The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

Best Music Podcasts

by 56 Comments

Have ventured into the world of podcasts with a little effort of my own. It’s on 80s music, so unlikely to be of much interest here, but I am looking for other recommended music podcasts – especially ones that do interviews, to compare and contrast.

What are the best ones out there? I already listen to The Hustle (and regularly chat with the host, Jon) and Rockenteurs. Any other goodies you would recommend?

For mine, so far i’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Langer/Winstanley, Hugh Padgham, Stephen Lipson, Chris Hughes and many others (did a whole season of interviews relating to Tears For Fears) and I am looking to check out the competition! (albeit from a much lower level…)

[Would also be grateful for any feedback on my little effort..cheers]

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/80sography-80s-music-one-artist-at-a-time/id1486104117

Even more box-sets-in-a-list mayhem

by 22 Comments

Fatima’s 2020 Box Sets & Reissues

Top Ten 1. Prince | Sign O’ The Times (Super Deluxe Edition: 8 CDs + DVD) 2. Focus | 50 Years 1970-1976 (9 CDs + 2 DVDs) 3. King Crimson | The Complete 1969 Recordings (20 CDs + 2 DVDs + 4 BluRays) 4. Hank Williams | Pictures From Life’s Other Side (Book + 6 CDs) 5. Eric Burdon & The Animals | When I Was Young (The MGM Recordings 1967-1968: 5 CDs) 6. The Alabama Box | 1950s & 1960s Oddball Labels (8 CDs) 7. Porcupine Tree | The Delerium Years 1991-1997 (13 CDs) 8. Bobby Bare | Sings Shel Silverstein (8 CDs) 9. Neneh Cherry | Raw Like Sushi (30th Anniversary Edition: 3 CDs) 10. Peter Kowald | Duos (3 LPs)

Top Twenty A-Z The Associates | Perhaps (2 CDs) Colosseum | Colosseum Live (6 CDs) The Fall | The Frenz Experiment (2 CDs) Bobbie Gentry | The Delta Sweete (Expanded Edition: 2 CDs) Tom Jones | The Complete Decca Studio Albums Collection (17 CDs) Marillion | Script For A Jester’s Tear (4 CD + BluRay) Paul McCartney | Flaming Pie (5 CDs + 2 DVDs) Joni Mitchell | Archives Vol. 1: The Early Years (5 CDs) Tom Petty | Wildflowers & All » Continue Reading.

Elvis makes a racket – Klaxon

by 5 Comments

Elvis span a new 45 yesterday – sorry, I mean he dropped some new sounds on multiple electronic platforms. The music is a racket on which he plays everything, his ‘I knocked this up myself in the shed’ tradition that goes all the way back to Hoover Factory 40 years ago. The lyrics might just be a bitter and sorrowful swipe at those who find themselves manipulated by anti-democratic leaders. Chill out music it ain’t.

Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle”

by 20 Comments

I have no particular recollection of noticing many comments or articles here about this show. Hence, I’m interested in your experience of it. I recall buying season one on DVD and pretty much rushing home to watch it thinking that I was in for a treat and a feast. I expected insightful interviews with an interesting array of people.

It certainly is an interesting array of people and season two, which is available now on YouTube, continues in that vein. However, to my surprise, Elvis is a terrible host and a bad interviewer. He reminds me a little of James Lipton who had the job of hosting Inside the Actors’ Studio. Great guests, but Lipton could make you squirm as he leaned into his guests attempting to oil his way into their affections.

Costello seems not to know how to actually ask a question. This is a problem that I see in the vast majority of interviewers, even professional ones, so I’m not that surprised to see it in an amateur. Costello is not a professional journalist and it shows. Instead, he’s egotistical, determined to show that he is the star here and everybody else is a guest. This seems » Continue Reading.

Elvis plays Artists 4 NHS tomorrow / Friday

by 2 Comments

If you’re fresh from cheering and clapping our precious battered NHS out of your window you might like to know about Artists 4 NHS. It’s a group fundraising for official NHS staff charities and set up in the last few days by musician Ronan MacManus, whose wife works at Northwick Park hospital in London. The first streamed performance is tomorrow (Friday 27th) at 7.30pm and is from Ronan’s half brother, a certain Elvis Costello, live from his basement apparently.

Do join – and do open your wallet a little if you can. He’s bound to pull out a rarely heard song or two as well as a hit or three.

It’s several weeks – though feels a world away – since I saw Elvis at what turned out to be the last night of his UK tour. I can report that he’s older but still great and fired up, including when he spoke from the stage about the NHS and the running down it usually receives from our politicians. He also praised the care they give his 92 year old mum in the same hospital that was quarantining Covid-19 patients returning from abroad. Just like after one of » Continue Reading.

Elvis Costello Tickets For Sale!!

by Leave a Comment

Hey folks, I was due to fly to London this Friday and see Elvis Costello and the Imposters at the Eventim Apollo Hammersmith. Obviously the other stuff happening is keeping me grounded in Dublin. The tickets are Circle Standing so they’re relatively cheap, £100 the pair. Anyone more local interested? Elvis is always great to see live. Ta!

Elvis was in the building

by 4 Comments

I happened to see that Elvis Costello was on Wednesday night’s One Show (BBC One) so watched it on the iPlayer machine…I did fear it might have been car crash TV ( Matt Baker and Elvis?!?!) Turns out it was mildly interesting and Elvis was quite funny. He was plugging his forthcoming album and, from what I heard, it might be quite good.

I still can’t do the links but a few of you may wish to seek it out.

No Reason To Play This Song Here Tonight: 40 Years On

by 12 Comments

Live television is the last place you should try and be spontaneous

At the time that Elvis Costello and The Attractions, in the middle of a pulverising touring schedule that made their reputation as a fearsome live band, played the cult late night comedy show on NBC it was regarded as a daring and provocative response to Monty Python. Or at least a team of the US best and brightest comedy performers – Dan Aykroyd , John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilder Radner, Bill Murray et al. The shows passion for presenting musical acts that might not necessarily get airtime elsewhere gained it a reputation for being cutting edge – so Elvis and the razor sharp Attraction seemed a perfect fit.

But it wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

Nearly two years before on a sleepy teatime TV show in the UK, the popular and interview shy Queen were booked to appear on the Today show. Perhaps wishing to avoid the comfy area chat with host Bill Grundy they withdrew at the 11th hour. A desperate EMI publicity department searched round for a stable-mate to replace them and found that fresh young signings, The Sex Pistols, were rehearsing across town. A » Continue Reading.

Revisionist History and Malcolm Gladwell

by 3 Comments

I heard someone give Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell a big up on the Afterword podcast, so I gave it a go and thank you very much to whoever mentioned it.

I bring it up because the 8th episode ‘Hallelujah’ is right up the Afterword alley – talking (briefly) to Alan Winstanley about working with Elvis Costello and making an album they all hated (Elvis, Alan and mega-fan Gladwell); the creation and eventual emergence of Halellujah as a classic covered by all and sundry; the difference between Dylan and Cohen and much more.

The rest of the series is very interesting too. Made me think about my thought patterns, behaviours and choices on more than one occasion… The tryptic on education started making me very angry.

Floor Singers Welcome! Memories of Les Cousins

by 47 Comments

I’m currently reading the Elvis Costello autobiography and there’s a chapter dedicated to the young Declan’s first faltering steps as a live performer. He describes the folk clubs and pubs who allowed virtually anyone to get up and perform. These days I suppose we’d call them “Open Mic Nights” but back then they weren’t really a feature so much as a way to fill the gaps between the main (ie paid) performers. Sometimes the floor singers were pretty good, often they were terrible, but mostly they were simply dull.

Folk clubs were the natural habit of the floor singer of course and this reminded me of the times I spent at arguably the most famous folk club of them all, Les Cousins.

Come with me now as we travel back in time to a more innocent age….

http://i.imgur.com/6W535qv.jpg

Every Day He Writes the Book

by 131 Comments

What’s the matter with y’all? The Costello autobio has been available for 16 hours and not a word about it so far.

There’s a Kindle sample up.

It looks proper interesting like (despite a couple of copy-editing howlers, but that’s standard practice for rock ‘n’ pop ‘n’ rollers’ memoirs, it seems).

Billy Sherrill

by 16 Comments

I just saw that Billy Sherrill, who produced Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, has passed away.

As a somewhat love-sick 17 year old, I was very taken with Mr Costello’s version of Sweet Dreams. As I recall, the single had a cover of Jack Kittel’s Psycho on the B-side. I liked that too, but not because I was love-sick.

Almost Blue was my gateway to Patsy Cline and Gram Parsons and it is still one of my favourite Elvis Costello albums. There’s a documentary (Edit: I see it’s the South Bank Show) about the making of Almost Blue, which I remember as being good. I see it’s on YouTube, so that’s my next hour sorted.

Billy Sherrill also co-wrote Stand By Your Man. I find Tammy Wynette’s version a bit cloying, but I like Lyle Lovett’s. I was going to pop that in here too, but I don’t know if I can, so I will (try to) be the first to comment on my own post and put it there.

What’s so funny…..

by 5 Comments

I was going to write a diatribe against religious zealots that seem only content when they are killing those who don’t share their fairytales about invisible Dads etc. Yet after a day of horrific news I was moved to tears by this wonderful Nick Lowe lyric at Elvis C’s Basingstoke show last night. It replaced the angry ranting John Lydon screaming PIL’s ‘Religion’ in my head.

Is this a record?

by 11 Comments

I’m moving office which has lead to me moving some CDs, which has obviously lead to a lot of listening to things I’d forgotten. One I’d not quite forgotten is Brutal Youth by Elvis Costello. I still have not got round to listening to it though. I bought it because I saw them play 13 steps lead down on TV and thought it sounded good, but obviously not good enough for me to listen to the thing. As I load it into Itunes I realise I have had it for 20 years (since 1994) without playing it. Is this a record? (no, a record is the black vinyl thing, boom tish).