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*[[Unicorn Times, May 1977|1977 May]]
*[[Unicorn Times, May 1977|1977 May]]
*[[Unicorn Times, July 1977|1977 July]]
*[[Unicorn Times, July 1977|1977 July]]
*[[Unicorn Times, September 1977|1977 September]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/6155 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, September 1977|1977 September]]
*[[Unicorn Times, October 1977|1977 October]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/6074 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, October 1977|1977 October]]
*[[Unicorn Times, November 1977|1977 November]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/5354  {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, November 1977|1977 November]]
*[[Unicorn Times, January 1978|1978 January]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/5993 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, January 1978|1978 January]]
*[[Unicorn Times, February 1978|1978 February]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/6220 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, February 1978|1978 February]]
*[[Unicorn Times, June 1978|1978 June]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/4267 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, March 1978|1978 March]]
*[[Unicorn Times, January 1979|1979 January]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/4646 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, April 1978|1978 April]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/4569 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, June 1978|1978 June]]
*[[Unicorn Times, December 1978|1978 December]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/5185 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, January 1979|1979 January]]
*[[Unicorn Times, February 1979|1979 February]]
*[[Unicorn Times, February 1979|1979 February]]
*[[Unicorn Times, March 1980|1980 March]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/1642 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, June 1979|1979 June]]
*[[Unicorn Times, March 1981|1981 March]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/440 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, July 1979|1979 July]][http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16808coll16/id/1456 {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, March 1980|1980 March]]
*[[Unicorn Times, March 1981|1981 March]]
*[[Unicorn Times, January 1983|1983 January]][https://digdc.dclibrary.org/islandora/object/dcplislandora%3A30321?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=ab831e166e8915cdb282&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=2#page/1/mode/1up {{t}}]
*[[Unicorn Times, August 1984|1984 August]]
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Notes:
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    January 1978
■j UNICORN TIMES
Page 51
Radar Records, Eno—And Of
Course Nick Lowe and Stiff
By Bruce Rosenstein
NICK LOWE, WHO LEFT Stiff Re-cords
recently with label mate Elvis Cos-tello,
has now signed with a new British
label, Radar Records. The significence
here is that Radar was formed last month
by ex-U.K. United Artists Managing
Director Martin Davies and ex-UA head
of A&R, Andrew Lauder, the man who
originally signed Lowe's old band Brins-ley
Schwarz nine years ago. Lauder, who
was in. charge of A&R at UA for ten
years, has had a reputation in London
for being the sharpest judge of talent in
town, as well as a keen spotter of trends.
Besides the Brinsleys, other Lauder
signings included Man, Hawkwind, Dr.
Feelgood, and The Stranglers. There are
rumors that Costello may join Lowe at
his new label, for Britain only, since he
is signed to CBS elsewhere. The Radar
label, which has yet to release its first
product, is a 50/50 venture between
Davies/Lauder and the WEA (Warner-
Elektra-Atlantic) Corporation.
We've gone through this before, but
now it looks like the real thing: Stiff
Records is apparently set to get U.S.
distribution, though Arista Records. The
Stiff roster includes Ian Dury—who may
tour here soon—The Damned, Wreck-
•less Eric, Yachts, and Larry Wallis. It
remains to be seen whether any U.S.
record company can adequately market
and promote such quirky, hardcore
British artists.
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January 1978
UNICORN TIMES
Page '29
TWO GENEIUTIONS OF PUB ROCK
Elvis Costello Twitches Breathlessly AcrossJM
By Joe Sasjy
AT THE MOMENT THAT ELVIS
Costello rushed to the stage of Phila-delphia's
Hot Club and jumped into
"Welcome to the Working Week," his
eyeballs relinquished focus and assumed
a life of their own. For the rest of the
night, they would wander and strain,
twist and swivel, at times appearing to be
two pupil less, bloodshot white globes.
As Costello stoked his boilerroom rage
. ..100°... 150°. . . 200°. ..250°. . .
those eyeballs, overheated and agitated,
threatened to take leave of their sockets.
By the time his band, the Attractions
(drums, bass, organ), had segued into
"The Angels Wanna Wear My Red
Shoes," Costello's face was transformed
from British chalk-white to crimson,
redder than the red shoes he was scream-ing
about. As Costello ripped through
the caustic lead in "Blame It on Cain,"
the sweat began pouring off his forehead,
to drop in a steady stream from his chin.
It was freezing outside; blood was boil-ing
inside. When the second show end-ed—
after about 30 songs of vengeance
set to the eternal rock'n'roll jukebox—
I was ecstatic, too numb to express
ecstasy, and possessed by two thoughts:
Everything really did seem less than
Elvis. When does he turn white again?
It's interesting to note that the most
potent image in rock today may be that of
a 22-year old, British, ex-computer
operator—homely, short-haired, spec-tacled—
standing awkwardly, Fender
Jazz in hand. That's a long way but only
a few years from the West Side Story
silhouettes of Broadway Bruce. The
ascent of Declan Costello from computer
operator at an Elizabeth Arden plant to
media sweetheart and Columbia record-ing
artist has been meteoric, although
Costello is still far from mass popularity.
It began in the best possible way, word-of-
mouth following the release of his al-bum,
MyAim Is True, by Stiff Records (a
small, significant, and imaginative Bri-tish
label). The album became a best-selling
import and started receiving signi-ficant
FM airplay in the States (very
little, however, in the DC area). Colum-bia,
with a tradition of landing the big
ones, signed Costello, immediately re-leased
the album, and began a sizable
ad campaign) for example, "Reality Was
Never this Good").
Philadelphia was just about the tail-end
(New York City remained) of Cos-tello's
brief first American tour. The
Hot Club, plastered with giant green
posters with a yellow Elvis staring out,
held a claustrophobic 200. When Costello
took the stage he looked every bit the
freshly hatched, ugly duckling of rock'n'-
roll; he was dressed in a crumpled black
suit that had seen neither washer nor iron
since the tour began.
The live show was not a reiteration of
the album; it was more a vicious counter-point.
Characteristic was the sacrifice of
some of the melodic sensibility of the
album in favor of a more rhythmically
incessant and monolithically angry ap-proach
on stage. Notably, Costello did
not sing "Radio Sweetheart" or "Alison,"
two songs that reflect the calm before the
storm, the more loving (even nostalgic)
side of Elvis' bitter dissections of failed
relationships. Gone also were many of
the U.S.A...
the brilliantly simple touches that ele-vated
the album—the transcendental
guitar figure opening "Miracle Man";
the screaming guitar note that follows
every "blame it on Cain"; the frenetic
instrumental break of "Mystery Dance."
Likewise some of the nuances of Cos-tello's
vocals were sublimated as he bore
down on the mike, shouting the lyrics,
insisting on their truth. A beautiful ex-ception
occurred during Costello's
rockabilly gem, "Mystery Dance." In
the song's dramatic stop-and-go intro,
Elvis demanded, "don't bury me 'cause
I'm not dead . . .," paused waited and
then carefully and forcefully enunciated
"... yet." At that point, Costello—with
his poor man's Buddy Holly looks, his
classic licks, and that beaten Fender—
seemed a timeless element of the eter-nal
50's. That "me" was as much about
rock'n'roll and its mystery as Elvis and
his dance. When the song was over, he
screamed at the audience, "WAKE UP!"
For the moment rockabilly had found it-self
in the 70's. The hillbilly was trans-formed
to workingclass British, the hic-cups
were a scream, and the nervousness
had become rage.
Live, Costello was not selling his al-bum
so much as himself as a songwriter.
I counted eleven new songs (some titles:
"Little Triggers," "No Action," "The
Beat," "Pump it Up," "Lipstick Vogue,"
and "Let's Slow Dance"). All of them
were the same blend of lyrical snap,
barbed wit, and pop accessibility that
made his album as cryptic as it was in-stantly
engaging. He introduced a new
song, "Radio Radio," that was both a put-down
of American radio and a claim that
radio was, by rock'n'roll birthright, his
territory. The use of the. organ gave cre-dence
to that claim as it brought out
AM echoes of the Mysterians, the
Strangeloves, and the Kingsmen.
Throughout the new material were shreds
of rock'n'roll archetypes like "Gloria,"
"Hang On Sloopy," and "My Genera-tion."
Throughout the evening, Costello
rushed from song to song with almost no
pause for breath or talk. He interjected
one note of humor in the second show
when he told the audience, "This one's
for all the people who stood out in the
cold waiting for us." The band then
broke into the wonderfully choppy intro
to "Less Than Zero." Interestingly, it
was not the encore—a furious, bulging
veins performance of "I'm Not Angry"—
that provided the evening's musical
climax. Rather it was Costello's TV
mystery, "Watching the Detectives,"
that riveted the audience. There was
something spellbinding and creepy about
"His eyeballs would
wander and strain,
twist and swivel, at times
appearing to be two
pupiless bloodshot white
globes. As Costello
stoked his boilerroom
rage those eyeballs,
overheated and agitated,
threatened to take
leave of their sockets."
i
Steve Bialer/photo: Columbia Records 
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Page 3O
January 1978
UNICORN TIMES
Costello's dramatic phrasing ("you know
it took my little fingers to blow you
away") and ominous guitar playing that
transform this organ-based reggae ditty
into a tale of the macabre.
Live, Costello seemed physically pos-sessed
and driven by his themes of re-jection
and revenge and, in that sense,
shared more with Johnny Rotten than
Southside Johnny. The power of his
music owes more, however, to his
ability to graft those themes onto classic
rock (at its toughest and most eco-nomical)
and to hold a teetering balance
between rage and humor ("Oh I used to
be disgusted/Now I fry to be amused"),
between contempt and passion. If this
ugly duckling is finally paying the world
back, he is using the double-edged sword
of the satirist and surrealist, not the
broad hatchet of the British punks.
The rejection theme that seems
endless in Costello's songs ("I know that
she has made a fool of him/Like girls
have done so many nights before, time
and time again") extends to the record
industry and the rock press. Costello
is openly bitter about his earlier problems
getting record companies interested in
his songs. He described his experiences
in a Melody Maker interview: "I went
around for nearly a year before I came to
Stiff and it was the same response. ' We
can't hear the words.' ' It isn't commerci-al
enough.' 'There aren't any singles.'
Idiots ... No, it didn't make me bitter.
I was already bitter." With his recent
success, it is Elvis' turn to reject and he
has given the rock press only the barest
tidbits on his life, and the sources and
meanings of his songs.
With the critics in tow, Columbia be-hind
him, and some of the best songs of
the decade, Costello has become the tar-get
of the big questions—will he be the
next big whatever? how far will he go?
how many will he attract? how much will
he sell? If new wave has any meaning—if
there is a point of reference for the likes
of Costello, the Ramones, Graham Park-er,
the Sex Pistols—it's that those are
the terms of the record industry, not the
artists and their fans. Any of the above
can do what Costello did in the Hot
Club—fill a rock club with uncompromis-ing,
occassionally brilliant and idiosyn-cratic
rock art and share that experience,
up close, with their audience. That is
enough; that is everything worth de-manding
and receiving. •
...While
Dr. Feelgood
Keeps
Overcoming
Obstacles
By Bruce Rosenstein
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MARCH 1981 PAGE 37
ELVIS COSTELLO:
IN ELVIS WE TRUST
Elvis Costello
Trust
Columbia
The cover of Elvis Costello's new
album, Trust, sports a head and
shoulders shot of him, his eyes peering
over his tinted glasses as if straining to
read a distant wall clock.
It's the same kind of quizzical stare
he used time and again on the Tomor-row
Show recently when Tom Snyder
pursued a line of question worthy of
Don Kirschner.
"Do you love your dad?" asked
Snyder, obviously a bit cautious with
New Wave types since his run-in with
John Lydon last summer. "Sure,"
blurted Costello, who then went on to
profess his admiration for Cole Porter,
Rodgers and Hart, and Hank Williams
as well.
To Snyder's immense relief, Cos-tello's
reputation for being remote or
belligerent seemed totally unwar-ranted;
on the contrary, he was the
perfect guest—sincere, responsive
and, in describing his early battles with
NBC and a few record executives, quite
funny.
But all was not peace, love and
understanding. Costello joined the
Attractions on an ice-cold version of
"Watch Your Step" (shot in black and
white, no less) from Trust, and any
notion that his new-found composure
has dulled his wits vanished as he
whispered above Steve Nieve's circling
keyboard about: "broken noses hung
up on the wall/back slapping drinkers
cheering the heavyweight brawl/so
punch drunk they don't stand at all/you
better watch your step."
THE LYRICS to "Watch Your Step"
survive Nick Lowe's opaque production
on Trust better than most. But the
tension—physical, sexual and emotion-al
that swells up inside of songs like
"White Knuckles ('on black and blue
skin')" and "Shot With His Own Gun"
("how does it feel now you've been
undressed/by a man with a mind like
the gutter press") is unmistakable.
Even Costello's stylistic leaps from
the Bo-Diddley-riffed "Lovers Walk" to
the countrified crooning of "Different
, Fingers" to the pop romanticism of
"Clubland" can't mask his intentions.
On Trust, his obsessions with guilt,
anger and loathing ride so close to the
surface you don't need a lyric sheet to
discover them. Compared with other
Lowe productions, Trust also benefits
from a cleaner, shallower mix. At least
one tune, the rockabilly rave up
"Luxembourg," seems as much the
product of Lowe's talents as Costello's.
Steve Nieve's keyboards trace Cos-tello's
witty and sly arrangements
faithfully, alluding, as usual, to a
variety of themes while navigating the
jerky, insistent rhythms laid down by
Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas. Glen
Tilbrook's vocals and Martin Belmont's
added guitar give the album a fuller,
richer sound than anything Costello has
recorded to date. Yet there's an
urgent, compelling tone to what
Costello has to say that makes you
wonder whether he'll ever really grow
soft. Trust shows no signs of it.
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