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I really hate it when rock reviewers elevate their subject to such a lofty plane that they lose their perspective on rock's relationship to the real world. I don't like to hear about Bruce Springsteen's angst and I can't appreciate it when people talk of the weltshmerz of Paul Simon; I cringe at hearing wholism used in any context, but when that context is Dylan I really get upset.
In light of these prejudices it becomes very difficult to discuss any rock figure seriously, which is unfortunate, because that is precisely what I plan to do. I saw strange looking Elvis Costello last week at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley and he was fantastic, so I feel obligated to do him some sort of justice; not to take him so seriously that he becomes confused with Chaucer and chem lab, but to at least make him appear intelligent and understandable.
The idea of nostalgic reconstruction is the key to the appreciation of Elvis Costello. All facets of his performance are organized around the premise, "What would life in the 50's have been like with their music and our values?" What it boils down to is Costello showing us his namesake Elvis Presley singing DRUGS, SEX, and VIOLENCE, seen on a badly flickering television set. I'm sure that some of you who saw Costello on Saturday Night Live were so repulsed that you had to wash your hands after turning him off; this is an understandable reaction, he is ugly of sight and song.
The problem with his television debut was that he needs the continuity of an entire evening to establish his character and so justify his music and appearance. When in character, he has the hype appeal of David Bowie, but out of it he comes off as low grade new wave.
Costello's character is a serious, unsmiling, angry man who is pigeon-toed, performing every action in short mechanically spastic jerks. This doesn't make him too appealing. When confronted with his high repulsion factor in the song "Miracle Man," he explains it away defensively saying, "Don't you think that I know that walking on water won't make me a miracle man."
It is obvious that the strength of such songs depends on Costello's success at maintaining this assumed personality; he did a fantastic job. He was so careful, in fact, that he did not sing his most popular song, "Allison," because as a ballad it would have been out of place with his character.
The rest of his persona is a perverse parody of Elvis Presley, in which the latter's famous pelvic gyrations are replaced by knockkneed stumbling. A more amazing substitution was for Presley's habit of raising his right shoulder on tough guitar licks, while showing an orgasmic pout; Costello on several occasions would look gracelessly over his right shoulder and twitch....
I think at this point it behooves me to clear Costello's reputation, regarding his alleged punk rock influences. Yes, there are elements that play a large part in both, such as the preoccupation with violence, or the vision of apathetic youth with no future, but the attitude towards these is entirely different. In punk the violence is fabricated, situational, and its participants are those who are performing. Not so for Elvis: the action here is all offstage. In such songs as "Less than Zero" or the menacing reggae "Watching the Detectives," the violent images are observed, rather than invented, and as such are more realistic and pointed.
This observational status allows Costello to be much more restrained than his punk rock counterparts, who depend so much on the excessive, continuously shocking their audience. An example of this is "Watching the Detectives," in which Costello describes a girl who is an avid fan of television violence; to match the subtle horror of a line like, "She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake," an equivalent punk song would have to begin, "The gutted torso...
With subdued comparisons Costello has achieved what punk can only do with blood.
Moreover, although both Costello and punk have embraced early rock as the music best suited to their purpose their justifications are entirely different. In punk such music works because it is primitive, rough-edged, and simple enough for the groups to play. (The Ramones don't play three chord songs out of choice.)
With Elvis, however, the period feel of the music is an integral part of the act. His back-up group is tight, the sound well-mixed, and the arrangements slick and carefully conceived, inspiring wild associations with a bygone era.
That era was smack in the middle of Elvis Costello's formative years, much of which he probably spent listening to Elvis Presley and the other early rockers. What he is talking about then is the image of living his own youth without the naivite that was so present in the music of the '50s; he is no longer innocent of the vulgar elements that surrounded him. In "I'm Not Angry" what begins as a typical baby-come-back-all-is-forgiven is transformed into a realistic open-eyed acknowledgement of the way things are:
I know what you been doing
I know where you've been
I know where, but I don t care, cause there's no such thing as an original sin.
True, this couldn't pass as Wallace Stevens, but it's still pretty eloquent as far as the medium goes. The whole point is not to say that he's great, but that he's exciting. It's not that he embodies an accurate representation of the interface between social structures in our recent past, but that he has a catchy gimmick. It's not that you should sell your mother for a full body tattoo; it's just that the next time Bill Graham brings him around Elvis can show you a good time.
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