument to registers unfamiliar to other bass players. In those days he also possessed a decent sense of humour. Then again, he was from Middlesborough.
After a couple of years working in California, the drummer had arrived back in England courtesy of a major record company. They had sprung for his plane ticket after my manager, Jake Riviera, had persuaded them that he might be a candidate for a vacant drum stool for one of their new groups. However, upon arrival in London he headed straight for the studio where Nick Lowe had just mixed "Watching the Detectives". I never really entertained the idea of another drummer. Pete Thomas was three weeks older than me. I was 22 and had just released my first record.
Our live debut was second on the bill to Wayne County and the Electric Chairs in Penzance. This was about as far from "where it's at" as you could get. Any sense of the punk or "new wave" excitement that was filling weekly music papers was pretty hard to detect in the West Country. The next evening in Plymouth we saw a few girls sporting scary eye makeup, but everyone else looked like they might have been waiting for The Sweet to take the stage. On Saturday night we returned to Davidstowe to play a dance in the village hall in payment for our week of rehearsal room hire. Now we were ready for the big city.
On the afternoon of our London debut it was decided that I would perform on the pavement outside the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane where C.B.S. Records was holding a convention. Stiff Records personnel marched up and down bearing placards entreating the A&R staff to give me a contract or at least come to our show. Unfortunately, the hotel management thought we were taking part in a political demonstration, and in a short time a large number of police vehicles came roaring up to the scene. The senior inspector was not amused to find that his special squad had been mobilized to deal with a publicity stunt.
He stood directly between me and my bemused audience. He cautioned me that I was obstructing the footpath, although the opposite was clearly the truth. I took a step to the left. He did likewise. I took a step to the right. He followed suit and said, "Do that again and you're nicked". I could see in his eyes that he did not believe that I was about to turn on my heel. So I was arrested while all the other "protesters" got clean away.
Once inside the police van I mentioned that I was making my London "debut" that evening. "Not if we keep you in, sonny", snapped the arresting officer. I had already surrendered my belt and tie and was waiting to be taken down to the cells when my solicitor rang the station. I don't know what was said, but suddenly I was given a cup of tea, they completed the paperwork, and the desperado was released.
I remember much less about that night than the fact that I had to be in court the next day by 9 a.m. I took my turn among the drunks, the disorderlies, and the ladies wearing very few clothes. When I came before the magistrate, the charge was not even correct. I was fined five pounds for "selling records in the street", which I suppose had some truth to it. I thought it easier to agree than to try and explain. It was only when I reached the cashier's desk that I realised there was less than that amount of the fine in my pocket and I had to queue up for a further two hours to go before the bench again to request "time to pay". Three months later I signed a contract with Columbia Records and My Aim is True was scheduled for U.S. release.
After one hysterical trip round the U.K. club circuit, we joined the "Live Stiffs" package tour, also featuring Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, and Ian Dury. What started as a presentation of "labelmates" quickly became a pretty competitive adventure both on and off the stage. One night, while suffering from what might be politely called "assisted insomnia", I scrawled a large number of verses about this headlong pursuit of oblivion. Next morning, I mercifully threw away most of the pages, but that evening we were playing a brand-new song. Five days later, we recorded "Pump it Up" in one take. Pretty soon I would stop resisting the lure of the nightlife completely.
This Year's Model was recorded at Eden Studios, London, in a total of 11 days. The engineer was Roger Becherian, who was to work on our next four Nick Lowe-produced albums. Roger was a calm and practical foil to Nick's instinctive and emotional approach to recording. It was Roger who had the task of making a sonic reality out of Nick's directions, such as "turn the drums into one big maraca" or "make it sound like a dinosaur eating cars".
The Attractions made a huge difference to these songs. "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" had originally used the same stop-start guitar figure as The Who's "I can't explain" (or for that matter The Clash's "Clash City Rockers"). Now Bruce and Pete came up with a more syncopated rhythm pattern and Steve found a part that sounded like sirens--although he rarely played the same thing twice, so you had to pay attention. His keyboard setup was limited to a Vox Continental organ and a cheap keyboard called an "Instapiano"--which had all the sustain and power of a musical box until cranked through an amp. I changed my guitar part to the sort of clicky figure that I'd heard on old Pioneers rock-steady records, only sped up quite a bit.
When working out songs, I always spoke in shorthand references to records that I liked. It was only after a couple of months that we discovered that Steve's appreciation of rock and roll really only extended to Alice Cooper and T.Rex. Pete, Bruce, and I had certainly listened to The Beatles and The Small Faces, and we could almost agree about the Rolling Stones--well, Aftermath at least, which was the album to which I listened more than any other at this time. "This Year's Girl" was pretty much an "answer song" to the Rolling Stones' "Stupid Girl"--though my words were much less contemptuous.
I never really understood the accusations of misogyny that were leveled at the lyrics on This Year's Model. They clearly contained more sense of disappointment than disgust. In any case, most of these songs were works of imagination rather than products of experience. The temptations and distractions of the touring life would soon enough add the more cynical and guilty edge found in "Little Triggers", "Pump it Up", and "Hand in Hand".
We were crossing a foggy mountain ridge coming into Tennessee, when the size of the task began to dawn on us. It was not going to be easy to take America by storm. The four of us plus our tour manager were jammed into a rented station wagon on-route from Atlanta, Georgia, to Madison, Wisconsin. We took turns riding "shotgun", that way you got to control the radio. It was during this journey that we managed to tune in to different parts of "Stairway to Heaven" playing simultaneously on three stations. It was not uncommon to catch the end of Linda Ronstadt's version of "Blue Bayou", only to find it had just begun on an adjacent frequency. You could have been forgiven for thinking that this was why they were called "frequencies".
We had landed in the country ten days earlier. Fresh from a 15-hour journey from London via Los Angeles, we arrived in the Bay Area at mid-evening and were confronted by the unimaginable luxury of a Howard Johnson's motel. The rooms contained king-size beds, colour television, and a bathroom. Our English hotels of that time typically featured narrow bunks with scratchy nylon sheets, a faulty black-and-white TV in the "residents lounge", and a freezing trip down the threadbare carpet to a shared toilet at the end of a dingy corridor. In the words of Chuck Berry: "Everything you want, they got it right here in the U.S.A.". I took a cab across the Golden Gate Bridge and called the driver to a screaming halt outside a record shop that was still open despite the fact that it was nearly midnight. Picking up a local music paper, I found that Iggy Pop was playing the same club in which we were due to make our American debut the next night. It took me three weeks to recover from seeing Iggy perform--with the limbs of an unstrung marionette, doing his Marlene Dietriech act with a straight-backed chair. I probably would have spent the whole tour hurling myself face down on the stage if I hadn't been holding a guitar.
Our shows went well in San Francisco. We received a pretty good welcome in the Bay Area. I even bought a couple of guitars: a red Rickenbacker six-string and the green Gretsch Country Club, which I later I used for the rhythm part on "This Year's Girl".
After an excellent start in Northern California, I took an instant and irrational dislike to Los Angeles. This was a town where nobody seemed to walk anywhere. Not being able to drive, I spent the first 24 hours in my room at the Tropicana Motel watching television. When I did venture out, I discovered regular resident Tom Waits resting in a chair in the front office and things began to look up.
The scene at our Whisky A-Go-Go show was curious. The audience consisted of young people making spectacularly misguided attempts to emulate London and New York punk style, all Halloween makeup and bin-liner dresses and a smattering of leather-skinned industry types in pressed denim, silver jewelry, and bouffant hair. It would take years and a driver's license to discover the best of this town, but at least we were playing where people had actually heard of us.
Three days later we found ourselves at a sparsely attended club in New Orleans--the atmosphere not helped by the fact that the audience were standing in a foot of water from a burst pipe. Our hotel rooms in the French Quarter had doors that had been kicked in on more than one occasion. The corridor carpet wore dark, tacky stains that were either ketchup or something more sinister. Outside on Bourbon St. we joined the gullible tourists drinking in the open air and paying a $10 cover charge to hear Clarence "Frogman" Henry sing two songs.
We headed north to share a bill with the Talking Heads in a small theatre in Atlanta that neither of us could have been confident in filling alone. The dates were so far apart that we had lots of time to take in the scenery. Every billboard or shop sign seemed like the opening line of a new song, and sometimes that proved to be the case--I was filling notebooks that would provide the lyrics of our next album, Armed Forces.
The tour proceeded across the States, encountering every reaction from curiosity to hostility until we reached the more welcoming audiences of Boston, Philly, and, finally, New York City. We even played the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park but had to lock ourselves in the dressing room to escape a furious posse of Springsteen fans when I jokingly introduced The Attractions' own "Bruce" as "the Real Future of Rock and Roll".
The following night we made our U.S. television debut on Saturday Night Live. The Sex Pistols had been scheduled for the show only to cancel after an alleged oversight regarding work permits. Needless to say the expected viewing figures for the debut of U.K. punk outrage were in our favour.
We arrived at NBC with the intention of playing a couple of songs from our live set. Maybe something got lost in translation, but none of the humour seemed nearly as "dangerous" or funny as they seemed to think it was, or perhaps they were just having a bad show. The record company interference certainly didn't help my mood.
We were getting pressure to perform a number from My Aim is True. I honestly believed that the words of "Less than Zero" would be utterly obscure to American viewers. Taking a cue from an impromptu performance by Jimi Hendrix on a late '60s B.B.C. television show, I stopped this tune after a few bars and counted off an unreleased song, "Radio, Radio". I believed that we were just acting in the spirit of the third word of the show's title, but it was quickly apparent that the producer did not agree. He stood behind the camera making obscene and threatening gestures in my direction. When the number was over, we were chased out of the building and told that we would "never work on American television again". Indeed, we did not make another U.S. television appearance until 1980. Although this clip from SNL went on to be rerun on numerous occasions, I was not allowed back on the show until 1989. However, I was forgiven in time to be invited to re-create the moment, with the Beastie Boys as my backing band, for the show's 25th anniversary special.
Back in 1977, we returned to England to find that my final Stiff single, "Watching the Detectives", had reached No.15 in the charts. Our manager, Jake Riviera, then dissolved his Stiff Record partnership with Dave Robinson, taking Nick Lowe and myself to be the first artists on the new Radar label.
Early in 1978, we recorded the last few tracks for this album. Then we returned to America. Between January and early March we played in 19 states and ended with two nights in Toronto, Canada--which were captured on the Columbia promotional album, Live at the Mocambo. The next five weeks were spent touring halls in England, Ireland, and Scotland. The last show was at the Roundhouse in London on April 16 th. Three days later we began another six weeks of American theatre dates supported by Nick Lowe and Mink de Ville. This was followed by our first European tour. Then we recorded our next album, Armed Forces.
The second CD features some songs that got away during this frantic time. "Big Tears" was the only genuine outtake song from the This Year's Model sessions. I cannot imagine why it did not make the actual album. I thought that The Clash were a really great rock and roll band, and although this opinion was most definitely not shared by some of The Attractions, I invited Mick Jones to play on one of our sessions. Despite that fact that his bandmates didn't approve of the idea either, the plan was for him to add another guitar to "Pump it Up". There is a version lying around somewhere on which he plays. However, he made much more difference to "Big Tears", and that is the track included here.
"Crawling to the U.S.A." was a song that was in our very first live set, but it never made the sessions for this album. It was finally recorded during our first Australian tour in the autumn of '78 and released on the motion picture soundtrack album Americathon, in which I had a small cameo as the "Earl of Manchester".
Our version of The Dammed's "Neat Neat Neat" was dedicated to "Chris Millar", otherwise known as "Rat Scabies", in a gesture of solidarity after the drummer got into a scrape in London. This live recording was made during the "Live Stiffs" package tour and features The Blockhead's Davey Payne on saxophone. Our live versions of Ian Dury's "Roadette Song" and the Everly Brothers' "The Price of Love" are also from late '77.
"Running out of Angels", "Greenshirt", and "Big Boys" are acoustic guitar demos dashed off in the first few days of 1978. I know this because "Greenshirt" refers to the "Quisling Clinic", a sinister sounding location simply because it put you in mind of the infamous Norwegian fascist leader. It is a real place in Madison, Wisconsin, that I passed by on our first U.S. tour, and it found its way into this lyric. I faltered over "Running out of Angels" at this session, and that was the last that was heard of it. "Greenshirt" and "Big Boys" were rerecorded for the album Armed Forces.
"You belong to me" and "Radio, Radio" are solo demo recordings, while the alternate takes of "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea" and "This Year's Girl" illustrate how the arrangements developed.
The version of "Stranger in the House" is the only decent item from several sessions recorded for B.B.C. Radio in the first year of my professional career. We always found the staff engineers unfriendly and hostile to our approach, although we were not exactly masters of diplomacy in those days. The sessions were often scheduled for unlikely daylight hours, which certainly didn't help.
The first single on Radar, "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea", went to No.16 in the U.K. charts, although it was removed by Columbia from the original U.S. release of This Year's Model (along with "Night Rally") on the pretext of the lyrical content being "too English". We followed this up with the release of "Pump it Up" and a stand-alone single version of "Radio, Radio" (which was added to the U.S. version of This Year's Model). Both of these singles charted, while the album itself reached No .4. in the U.K. charts. Our last London shows of 1977 featured a little-known support band, Dire Straits, and those locked out of the venue actually managed to stop traffic outside the club. Then again it was a very narrow street.
For a brief, improbable moment the horrified children of Britain were offered magazines featuring pop pinups of myself and the most handsome band in the world, right alongside Debbie Harry and those other blonde beauties, The Police. Thankfully for all concerned, I was just about to screw it all up completely.
--Elvis Costello

________________________________________

Rykodisk Liner Notes

"This Year's Model was begun at Eden Studios, London at the end of 1977, just after the single release of "Watching the Detectives", and completed at the beginning of 1978. The Sessions, which had to be scheduled at either end of our first American tour, took about eleven days. Most of the songs had been played "live" since our first appearances in July '77. Others, such as "Pump it Up", were written in the last days of the infamous "Live Stiffs" package tour which ended shortly before the recording."
Around this time Jake Riviera parted company with Stiff Records taking Nick Lowe and Elvis with him. "This Year's Model" was therefore the first release on the new Radar label. Elvis and The attractions continued what would become an unbroken run of eight top thirty singles in Britain with "Chelsea" and "Pump it Up". These were issued in March and June '78.
"By this point I had lost track of time as we completed our first headlining tour of Britain and Europe and two further tours of America, plus a visit to Toronto, where our date at "El Mocambo" was broadcast live on the radio and later issued as a Canada-Only promotional album. By the time "Radio Radio" was released in October '78 we had already recorded our next album Armed Forces"
In America, Columbia Records had released "My Aim is True" with the addition of "Watching the Detectives", but when it came time to issue "This Year's Model" they requested bizarre changes in the running order. These included the omission of "Night Rally" and "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" (Despite it's success as a British single) and the inclusion of "Radio Radio". The original sequence is restored for this edition.

EXTENDED PLAY
"RADIO RADIO"
"This track was either recorded at the This Year's Model sessions or shortly afterwards, but intended as a "stand alone" single, a phenomenon common in the vinyl era".
"BIG TEARS"
"My favourite Out-take by some distance, featuring guest guitarist Mick Jones of the Clash."
Issued first as the B-side to "Pump It Up" and included on the "10 Bloody Marys and 10 How's your Fathers" and "Taking Liberties" compilations.
"CRAWLING TO THE U.S.A."
Having featured in the early club shows, this version was actually recorded at Waterloo Studios, Sydney, during Elvis and The Attractions' first, literally, riotous Australian tour. Elvis was later seen performing it in the "smash-hit" film "Americathon", in which he made his motion picture debut as "Earl Manchester".
"RUNNING OUT OF ANGELS", "GREENSHIRT", and "BIG BOYS"
"These Songs, two of which later appeared on Armed Forces, Must have been recorded some time after This Year's Model. They are rare in the sense that most songs from this time were written in hotel rooms, rehearsed on tour buses or at soundchecks and then recorded. There was hardly ever any any time to make demo tapes. However this is the exception; "Greenshirt" contains a verse that I later dropped while "Big Boys" was my attempt to write a song on one chord. "Running Out of Angels", which includes a false start, sounds as if I was making it up as I went along. I probably was."

[johnfoyle]

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/04/12/151145.php

Vinyl Tap: Elvis Costello - This Year's Model

April 12, 2006

Gordon Hauptfleisch

I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #6:

Giving you the 33 and a 3rd degree with spittle and spite on every spin and revenge and guilt in every groove, Elvis Costello's aim is true. But with This Year's Model, his breathtakingly bristling and audacious quantum leap of a second album, he aims to displease and pass along a little free-floating anxiety. Well, more than just a little.

For those pump-it-uppity handwringers who bemoan the wide-ranging ambitiousness of Elvis the side-show Attraction, and who curse the Fates that he has not somehow evolved into some pigeon-holed Johnny-one-note angry middle-aged man, and who forever rue the day that this prodigious prodigal son strayed from the path of righteousness — about the time that he Got Happy, I'm guessing — rejoice as we wallow in what once was, in your mind.

Never mind that Costello has continued his biting and bitter ways — in songs like hard-crusted bread crumbs strewn for the easily misguided — on albums such as Blood and Chocolate, Spike, Mighty Like A Rose, Brutal Youth and When I Was Cruel. If he's ever been mellow (to answer the musical questions: "Have you never tried to find a comfort from inside you? / Have you never been happy just to hear your song?" ) it was on the relatively laid-back, taking-it-easiest, keep-on-truckin'-ist King of America, but he still expressed a healthy appreciation for being "so contrary / Like a chainsaw running through a dictionary."

Good way to harsh your mellow. In any case, you could make a convincing case that This Year's Model, all pent-up scorn and damning sneer, just by itself contains three decades worth of mismanaged anger-can-be powerful rage rolled into one glorious — verging on vainglorious — pissed-off righteousness. At first listen, the 1978 release may sound like one big misogynistic tirade --and it is to an extent — but there's a considerable number of misanthropic and self-loathing strains coursing throughout, facets he will expand upon in Armed Forces, wherein he interfuses more societal and political rants that justify the LP's original title, "Emotional Fascism."

And, in further attesting to the fact that the man's an equal opportunity hater of the world and everybody in it, Costello would go on to pen his most scathingly vitriolic song in 1991's "How To Be Dumb" in which his raised hackles exacts the most contemptuous musical retribution of his career not on a love disinterest, but on another man — a traitorous where-are-they-now tell-all Attraction with a "new occupation" in which "Every fleeting thought is a pearl / And beautiful people stampede to the doorway of the funniest fucker in the world." That's Mr. MacManus, if you're nasty.

But I digress, though Costello doesn't. "I don't wanna be a lover, I just wanna be your victim," he says in "The Beat," and there's many insecurities, mixed emotions, crossed signals and interpersonal bluffing and feinting going on in this album to ensure that Model's thematic concern remains largely focused on the hell of other people, relationships that pass in the night or true love gone bad. There's an awful lot of done-wrong Costello, then, bloodied but unbowed, neither deviating nor dissuaded, who gets right to the matter at hand on the first track of the album, staying the main course where revenge is still a dish best served cold: "I don't wanna kiss you. I don't wanna touch / I don't wanna see you 'cause I don't miss you that much." "No Action," indeed, but perhaps he protests too much.

Just in case such a romantic magic of the moment dissipates over the course of the first side — which includes "This Year's Girl's" berating of a man with "fancy manners" and "English grammar" because "you don't really give a damn about this year's girl — Costello is on the ball at the start of side two (that would be "Hand In Hand" for those of you following along on CD) with a little bit of a reminder that "you can't show me any kind of hell that I don't know already," and moreover: "don't ask me to apologise, I won't ask you to forgive me / If I'm gonna go down, you're gonna come with me."

Not exactly a passport to paradise. But in Costello's conception of heaven, "everyone in paradise carries a gun," as conveyed in a song in which he also declares "I don't like those other guys looking at your curves / I don't like you walking 'round with physical jerks" ("Living In Paradise"). But Model is more than an opportunity to "Listen to the propaganda, listen to the latest slander" ("Pump It Up"); or a chance to bite the hand that feeds while the "Radio, Radio" is "in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel"; or an occasion to hurl a side-swipe censure that "You're easily led, but you're much too scared to follow" ("You Belong To Me").

There's more deep-seated troubles being revealed, gadfly-on-the-wall observations, and close-to-the-bone accusations bandied about that belie Costello's claim that "Lip Service is all you'll ever get from me" ("Lip Service"). The sinister and unsubtle tones of the "Night Rally" tolls a bell about "deeds done in the darkest hours," and "the sort of catchy little melody to get you singing in the showers." In the most caustic and telling song on Model, encompassing the nothingness of being and the numbing of feeling, Costello, in "Lipstick Vogue," extends the personal to the fatalistic nothing-matters-and-what-if-it-did apathetic black hole, setting up for the fall an existential domino effect of sorts:


Don't say you love me when it's just a rumour
Don't say a word if there is any doubt.
Sometimes I think that love is just a tumour;
you've got to cut it out.

You say you're sorry for the things that you've done.
You say you're sorry but you know you don't mean it.
I wouldn't worry, I had so much fun.
Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being...

...Get to the slot machine almost dead on arrival
Just hit me one more time with that live wire
Maybe they told you you were only a girl in a million
You say I've got not feelings;
this is a good way to kill them.

Now there's your downward spiral, big time: Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has burned down the building!


Note: This review comprises the American and British versions of This Year's Model. I have both. Never could make up my mind.

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a free-lance writer who has managed record stores and bookstores while barely managing to retain a thread of decorum and dignity. When not lollygagging his way to an early grave, he edits for Blogcritics, writes book reviews for the San Diego Union-Tribune and is currently writing a San Diego local history book of the decidedly off-kilter variety. He will have you know that beneath his flabby exterior lies an enormous lack of character.

[johnfoyle]

http://lastyearsmodel.blogspot.com/2006 ... rsary.html

John Schuster 'blogs -


What is this three day area on the calendar? It is the one year anniversary of my introduction to the Elvis Costello album This Year's Model! I remember the day fondly. I sat down on the risers, first period, concert choir. David sat next to me, pulled out his CD book, and handed me his copy of This Year's Model. I then put the CD into my PowerBook G4, and ripped that bad boy. After that class when I went home and got ready for prom that same day, I burned a CD and put it into my prom chariot. I had no idea of the cutting, ironic lyrics put inside, but this album completely defined every single aspect of the prom weekend. It was absolutely brilliant. From driving up to Avalon Manor to the strains of "No Action" to driving home blasting "Radio, Radio."

The next three days it was played almost non-stop. Nothing beat the moment when I had my CD player, sitting on the bus, while we were on Lakeshore drive right in front of the Museum of Science and Industry when the largest grin ever spread across my face as I took in the lyrics from the third verse of "Living in Paradise."

I can't believe it's already been a year, This Year's Model. You still keep me company after all the times i've had you on non-stop repeat, after I made a Vauxhall Viva-themed desktop background, after I named a blog after you, even still I can rock out to you like it's that fateful day this time of year, 2005.

[johnfoyle]

New on the magazine racks here is Mojo Classics - The Greatest Album Covers.

Along with a feature on Barney Bubbles there are 'Outtakes' features on classic album covers. One such is This Years Model. Chris Gabrin talks about the circumstances of the photo shoot . I'll add the text later but here's a contact sheet that is used -

[johnfoyle]

ELVIS COSTELLO THOUGHT HE WASN’T LOOKING MOODY ENOUGH FOR THE COVER OF HIS SECOND ALBUM.

BUT THEN HE FOUND PHOTOGRAPHER CHRIS GABRIN’S COPY OF HOTEL CALIFORNIA... BY PAT GILBERT

THE FIRST TIME Chris Gabrin met Elvis Costello, in summer 1976, the singer was introduced as ‘Declan’ and hardly looked the raw material of rock’n’roll greatness. ‘My studio was in Camden at the time,â€

[johnfoyle]

The Word , May 2007



IT IS A FACT OF MEDIA LIFE that the people most reluctant to submit to having their pictures taken are the very people who make their livings taking such pictures.

What precise combination of charm and guile young Icelandic photographer Emilie Sandy employed to persuade some of the more venerable members of the rock photography fraternity to re-stage some of their most iconic shots with them in front of the lens rather than behind it we shall never quite know . It has however resulted in Deja Vu, an upcoming exhibition of Sandy’s work in which the likes of Gered Mankowitz court photographer to the young Stones, Terry O’Neill, lensman to the stars of many decades, and Andy Earl, the man who designed the American Gothic look of late-period Johnny Cash, take the place of their subjects.

The idea came when casting around for a suitable place to photograph Mankowitz. The Salisbury, the pub in St Martins Lane where in 1964 the 18-year-old Mankowitz took the defining picture of the 18-year-old Marianne Faithfull was still largely intact, so they decided to stage the picture there. “When we took the picture of Chris Gabrin (above), who did the Elvis Costello This Year’s Model cover in 1978, you had all sorts of interesting things going on. Elvis was pretending to be Chris and now Chris was pretending to be Elvis. I took the picture with the Hasselblad that Chris used originally while he posed with mine.

“I did it because I find other photographers’ work very inspiring . All the photographers were happy to be asked and were very supportive of my idea,â€

[johnfoyle]

Re-issue bump!

[johnfoyle]

Researching Elvis March '78 Dublin shows I found this review of TYM ; Mr Stokes was clearly reading a lot of Lester Bangs - ( some of the , uh, unique spelling is accurately reproduced)

Hot Press March 1978

I May Look Like The Photographer........But I'm Really The Best Man

King Elvis II Stakes His Claim

Dermot Stokes

ELVIS COSTELLO: “This Year’s Model” (Radar).

Well screw this!
I burned my dinner, listening to this record. Goddam it.. two beautiful pieces of white fish lovingly
marinated In all sorts of juices (heh heh) and put in the oven while I listened to our El’s newest waxing...



And I got so intent on it that the juices were a brown tar, and the fish were like fat potato crisps!

Well, bugger that!
But at the same time the death of the dinner is as good a review as is possible, because, while occasionally the intensity of my scrutiny attempt to make out one or two phrases that escaped me, mostly it was just glasseyed attention to what is a real powerful album.

And I’m delighted to report It, because Costello’s first was one of toy top albums of last year and I saw
him as ultimately more hopeful than most of the other new acts that were surfacing around then, (along with
Mink de Ville). And from their point of view, 1977 did very nicely. For a start it blew the whole world open for people with
no track records. Also it urbanized and speeded up a rather lazy music scene as well as blowing away vast
clouds of 2nd rate HM and country rock and disco and glitter and..

Most Importantly though, (and I think Springsteen and Graham Parker are pivotal In this) 1977 made it
respectable for musicians to have mainstream influences again. Toss Blind Lister Crawdad and l.Hair
In the bin, main, not to mention Tex McGillicuddy! Its safe to be yourself again, white influences and all!

Great.

Not just because a lot of people were embarrassed about having such unhip influences as Bob Dylan and Van
Morrison (and of course late Beatles the early Beatles, for some reason are acceptable), but also because the whole industry was unsympathetic to people who sounded like someone else (apart from The Eagles).

SO!


“This Year’s Model”, (such a perfect 1978 title) is Elvis Costello’s follow.up and ya betcha ass it delivers on all the promises made by “My Aim Is True”.

Stylistically similar to the latter, and with the same range of lyrical interest (he’s still the mouthy little guy who Is fed up with heavy hands) it still represents enough of ass advance to satisfy all those (including’ me) who’ve been baring fangs at the prospect of highly touted new acts standing still. Plus, his image, his range and his sound are all being honed - he has his beachhead and he’s consolidating. It’s all becoming mole focused, and consequently
stronger.

You don’t get the kind of insight provided by the steel and acoustic guitars on his early “Radio Sweetheart” for example, but what is not provided for in that department is delivered In the greater muscle, tightness and intensity provided by the backing work of the Attractions.

And they really are a tough little band — obviously steeped in 60s Britbeatgroups as well as all the other rock ‘n’ roll styles necessary to assert 70s mastery and they can shoulder Elvis’ no-natlon drawl with fire, wit, economy and emotion.
And the songs — hooks littered all over the album, and great power in the lyrics, choruses and song-structures. Yeah — he’s still your smouldering little hero, and uh-uh his aim is true..

“Every time I phone you I just wanna put you down,” he says In “No Action”, and the claustro-rhythm hauls In This Years Girl........ See her picture In a thousand places/ Cos she’s this year’s girl/ You think you all own little pieces of this year’s girl. . . Those disco sleeve sizes/ And those daily tranquilizers. . . all this but no surprises for this year’s girl..

Yeah, and the half-mocking fairgroundy organ colours “The Beat”, and its sardonic introduction, ‘We're all
going on a Summer holiday/Vigilantes gonna have to follow there.. (and its got a true Dylan ending).

And halfway thru’ side one you know it’s gonna be all right tonight, that the man Is intight and incontrol,with the magnificent “Pump it Up” — subterranean Homesick words rhymerhymerhyme staccato - You wanta talk to her/All the things you bought for her/ Puttin' up your temperature.. it’s a dance,it’s a killer.

And for the record the cocky little guy who’s quick to spot your weakness in song, and who ain’t gonna be put
down doesn’t just keep it for chicks and others who nobble his toes . . . in “You Belong To Me”, aside from people he also numbers leaders and movements he don’t want anybody saying “You Belong To Me”.


Side two maintains the pressure, and the merciless eye goes over the scene in “Chelsea”, and picks off its targets unblinkingly . . the staggering lines stumbling out, sneered across the naive un-FX.ed organ..
Most of the other songs on this side are back to sexual warfare — ‘don’t ask me to apologise/ I won’t
ask you to forgive me/If I'm gonna go do-own/ You're gonna come down with me......from “Hand In Hand”,
which has a lovely little Beatles riff pasted just once into each chorus.

And there’s a great celebrative Beatles riff in “Lip Service”, which Is chased by the dry, upfront “Living
In Paradise”, plump with more accusation — “I don’t like those other, guys lookin’ at your curves/ I don’t like you walking round with physical jerks/ Everything they say and do is getting on my nerves/Soon Ill be lucky to be picking up the perks...

God, Elvis, you shouldn’t oughta git so tight . , . but the lady is up to tricks, and he knows ..“Later in the evening when arrangements are made I'II be at the keyhole outside your bedroom door.....

Yeah — a bit like Woody Allen’s jerky, uptight, intense and aggressively defensive screen image, the
guy who goes down and comes up cursing to shout “you can’t put me down” only to go down again, but who keeps on defying because that’s the only way to show he’s still alive.

That’s right — far away from the cowboys, the spacemen and the nightmare and comicbook heroes that
have gotten rock music by the heels, Elvis Costello lives, (and specifically the character portrayed by his recorded work) and that’s what’s great about him like the rest of us.

This is one for the collection — get it while it’s hot . . . and before it’s sold out.

Dermot Stokes..,

P.S. . .E.r. . Elvis . . .. fancy buying me a dinner next time you’re in Dublin? Uh, ,those fish were like boots.

[johnfoyle]

Interesting discussion of the TYM sleeve -


http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showt ... 063&page=4



Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Downard

There were actually three original covers for TYM, all variations on each other, for the UK, North America and Scandinavia (no kidding).

Response from Jeff Wong


That's mostly true--there's actually a 4th variant when it come to Scandinavia; the Finnish Arletty release uses the Swedish cover, but offsets the art like the original UK version with the colour registration bars (see lower right corner in attached pic, ignore the red vinyl Belgian release and cover above it). Paul Gorman (Barney Bubbles' biographer/blogger) sent my images to David Corio, who modeled the gloves--he had never seen the variants and was delighted.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.snapgalleries.com/shop/produ ... T_ID=20111

[johnfoyle]

http://www.punknews.org/review/11449/el ... ears-model

Elvis Costello
This Year's Model (1978)
Columbia

Contributed by: DanDavis

Published on August 31st 2012


When recording My Aim Is True (1977), Elvis Costello was never quite satisfied with having the session men of Graham Parker's the Rumour and Huey Lewis' Clover fill in on what would become some his most notable work, but he worked with what he had and that heart and passion shows on the final record. The second time around, Costello rounded up his own band, and we see where his' musical visions truly lie.

Kicking off the album with "No Action," we are introduced to the Attractions, Costello's backing band (Steve Nieve - Keyboard, Pete Thomas - Drums, Bruce Thomas - Bass). The song is an infectious, fast-paced power pop number about regret, guilt and jealousy with a vocal delivery of snotty nonchalance; it is no doubt a template for many pop-punk anthems in the future.

"Pump it Up," the album's second single, spirals the album into a wild party. Its Mod-inspired tempo has Pete and Bruce's rhythm section stomping and thumping through both the verse and chorus, all the while being held together by Nieve's carousel-esque keyboarding. Costello is not afraid to take a back seat, to let the rest of his band shine so vibrantly.

The album allows its listener to settle down and wipe off the sweat, with Costello's follow-up to "Alison," a bluesy hard-edged ballad entitled "Little Triggers." Its bittersweet lyrics with Costello's sincere delivery gives the album some breathing room and lets the listener soak in the atmosphere. As a standalone track, "Little Triggers" may fall short against a more classic Costello tune such as "Alison," but here, it allows a breakdown in tempo, a "smoke break" during a rambunctious party so to speak; it marks as a great example of Costello's album-making talents.

Don't get too comfortable though, Elvis and the Attractions burst back into action, with "You Belong to Me," the ska-tinged "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea," all the way to the speedy "Lipstick Vogue." It's on this track, where we see Elvis and the Attractions in top form, from the racy tom-tom work of Pete Thomas, to Costello's own nasty snarl. He tells us the story of a regretful one night stand through a fast paced punk rock track that clocks in at three minutes.

"Radio Radio" closes the U.S. version of the album with biting urgency. Costello's attack on the media and marketing world, his cynical wit takes center stage, as he runs through lines as "I wanna bite the hand that feeds me," and he truely does. Costello was titled as the "Angry Young Man" after the release of My Aim is True, and it's on This Year's Model where he refuses to set that record straight.

[johnfoyle]

http://paste.com/issues/week-86/article ... retrospect

Paste 26 March '13

Elvis Costello's This Year's Model
In Retrospect
By Mack Hayden

I’ve listened to Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model many more times than the number of years I’ve been alive. For that matter, I’ve listened to it more times than the number of years it’s been out as well, which is to say 35. It was a favorite of my father’s in 1978, who was my age exactly when it first came out, and his affinity for this more bespectacled and angsty of Elvises was passed down to me without the slightest distillation. I’ve listened to the record more times than the number of years my dad’s been alive too, but I think he’d rather leave his age out of this.

It’s nothing short of discombobulating to see This Year’s Model edging in on forty years. It’s the perennial “angry young man” record, and here it is heading into middle age. 1978 saw The Band’s Scorsese-shot and climactic The Last Waltz hit movie theaters and record stores as well as the Stones’ release of their last classic album, Some Girls. Blondie took to the mainstream with Parallel Lines and debuts were delivered from The Police, The Cars and Van Halen. In other words, the pop infrastructure was going through a changing of the guard, and the radio darlings of the ’80s were already stepping up to bat. Into all of this steps Elvis Costello.

A year before This Year’s Model, he’d already gotten critics and fans on his side with one of the best debut records in history, My Aim is True. It was the kind of album that made all the best production styles and melodies of the ’50s to ’77 sound like Costello had thought of them first. This was a man equal parts Johnny Rotten and Buddy Holly. A look at the album cover suggests a purer, bygone era, but the lyrics—sexual, caustic and witty—told an entirely different story.

This Year’s Model is where the music caught up to the subversive modernity of the words, and this mostly has to do with the assembling of a pitch-perfect backup group. The Attractions brought in bass lines by Bruce Thomas that could make a valley of dry bones get up and dance, the gentleman-punk drumming of Pete Thomas and the shiny keyboard licks of Steve Nieve. The four recorded a number of great records together, but never did they achieve the kind of musical fusion attained here.

“I don’t want to kiss you, I don’t want to touch” begins the record before the nuclear guitar comes in to punctuate the statement all exclamatory. “No Action,” the first track, was proof Costello’s teeth were a bit more gritted this time around. The frustration here comes in a more visceral package than on My Aim is True or follow-up Armed Forces, certainly 10 times more so than on anything after that. He gets the choleric fog of a breakup perfectly, not meaning much of what he says but somehow never as honest.

“This Year’s Girl” really showcases each member of the band’s everyman virtuosity. Each instrument comes in one at a time until the curtain rises at last on Costello’s vocal satire of male heart versus libido. For the most part, romance at its most sublime and most sordid is suggested to be a sick fantasy here and through the rest of his early work as well. “The Beat” and “Pump It Up” get the dancefloors lit up with people who’d never be seen under the light of a disco ball. Both are pulsating with sexual energy, and the lyrical content’s deeper meanings suggest things you probably wouldn’t want to discuss with your mother. “Little Triggers” is a ballad about something Costello knows best: the power of language or, in this case, the lack thereof. Listen to it every second that girl you just went out with doesn’t call back. “You Belong to Me” closes side one of the original record with a guitar riff that catches like the plague, an anthem against settling into the arms of anyone.

“Hand in Hand” sleeks in over controlled feedback and backward vocals. The keyboards swirl while a relationship built on Mutually Assured Destruction is put on display. “No don’t ask me to apologize / I won’t ask you to forgive me / If I’m gonna go down / You’re gonna come with me.” Cue the snare attacks of “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” and you have even more evidence of Costello’s resilience against landing anywhere. The riffs and wordplay of “Lip Service” have a stickiness factor that can’t be underscored enough. “If you change your mind, you can send it in a letter to me.”

“Living in Paradise” is the prototype for quite a number of early Weezer songs: catchy power pop hooks coupled with unrealistic demands on women. “Lipstick Vogue” and “Night Rally” are still fun but a little less poignant than all the other songs on the album. Luckily, the LP closes with “Radio, Radio,” a critique of media power that stands up just as much in our own era of Grammy irrelevancy and airwave impotence as it did in 1978.

This Year’s Model is 35 years old, the kind of age where you’re not supposed to be feeling any of the things sung about here anymore. Given his more current work with the likes of Burt Bacharach and T-Bone Burnett, it seems clear even the bespectacled bard behind the music grew out of the angst. But his younger, skinny-suited self stands perched behind that camera on this 1978 classic’s cover still. It’s almost like he knows he’d be taking a photo for the memories. We won’t always be thrown by the winds of an adolescent to late-20s temperament but this album has been as much a perfect soundtrack to that tumultuous time as it was for my dad. Thing’s got staying power; it’s as worthwhile now as it was then. Don’t believe me? Somewhere, the fellow with the Buddy Holly glasses has the pictures to prove it.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.hypergallery.com/product/sho ... rs%20Model




This Years Model
Elvis Costello
Art by: Chris Gabrin
Signed by: Chris Gabrin

£795 £663 excluding VAT

[sweetest punch]

Today (March 17) Elvis Costello and The Attractions released This Year's Model: http://johannasvisions.com/today-elvis- ... l-in-1978/

[wardo68]

My review has been updated and expanded:

https://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/20 ... model.html