10/20/2023 0 Comments Elvis costello why can;t you tell me![]() ![]() ![]() The music of Costello and the Dead has little in common, except, of course, the fact that the former is a self-confessed fan of the latter (several years later, I discovered on a hard-to-find-digitally album, Stolen Roses, a brilliant medley of Ship Of Fools and It Must Have Been The Roses by Costello, performed live).Ĭostello, a Londoner born Declan Patrick MacManus, began his musical career in the 1970s in a genre known as pub rock, a back-to-the-roots, bar-friendly kind of rock music that eschewed the excesses and heavy over-production that the then prevailing glam rock employed. It wasn’t the best rendition of the iconic song from the Dead’s From The Mars Hotel album but as a long-time Deadhead, it was a cue for me to explore more of Costello. ![]() Strangely, my first serious introduction to Costello’s music came not from one of his numerous original songs but via the 1991 album Deadicated, a compilation of 15 songs by the Grateful Dead sung by other artists. So, like a quick-change artist, he can shift from exuberance to melancholy, or from romantic sweetness to snarling anger, on a whim. ![]() Costello’s vocal range, as anyone who has heard him will know, has an octave-switching ability-and sometimes he uses it within the same song. The reasons for liking Costello’s songs could be the same as for disliking them. But then the taste for Costello’s music has been like the preference for liquorice-the metaphor first used by the late Jerry Garcia to describe the Grateful Dead’s music: You either love it or you hate it. When a musician of his standing does something like this, you would expect a horde of fans to follow the playlist. The project ended on 3 November, presidential election day in the US. Nearly all the songs he uploaded were from his back catalogue. When he put up an “installation” this September, uploading a song each day on a playlist titled 50 Songs For 50 Days, he got barely 1,000 followers. At 66, the English singer-songwriter has done 31 studio albums, six live albums, 16 compilation albums and a host of other releases, including box sets and tribute albums. Elvis Costello is an underrated musician. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |