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Revision as of 09:28, 4 September 2017
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Elvis Costello & The Attractions - This Year’s Model
John Scott
This month John Scott turns his attention to the UK singer songwriter Elvis Costello who rose to stardom in the first wave of punk rock and here looks at his album “This Year’s Model” recorded with his band The Attractions.
The punk explosion of 1976 famously encouraged anyone with three chords and a guitar to form a band. Punk’s DIY ethos also opened up opportunities for a shed load of musicians who had been slogging away in the pubs and around London for years but getting nowhere fast. Pub rock was an amalgam of American musical styles, mixing up rock and roll with rhythm and blues and country. As established and newly-formed record labels scrabbled around to sign up almost anyone with a guitar and a couple of tunes, bands like Dr Feelgood, Brinsley Schwarz and Kilburn and The Highroads seized the chance, either collectively or individually, to break out of the pubs and into the charts.
Amongst these pub rock hopefuls was a certain Declan McManus whose band Flip City had started working the pub scene in 1974. Having had no success, McManus had ditched the band in favour of full-time employment as a data entry clerk with cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden but was still writing songs. McManus recorded some demos which came to the attention of Stiff Records who earmarked him as a staff writer, but were eventually persuaded that he had Schwarz bass player Nick Lowe and backed by American band Clover. While not in any punk, its stripped-down direct approach was a breath of fresh air from a British singer-songwriter and the album was an immediate critical success on both sides of the Atlantic.
The newly-named Elvis Costello now found himself in need of a band with which to perform the songs on tour.
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