EC Guests: Fall Out Boy, "What A Catch, Donnie"

I won't lie; there's something fun and poppy about Fall Out Boy that appeals to me. I won't apologize for it, and I shouldn't have to. Yes, their music is 'teh emo', substitutes
cleverness for true intelligence and is generally an overwrought confessional about just how difficult it is to be Fall Out Boy, but I think that they're just good enough that there's value there.

And so, apparently, does Elvis Costello, because he loans his voice to "What A Catch, Donnie," one of the singles off of the band's new album Folie A Deux. The track features several other guest vocalists, whose names I don't pretend to know, from peer acts like Gym Class Heroes and Panic at the Disco. The gimmick of the song is that the verse are all lyrics from other FOB songs as sung by the guests. Elvis has a line from "Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bed Bet," another track on Folie that previously made the Internet rounds as "Does Your Husband Know?" The guest spot is about three lines long:

I will never end up like him
Behind my back, I already am
Keep a calendar, this way you will always know

My initial reaction was that "Donnie" was a bit of an uneven mess, and it's still one of the weaker tracks on the album, but there is a method to its madness that I'm just starting to grok.

Elvis's attempts to cover contemporary pop/indie pop are hit or miss, but I'd like to hear him try all of "Cooperstown." It's not a bad song, and has a hint of Costello's biting snark underlying it.

Check out the song below:

"Pump It Up" In Rock Band 2

Being Poisoned Letter's resident gamer geek, it didn't escape my notice that "Pump It Up" is on the track list of Rock Band 2. Which is good news, except that I'm still having trouble getting five stars on the thing on Hard. It frustrates me more than Elvis Costello should. It's the master recording, not a cover, and other than the chord-y bits that vex me, it's fun to play.

I'm hoping that this means we get some more Elvis as downloadable content in the future. The question is what other songs would translate well to video game format? I think "Veronica" is a good choice, and "American Gangster Time," and I want to name "I Want You" in spite of logic because of the smoldering guitar part that ignites in that too-brief solo.

What three songs would you recommend for a DLC Elvis Costello pack?

EC Covered: Girl Talk swipes "Pump It Up"

I've been a fan of mashups for a couple years now, but no one has taken it to quite the luscious extremes of Girl Talk. His tunes are less mashups than total reimaginings of pop and hip-hop tracks built from the detritus of sound itself. It's like cutting together fifty different scenes from fifty different movies to create a new film, or swiping paragraphs from different novels to craft one whole story. 

On his latest album, Feed the Animals, Girl Talk executes a brilliant swipe of our very own Mr. Costello. Download, listen, enjoy, and give it time--the EC bit's a couple minutes in. 

Girl Talk - "Here's the Thing"

Pony St.

My wife hates baby boomers.

Maybe "hate" is a strong word, but she blames them (and rightly so, in my opinion) for much of what's wrong with our country and culture. She's especially right about their dominance over popular art; they're the reason Mick Jagger and his fellows still have a career in spite of their age and general lack of whatever it was that first made the true spirit of rock 'n' roll ignite lo those many years ago.

But it's a coin with two sides; we of generations beyond the baby boom look back at these relics of an older time and wonder why we still have to cater to these dottering old fools; the boomers probably look down at us from the distance of age and experience and giggle a bit at how everything that was edgy and revolutionary upon its invention just continues to get recycled in new forms--early rock is punk is gangsta rap, and so on. 

"Pony St." leads off Costello's 1994 album Brutal Youth, and it covers both sides of the coin--the child frustrated by how square and antiquated her parents are, and the mother who has been and done everything her kid is trying as a way of staking her own claim on rebellion. It's told mostly from the mother's point of view, but the daughter gets her own say in a verse, and even if it's the daughter speaking through the filter of her mother's frustration, the words still sting:

Oh mother, oh mother, sometimes you are so mortifying

From the hole in your leopard skin tights I can tell you've been spying

But your generation confesses before it transgresses

Those Super-8 movies of Daddy in your disco dresses

Costello is known for his lyrical bite, but that doesn't mean his words don't leave teeth marks; "Pony St." has a few of my all-time favorite Costello lines...

If you're going out tonight

I won't wait up

Reading "Das Capital"

Watching Home Shopping Club

There's an apparent collision of socialism and capitalism in those two last lines; we've essentially seen the idealist philosophies of the love generation twisted and bent into the same get-more-now lifestyle that they seemed to reject in their youth, which is perhaps what made their youth quite so brutal? The failed promise of it, and the desire for change eventually replaced with a stultifying satisfaction with the status quo? 

Or even worse--they think they've changed everything for the better, but nothing's changed at all?

And then later:

If you're going out tonight

How can you be sure

Where you lay your pretty head

Mother may have been before

The "nothing new under the sun" concept taken to its logical, bitter end--you can't escape the past, and sometimes, you lie down beneath it and think of England, whether you realize it or not. 

The Big Light

On some EC tunes, it's hard to uncover his meanings and motives; on this track, it's hard to miss them.

This is a song about being seriously fucking hung over. The album cut from King of America boasts fiery guitar work from James Burton, a legendary studio hand and part of Elvis Presley's infamous TCB backing band. In fact, the entire TCB combo, including bassist Jerry Scheff and drummer Ronnie Tutt, joins EC on the track--hot shit. When you're looking to deliver a galloping rockabilly number about the evils of drink, there's no better men in the history of the planet to play on it.

The inspiration for examining "Big Light" was twofold--first, I heard the searing live version of it this morning on my drive, the one from the bonus live EP included with the Ryko reissue of King of America (and a more nerdy sentence you will not read on the internet, my friend).

Second and more importantly, hearing it reminded me that I have an EC-related anecdote that involves an incredible live performance by Costello, a slightly messy break up, and my own horrifying hangover.

***

I have seen EC in concert 7 times. The last was 2004; the first was 1996. One of them was on October 15, 1999, at Chicago's Arie Crown Theater.

He didn't actually play "The Big Light" at this show; for the purposes of this rambling, navel-gazing, confessional piece, it's more important who attended the show with me than anything that happened at the show.

My company that evening were my two friends, Steve and Steve, both EC fans; and my recently ex-girlfriend, Nelly.

So Nelly had dumped me several weeks before, for reasons that thankfully escape me; I am glad to know that I remember few details of being dumped nearly ten years ago. I think that's healthy.

I remember our last real goodbye, a particularly nasty spat as I dropped her off at a train station and made her take the El home because I think I was too tired to drive her up to the far north side where she lived. And I remember the EC show, and a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert from late September, because in spite of the fact that I had fully been ditched by this precocious little lady, she decided to keep and use these two concert tickets I had recently given her as gifts.

That's how I ended up with my ex sitting next to me for concerts by two of my favorite artists of all time, within weeks of each other, and at significant cost to myself. Because I am weak, and stupid, and didn't have the gumption to force her to give me the goddamned tickets back, or at least fork over some cash for the privilege of seeing two legends in their latter-day primes.

Anyway. That was Friday night--a Costello/Nieve show, with the Steves, and Nelly.

***

Saturday night was one of the seminal events of my early twenties: Diversey Homecoming.

My roommates and I decided it would be fun to hold a mock Homecoming dance in our apartment and invite everyone we knew. I think something like 100 people showed up; it was the kind of party where you make friends you've never met before and the production guy from your office pukes on the back porch and no one blinks cause they're too busy having fun.

At this party was Nelly, and at this party was a large bowl of punch featuring chambord, which I am told now is a "French black raspberry liqueur." Mixed with other boozes and some kind of fruit punch, it was the worst possible alcoholic beverage for a young, emotionally distraught, bitter male coming off a bad breakup and an Elvis Costello concert--it tasted good and was WAY stronger than its taste suggested.

I got so fucking wasted, dude.

Huge swaths of the evening are lost forever to me, thanks to the passing of time and the destructive mental effects of binge drinking. I remember there was shouting, on my part, directed at Nelly; I think she may have left crying.

Here's what I will never forget: The next morning, when I woke up in a rented tuxedo and a puddle of my own piss.

I had consumed so much liquor that I wet the bed. I emptied my bladder as I lay unconscious in the same place I'd nuzzled with Nelly just a few months before.

I think the stain was on that mattress till I got rid of it several years later.

***

Okay, so there wasn't an actual "big light" involved in my personal "Big Light" story; it'd probably be more appropriate if the song were called "The Big Damp Urine Stain." But that's my story, and I'm sticking to it--ex-girlfriends, Elvis Costello, and chambord don't mix. Ever.

The Honky Tonk Demo

Like Roddy Doyle's Barrytown musicians at the end of The Commitments, maybe Elvis Costello's real calling was country music.

Elvis has had some notable performances with country luminaries like Emmylou Harris and George Jones, released his own country album with Almost Blue and wrote a whole mess of songs - like Complicated Shadows - that he wanted Johnny Cash to sing.

That may not sound like the seething post-punk Elvis Costello that you know and love, but it makes a ton of sense when you consider that punk and old-school country are close cousins, both full of angry outlaw songs about human ruin, blood and alcohol.

Costello's early Honky Tonk demo is a five song love letter to this sort of country music, an unpolished collection of songs about bitter drinking and domestic violence. Starting with Cheap Reward, the maudlin miniature rebellion of a drunk stuck in a failing relationship, continuing through the ugly singsong of Wave A White Flag ("Meet me in the kitchen and I'll beat you in the hall") and ending with the very Cash-sounding Poison Moon, the demo tears through four tracks, some of them a mishmash of the clever lyrics that made their way to My Aim Is True (Cheap Reward lends much of its hook to Lip Service, for instance). The fourth song, Jump Up, is possessed of the same bitter class consciousness that seeps out of Blame It On Cain.

The demo appears in both the Rykodisc and Rhino bonus material, but is sadly missing from the new "Deluxe" edition of Aim. If you have access to it and haven't heard it, give it a listen. Most of EC's demos are a great peek into his creative process, but the total regenrefication that occurs in Honky Tonk is an entertaining introspection into Costello's influences.

EDIT: As Matt pedantically points out, the demo includes early versions of Blame It On Cain and Mystery Dance (and the Mystery Dance demo has a fun little guitar riff that serves as a bumper between the verse and chorus). For the sake of completeness, they're part of the demo, but I really wanted to talk about the original tunes it contained.

Elvis Covered: Fiona Apple, "I Want You"

Covers like this are the reason why I love cover songs. The original track off of Blood and Chocolate is a favorite of mine (and probably every EC fan's - let's be honest), but this performance from 2006's largely-forgettable Decades Live: Elvis Costello and Friends concert is maybe the most perfect version of the song I've heard.

Fiona Apple's voice is so goddamn emotive, and she plays the thrill ride change in tone over the course of the song - from devoted and plaintive to jealous to raging - for every bit of chilling pathos it's worth. The original is much more even-toned, which is atmospheric in its own way, but this is just one of those 'reach-into-your-chest-and-tear-your-heart-out'.

Elvis's guitar is as big a factor in the shape of the song. Check out that opening snarl at 1:06, a full-stop punctuation on the sugary intro, and the frenzied screech of the guitar solo in comparison to the original, laid-back break. This is a song about love being twisted into possessiveness, yeah, but this track also has murder on its mind.

This is, far and away, my favorite EC cover, ranking even higher than Weird Al's perennial, impromptu runs through "Radio, Radio." What's yours, and why?

Two Little Hitlers

Emotional Fascism was the working title of Elvis Costello's 1979 release with the Attractions, what would become Armed Forces. It's no surprise that the record features military metaphors for relationships throughout, and perhaps nowhere moreso than on its closing track.

Yet at the risk of launching the actual content of this blog with a shit-stirring opinion, I have to ask: What's up with EC's use of Holocaust imagery and metaphors?

I'm not slamming the central concept of the song necessarily; "Two Little Hitlers" is as perfect a definition of an untenable relationship as I can imagine. I'm thinking more about the concluding lines of the chorus:

I will return
I will not burn
Down in the basement

It's a minor moment, perhaps, a passing nod at best; he gets far more explicit in utilizing Holocaust metaphors on other songs throughout his career, most notably the 1983 protest song "Pills and Soap."

With "Pills and Soap," however, the metaphor is a blunt object used to bring home a point about the political climate in Britain. On "Hitlers," it's a tossed-off bit, which makes it a little...disturbing to me? It certainly fits in the theme of the song--the brutal impasse between lovers when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object--but is the defiance of a passionate argument really deserving of comparison to the death of millions?

Aw, now, I think I've already lost some of you. Sorry. I know why he really did it--the early career of Costello was especially informed by a need to flout convention, to flagrantly defy expectations at every turn, while at the same time delivering exceptionally refined pop/punk/rock music.

"Hitlers" is no exception. You can feel the fluidity of the Attractions at their height in the backing track, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas laying down a loose, sinewy rhythm while Steve Nieve provides light organ accents and EC himself weaves in slight guitar riffs. There's a nice contrast between the brutality of the song's central metaphor and the easy flow of the tune's melody.

It's hard to imagine the level at which Costello was working through these early years; churning out albums at an alarming rate, each of them seemingly more packed with unforgettable tunes and endlessly clever lyrics than the last. I mean, does it get any better than this:

Dial me a valentine
She's a smooth operator
It's all so calculated
She's got a calculator
She's my soft touch typewriter
And I'm her great dictator

That is, as they say, the SHIT right there.

There's also a slight hint on "Hitlers" of EC's ongoing fascination with ska-tinged music; the organ part certainly provides a light ska touch. He would go on to produce the debut album by English ska stalwarts The Specials. One of Costello's first great songs, "Watching the Detectives," delivers its own jerky ska beat; his next record after Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, would include the driving ska of "Human Touch."

(I mention it cause I did a paper on it in college. Yes, I wrote about Elvis Costello in college classes--I was one of THOSE people. You should see my Springsteen paper on the myth of the American dream.)

Buy mp3 from Amazon: "Two Little Hitlers"
Buy CD from Amazon: Armed Forces