Elvis Costello

Started by montage, May 02, 2017, 01:13:33 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

montage

 [ You are not allowed to view this attachment ]



Declan Patrick MacManus (born 25 August 1954), better known by his stage name Elvis Costello, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as part of London's pub rock scene in the early 1970s and later became associated with the first wave of the British punk and new wave movement that emerged in the mid-to-late 1970s.

His critically acclaimed debut album, My Aim Is True, was released in 1977. Shortly after recording it, he formed the Attractions as his backing band. His second album, This Year's Model, was released in 1978, and was ranked number 11 by Rolling Stone on its list of the best albums from 1967–1987. His third album, Armed Forces, was released in 1979, and features his most successful single "Oliver's Army". His first three albums all appeared on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


Costello and the Attractions toured and recorded together for the better part of a decade, though differences between them caused a split by 1986. Much of Costello's work since has been as a solo artist, though reunions with members of the Attractions have been credited to the group over the years. Steeped in wordplay, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broad. His music has drawn on many diverse genres; one critic described him as a "pop encyclopaedia", able to "reinvent the past in his own image".


He has won multiple awards in his career, including a Grammy Award, and has twice been nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male Singer.  In 2003, Costello and the Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Costello number 80 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.


Costello has co-written several original songs for motion pictures, including "God Give Me Strength" from Grace of My Heart (1996, with Burt Bacharach) and "The Scarlet Tide" from Cold Mountain (2003, with T-Bone Burnett). For the latter, Costello was nominated (along with Burnett) for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
  •  

montage

#1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCykaPjrCWE


I'll Never Fall in Love Again" is a popular song by composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David that was written for the 1968 musical Promises, Promises.

Several recordings of the song were released in 1969, the most popular of which was by Dionne Warwick, who took it to number six on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 and spent three weeks with it at number one on the magazine's list of the 40 most popular Easy Listening songs in the US.
  •  

admin

#2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9GlC9GyF4Y

"Alison" is a song written by and first recorded by Elvis Costello in 1977 for his debut album on Stiff Records. Costello's single never charted. Linda Ronstadt, who covered the song and released her version in 1979, had a moderate hit with it. There have also been several other cover versions of this song.

The song "Alison" was included on Elvis Costello's debut studio album My Aim Is True as the fifth track, and was released in 1977. As "Alison" was recorded before Elvis Costello and the Attractions formed, his backing band on the track was Clover. Costello has divulged little on the meaning of the song other than to say that it is about "disappointing somebody" and to deny suggestions that the lines "somebody better put out the big light" and "my aim is true" refer to murder. He has also declined to reveal who the song is about, writing in the liner notes for Girls Girls Girls, "Much could be undone by saying more." The line "my aim is true" gives the album its title. Costello has also said that the song was musically based on "Ghetto Child" by The Spinners.

However, in his 2015 autobiography Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello wrote: "I've always told people that I wrote the song "Alison" after seeing a beautiful checkout girl at the local supermarket. She had a face for which a ship might have once been named. Scoundrels might once have fought mist-swathed duels to defend her honour. Now she was punching in the prices on cans of beans at a cash register and looking as if all the hopes and dreams of her youth were draining away. All that were left would soon be squandered to a ruffian who told her convenient lies and trapped her still further".

Costello and Billie Joe Armstrong, of Green Day, played the song live together on VH1 Classic's "Decades Rock Live". The performance originally aired on 19 May 2006.

Yamaha DGX-670 connected to a Yamaha MW12 Mixer connected to a pair of Yamaha MSP10's + Yamaha SW10 Subwoofer using Songbook+.
MacBook Pro  32 GB  1 Terabyte SSD
  •  

admin

#3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrjHz5hrupA

"Oliver's Army" is a song written by Elvis Costello, originally performed by Elvis Costello and The Attractions, and appearing on the album Armed Forces in 1979. It remains his most successful single, spending three weeks at number 2 in the UK Singles Chart.

Some music critics, such as Simon Frith  and others have suggested that the title refers to Oliver Cromwell whose New Model Army was a forerunner to the modern British Army. Of the song's meaning, Costello himself has stated: "I made my first trip to Belfast in 1978 and saw mere boys walking around in battle dress with automatic weapons.

They were no longer just on the evening news. These snapshot experiences exploded into visions of mercenaries and imperial armies around the world. The song was based on the premise 'they always get a working class boy to do the killing'. I don't know who said that; maybe it was me, but it seems to be true nonetheless. I pretty much had the song sketched out on the plane back to London."

As well as the Troubles the song alludes to several other "trouble spots" around the world including South Africa, Palestine, Cyprus and "Checkpoint Charlie". It has been suggested that the events in Belfast prompted Costello to write this "anti-occupation anthem".

The music video for "Oliver's Army" was aired on MTV's first US broadcast day, 1 August 1981.

The song lyrics contain the phrase "white nigger", a racial slur which usually remains uncensored on radio stations. In March 2013, the radio station BBC Radio 6 Music played the song with the word removed despite BBC radio stations having played the song uncensored for over 30 years. Their move attracted public criticism given the intended anti-racist and anti-war theme of the single.  Costello performed the song at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival, which was broadcast by the BBC, with the phrase uncensored.
Yamaha DGX-670 connected to a Yamaha MW12 Mixer connected to a pair of Yamaha MSP10's + Yamaha SW10 Subwoofer using Songbook+.
MacBook Pro  32 GB  1 Terabyte SSD
  •  

admin

#4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snPDoXl9ZPs

"Watching the Detectives" is a 1977 single by English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello. His fourth single overall, it was his first hit single on any national chart, peaking at #15 in the UK and also charting modestly in Canada, Australia and the U.S. The song featured on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at No. 354.

The song, with a lyric about a lover who would rather watch TV, sung over a simple reggae beat, was described by Rolling Stone as "a clever but furious burst of cynicism", and they also described the song as "indisputably classic".  Allmusic's Mark Deming described the song: "a skeletal minor-key melody that slowly but effectively wound itself into a solid knot of fierce emotional tension, pushing the bitter lyrical atmosphere further into the darkness". Costello described how he wrote the song:

I was in my flat in the suburbs of London before I was a professional musician, and I'd been up for thirty-six hours. I was actually listening to another inductee's record, the Clash's first album. When I first put it on, I thought it was just terrible. Then I played it again and I liked it better. By the end, I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, and I thought it was great. Then I wrote "Watching the Detectives".

Costello considers "Watching the Detectives" his favourite song from the first five years of his career. He later performed the song with a big band arrangement, which he admitted was "a desecration to people who love the tenseness of the original recording", but explained that "the story that's going on, and the musical allusions in the original arrangements, relate very much to the realization of this song as an orchestral piece using the film music feeling and the swing rhythms of '50s detective shows."
Yamaha DGX-670 connected to a Yamaha MW12 Mixer connected to a pair of Yamaha MSP10's + Yamaha SW10 Subwoofer using Songbook+.
MacBook Pro  32 GB  1 Terabyte SSD
  •  

admin

She
Yamaha DGX-670 connected to a Yamaha MW12 Mixer connected to a pair of Yamaha MSP10's + Yamaha SW10 Subwoofer using Songbook+.
MacBook Pro  32 GB  1 Terabyte SSD