Melody Maker, June 10, 1995

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Melody Maker

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50 million Elvis fans can be wrong


Taylor Parkes

Elvis Costello
The Empire, London

Ah, Elvis, dearest Elvis, he always was the boff in the snorkel, a bit of a ninny: that his ruminations (delivered with all the literary pretensions and misplaced spite of the self-obsessed university virgin) on, like, how shit women are because they don't particularly want to shag a speccy fatso whose fingers reek of stale spunk (restrain me when faced with those who would attempt to wrench pop away from its purpose — to elevate the unfortunate to Godhead — and pervert it into some kind of stardust-free wankers' e-mail group!) are, to this very day of all days, taken Bible-serious by a hefty gaggle of veteran and not-so-veteran music journalists — it does puzzle me a touch (sadly, it was not me who sagely remarked that "most music journalists like Elvis Costello because most music journalists look like Elvis Costello"). Costello himself, of course, has been sinking his fangs into the feeding fingers of the British press for years, yet a mini-consensus has arisen among their ranks suggesting that Elvis, far from being, after Matt Johnson, the most absurd figure still loitering around the fringes of pop, is in fad some kind of fulcrum on which all current creativity turns, an inspiration to us all. Mmm, right.

The Empire: then: I'm locked in with a couple of hundred music teachers in elephant cords and a handful of veteran (and not-so-veteran) music journalists, and — ah ha ha ha — I would rather be anywhere else than here today. Coiled in the corner avoiding the eyes. Tonight's performance is a showcase for American radio, Elvis strolling through the graveyard which is the Kojak Variety LP, a clutch of cobwebbed R&B "classics" — at least we're thus spared his own unloveable whining and unaffectingly airless wordplay. But in its way, his aesthetically correct homage is just as smug, and certainly deluded in its hand-me-down reverence: these songs are in NO WAY "timeless", they function only as nostalgia, their simplicity doesn't streamline them but renders them primitive, unsatisfying. ("Bama Lama Bama Loo" —speaking in tongues? No, just slapdash babble that communicates nothing, overtly or implicitly) "Back to basics": always a (literally) retarded concept.

It strikes me that this man's entire fucking career has been one colossal disaster for pop, that his ceaseless, unembarrassed elevation of meaning over mystery, method over madness, and the respect it has been accorded by men — always men — who should know better has crippled so many young hearts... I could cry. I watch the sweat (not even perspiration) bubble up through Elvis' face and glaze it, hear him sucking on the dry bones of Little Willie John (whose "Leave My Kitten Alone" is one of the few worthwhile tunes tackled tonight, a roar of unstable, jealous violence: in EC's paws, it's a fucking Ming vase).

Pop, then: pop never gave up on Elvis Costello, Elvis gave up on pop: like Lou Reed, he reeks of that pompousness peculiar to the snobbishly overeducated, that desperate insecurity that drives men — always men — to seek comfort in capital-A art, find something to look down on. Which is why I abandoned an earlier draft of this review (a tortuous explication full of shit about the death of "pure songwriting" in fragmentary times) for being a little too cold, a little too analytical, decided instead that we'd all be better served by cheap slingshots and words like "speccy", a poorly angled splurge of juvenilia. I wanted to create something shoddy, something ill-considered; I felt that some kind of cosmic balance would thus be restored, that it might, to my mind at least, be some kind of strike against this cancer of order and good taste, these fat little maggots burrowing their way through pop's dizzy heart.

Somehow it seemed that to take this man remotely seriously, to deal with him calmly, reasonably, maturely, would be... to sink to his level.


Tags: Shepherds Bush EmpireLondonThe AttractionsJames BurtonMarc RibotKojak VarietyBama Lama Bama LooLittle Willie JohnLeave My Kitten AloneLou Reed

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Melody Maker, June 10, 1995


Taylor Parkes reviews Elvis Costello & The Attractions with James Burton and Marc Ribot, Wednesday, May 17, 1995, Shepherds Bush Empire, London, England.

Images

1995-06-10 Melody Maker page 26 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.


1994 photo by Mark Stringer.
1995-06-10 Melody Maker photo 01 ms.jpg


Cover and page scan.
1995-06-10 Melody Maker cover.jpg 1995-06-10 Melody Maker page 26.jpg

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