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Elvis Costello owes a lot to pub rock. It was pub rock that gave him the opportunity to perform, in band called Flip City, while he spent his days slaving away at a computer. And let us not forget that his first album, the landmark My Aim Is True, would have been pub rock if it had been released in 1974 rather than 1977. Although it can be argued that Costello merely had the same influences that the pub boys had, I think there's more to the man than that facile assessment. All of Costello's albums have the what-the-hell-let's-try-it-anyway feeling of the best pub rock. His lyrics and later arrangements may have been more sophisticated and complicated than anything Ducks Deluxe or Ace ever tried, but I'm convinced that Elvis never lost the spirit that he picked up back in 1975 with Flip City.
Costello's first three albums tend to stick to the relative basics of guitar, bass, drums, and piano/organ. In fact, My Aim Is True is so basic that the arrangements are nearly non-existent. The songs "Alison," "Welcome To The Working Week," and "Waiting For The End Of The World" don't sound like much, musically, but make their impact through those bitterly ironic lyrics and Costello's sarcastic singing. These songs take their dynamics from pub rock, but the attitude is certainly not hippie in outlook. What hippie would write a song about the end of the world or a 1930s fascist leader? Under-produced certainly, but My Aim Is True still plays well today and had an influence beyond its limitations.
One of the best songs on My Aim Is True is "Watching The Detectives"; its crackling reggae accompaniment was ostensibly provided by the Attractions, and according to legend, was the very first song they played together (the rest of the album's instrumentation was provided by a Marin County band named Clover, which included among its members future star Huey Lewis, future Newsman Sean Hopper, and future Doobie Brother John McFee). The Attractions — Pete Thomas on drums, Bruce Thomas (no relation) on bass, and Steve Nieve on keyboards — made their album debut proper on Costello's 1978 waxing, This Year's Model, a wonderful album by any yardstick.
If the debut LP is updated pub rock for cynical times, then Model is Sixties rock revisited led by the dominant sound of Nieve's Farfisa organ. More importantly, the songs are stunningly eclectic: lots of Golden Age of Top 40 generic harmonies ("No Action" which is a misnomer if there ever was one), folk rock guitar ("Lip Service"), pretty pop melodies ("Little Triggers"), and "Palisades Park" remakes ("Pump It Up," "You Belong To Me," "The Beat"). Elvis composed some of his best ever riffs for this record and some of his nastiest lyrics: he trashes everything from pin ups ("This Year's Girl") to the state of late Seventies radio ("Radio, Radio") to women in general (the rest of the record). It's safe to say that this album is not for feminists.
Many of the album's songs were controversial in their day, but the most notorious by far were "Pump It Up" and "Radio, Radio." The former outlines our boy's solution to a bad romance and he's not talking about getting a job at the local gas station. Featuring a relentless rhythm attack from the Thomases and Nieve's crazy Farfisa washes, some of my most treasured memories consist of bouncing around my kitchen to "Pump It Up" cranked full throttle. Meanwhile, my mother was screaming at me to "turn that racket down"; some things never change, do they?
"Radio, Radio," on the other hand, was scandalous for a different reason: it's an uncompromisingly scabrous anti-radio diatribe. The late Seventies wasn't exactly a marvelous time for listening to the radio — AOR dinosaurs, pre-fab imitators, and insipid pop acts dominated the airwaves — and the battle for someone as supposedly radical as Elvis to get on the radio was an uphill one. He didn't make things easier for himself with "Radio, Radio" —that he was knocking the hand that feeds him is an understatement — but that was the point. It might seem a bit passe today, but in 1978 "Radio, Radio" was important and a fabulous piece of music.
This Year's Model is a mind-blowing record but it hardly prepared the world for Armed Forces, the most baroquely political LP I've ever heard. Nick Lowe (who also guided My Aim Is True and Model) pulled every rabbit out of his hat for this one, Elvis wrote lyrics that showed that he does care about his fellow man, and the result was his first and last American Top Ten album.
Armed Forces is much more upbeat and poppy than its predecessor, but the happy music is deceptive as it conceals some extremely downer lyrics. "Oliver's Army" is the best example of this tendency: an Abba-esque melody supports words describing mercenary tactics and the violent state of the world in 1979. Only Warren Zevon's "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" comes as close to telling it like was and still is. Meanwhile, "Goon Squad," "Chemistry Class," "Green Shirt," and "Two Little Hiders" follow suit as Elvis tries to make some sense of the madness going on around him. But his greatest statement on the album comes not from his own pen but from the pen of Nick Lowe: Costello's version of the Brinsley Schwarz lost treasure "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding" is nothing short of awesome. What had been an ironic hippie take-off became in Elvis' hands a defiant plea for a return to world sanity. The message comes through loud and clear and wondrously supportive backing from the Attractions makes "Peace, Love, And Understanding" a special song indeed.
Despite the inverted Sixties pop touches and cryptic lyrics that make Armed Forces the fascinating listening experience it is, there's still a few songs that get up the nose: "Party Girl" meanders along until it finally winds down into an endless Abbey Road chord progression and "Big Boys" is ponderous and a fast ticket to a headache. And why couldn't someone have included a lyric sheet with the record since trying to piece together the songs' meaning from bits and snatches through the highly complex arrangements is time consuming and not always fun.
Listening to 1980's Get Happy, however, is no fun at all. The record is a sloppily recorded and/or badly mixed R&B song cycle that, at 20 songs, is overcrowded to say the least. At the time it was released, some scribes considered the LP Elvis' apology for his famous Cleveland run-in (or punch out) with Bonnie Bramlett. Maybe, but I think he meant the record to be the first of his genre experiments and the appearance of Almost Blue the next year adds weight to my notion. Produced by Lowe again, he had the nerve to insist in the liner notes that the songs were crammed onto the record without loss of fidelity. Hah! I have to crank my stereo to the max just to be able to hear the vocals! Sheesh!
Truth to tell, Get Happy is actually fairly eclectic within its limited setting — ranging from the Philly soul gracefulness of "Motel Matches" to the reggae hip hop of "Human Touch" to the Motown overdrive of "Love For Tender." Most of the material, however, sticks in the Stax groove: "Temptation" with its "Time Is Tight" riff; the Sam and Dave cover "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down"; and the whirlwind pace of "The Imposter." Some of the songs are just plain obvious: Elvis didn't even try to disguise the "My Girl" riff in "Secondary Modern." Overall, though, this LP is pretty boring and shamefully overrated, especially in the U.K. Did Costello try to make a bunch of second-rate songs more exciting with R&B arrangements? Or was he trying to make a point? Whatever, Get Happy is probably the only Costello LP of the '80s that doesn't bury his pub rock instincts with bombastic arrangements and cutie pie wordplay.
Later in 1980, someone at Columbia decided the Elvis house needed cleaning; hence the Taking Liberties album wherein assorted unreleased (in America) album tracks, movie soundtrack bonuses, and B-sides were randomly collected. A hit-or-miss compilation, to put it mildly, Liberties houses a few misplaced gems. Betty Everett's "Getting Mighty Crowded" was originally the flip side of "Can't Stand Up" and why it didn't make Get Happy is a mystery since this is one hot tamale indeed. Omitted from the U.S. This Year's Model, "{I Don't Want To Go To
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