Discography Additions --------------------- Aug 1999 - +The Very Best of Elvis Costello (2-CD) Film Section Additions ------------------------- 200 Cigarettes: Elvis is seen at one point going down the stairs and there are several references to him at the end, including several pictures of him at a party in the movie. He also winds up in bed with Jeanine Garofalo in the end. Austin Powers II: Elvis plays a street musician and serenades Mike Meyers and Heather Graham. Trainspotting Section Additions ------------------------------ In the Company of Men - On the DVD release of Neil LaBute's 1997 film there is a commentary track where the director and other crew members are discussing the music they attempted to use for the film. Originally, they tried to use excerpts from "The Juliet Letters," but for reasons not quite explained, this idea was scrapped. (cspark@erols.com) Party of Five - The girlfriend of one of the main characters does a version of 'The Angels Wanna Wear my Red Shoes' with her band (and sings the wrong lyric - 'Since I went and got arrested') (gaelenmag@hotmail.com) That '70s Show - on the 21/06/99 episode of this FOX tv show, during the scene in which Hyde and his punk rocker girlfriend are breaking up, a long excerpt from "Alison" is played. (gbruno@sbgk.com) Musical References Additions ----------------------- Pills and Soap - the descending chords at 2.03 have always quote the long introduction to the Temptations' Papa Was a Rolling Stone. (paul.bernays@virgin.net) Clown Strike - Closely related (thematically) to "Dear Madame Barnum" by XTC on their "Nonsuch" album. (shaws@aol.com) Deportees Club - chorus sounds similar to the chorus in the Woody Guthire song Deportee which was record by the Byrds in 1969. (dattijoh@hotmail.com) Lyrics FAQ Additions -------------------- Sunday's Best - The "severed head" in the line "an arm, a leg, a severed head," makes an allusion to the late Iris Murdoch's 1961 satirical novel "A Severed Head," which was an enormous success in the UK. (motfi@pacbell.net) Beyond Belief Crocodile tears = ones that aren't genuine Gin palace - English Victorian slang for a pub or bar Insults and flattery - play on criminal charge of assault and battery Cruel to be callous - play cruel to be kind (also a song by Nick Lowe) EC has mentioned in an interview:'I wanted there to be more than one attitude going on in this song...In the lyrics everything you don't understand is exactly what it appears to be" Brilliant Mistake And the axe of love in screams - play on axe and acts Deep Dark Truthful Mirror - bizarre lines regarding butterflys and monkeys mean apparently nothing. In a BBC interview EC says he lifted them from a nature program he was watching as they sounded cool. He has also said that the idea was to give the impression the main character in the song is hallucinating. The nature program was the BBC special 'The Condor Flight' about the flora and fauna of the Andes mountains in Chile. It does actually contain images of a butterfly above a turtle in order to drink the liquid of the turtle´s eye and another butterfly feeding on a dead monkey´s hand (josue.gentil@natura.com.br) Roustabouts - dock workers and labourers Do you know what I'm saying? "He's blowing his lines with his cheeks sucked in" - possibly a veiled cocaine reference. 80's pop groups were notorious for sucking their cheeks in to give themselves a fashionably gaunt look. A caption under a photo of Sting in New Musical Express during this period read 'Sting sucks his cheeeks in every photo you take'. (paul.bernays@virgin.net) God's Comic Dog collar - black and white collar preists wear Mystery brand - like in a taste test advert (ie. the Pepsi Challenge) where they cover up the labels of two brands of cola and participants miraculously choose the one being advertised Hoover Factory - written about an old vacuum cleaner factory outside London that was constructed in grand Art Deco style. It has now been turned into trendy offices with a vast supermarket taking up the lower floor. (paul.bernays@virgin.net) I'll Wear It Proudly - A vampire kiss - neck bites from petting that teenagers make only token attempts to conceal 'Cos down in the flesh pot where they pay you in pounds - a pound of flesh is what a lot of people say their employers want from them London's Brilliant Parade London's Brilliant Parade - - The Speakeasy was an 'in' club during the swinging 60s. - A MGB is a British make of car that is not being made anymore. - A red Routemaster is a London double-decker bus. - Hungerford bridge is a narrow footbridge attached to the side of a railbridge in London where many people have committed suicide. (hosken@c31.rb.op.dlr.de) EC: 'I don't actually insult anybody's intelligence by talking about the homeless bashes around the bridge but that's what you see when you look below. I didn't want it to be a pious "oh the poor people on the street' song because heaven knows there are so many more talented commentators when it comes to that subject, like Phil Collins (Another Day in Paradise) doing it for me and voting Tory at the same time, which is pretty ironic.' - EC was born in St. Mary's hospital, Paddington, London. (george@concepts.demon.co.uk) - '...The Lions and the Tigers in Regents Park couldn't pay their way...' is a reference to the London Zoo losing its funding in the late 80's due to cost cutting zeal on the part of the Conservative gov't. (rossish@eskimo.com) - the dobro used during the first verse is, according to EC, a tribute to Ray Davies, who wrote what he called the greatest song ever written about London, Waterloo Sunset. (dslift@erols.com) - from 'Extreme Honey' ; "LBP is a sidelong look at the town in which I was born. the last verse is my own personal streetmap" 'They sounded the all clear in the occidental bazaar they used to call Oxford Street' - play on oriental bazaar, the opposite of Oxford Street, London's apparently premier shopping street, with it's tourist tat and clearence shops. EC:'Oxford Street is just full of road works and jangling loudspeaker voices selling crap; and there were bomb warnings and bombs going off when I wrote it.' His mother worked in the sheet music department of Selfridges, the oldest Oxford Street store 'when it was a place of glittering childhood wonder and not the tacky tourist trap it is today'. 'Now the bankrupt souls in the city are finally facing defeat - the black wednesday stock market crash in 1992. After the excesses of the '80's EC called this a comeuppance for 'the city crooks and drugged yuppies and canting scum like Lilley and Portillo' - two nauseating but smart right wing politicians here. Trolley Bus in Fulham Braodway - an old type of bus, with tires rather than tram tracks but powered from overhead cables all the way along its route. Fulham Braodway is not far from Elvis's childhood home in West London. Hammersmith Palais - As a child Elvis would hang around the Hammersmith Palais ballroom on Saturday afternoons while his father rehearsed for the evening's gig with The Joe Loss Orchestra. Elvis went on to play the Palais himself a number of times in the late '70's. Kensington probably refers to the Nashville club in West Kensington, now deceased, and Camden to Dingwalls, both places the early Attractions played. The lovely Diorama - in Great Portland Street close to the lions and tigers of Regent's Park Zoo, is a beautiful glass domed Victorian building and was a pre-cinema moving image theatre, host to magic lantern shows, phantasmagoia and the like. Now an arts and music venue and where Elvis met his current wife Cait. EC:'The song is ambivalent too. When I sing "I'm having the time of life" some of the time I mean it, other times it's very tongue in cheek. It isn't an absolute judgement about London.' (thanks to paul.bernays@virgin.net for the London info) New Amsterdam - - double dutch is a children's jump rope game, and a language. - The "other side," is likely a reference to the U.S. Sleep of the Just - She wears the trousers - she's in charge in the relationship Painting tar on somebody - as in tarring and feathering, a humiliating 18th century public punishment. The person would be dunked in scorchingly hot molten tar and rolled in feathers that stuck to them, making them into a chicken. Tramp the Dirt Down - Tarmacadam - full name for tarmac, or asphalt ..say 'Thank you', straighten up, look proud and pleased - how you're taught to take your physical puishment, usually caning, in traditional English schools EC: 'I'm not a violent person, but we are all capable of appaling acts of violence. She (Thatcher) is a seemingly benign middle aged women with hair like candy floss, but she shows not just two faces but any face that suits her at the time and tells you that this is an honest way to be. I simply can't find words to express my contempt strong enough. And I'm not some little kid to who they can say "There, there, you're just a teenager having a moment of protest", I'm fucking sick of it, what's going on in this country.' Veronica The Empress of India - a luxury cruise liner commandeered by the British navy in the First World War. It was torpedoed and sank with great loss of life. (paul.bernays@virgin.net)