I alluded to this ancient dilemma last year, but Elvis Costello has always been a divisive, polarizing figure among my little crowd. I remember sitting in a dive bar in Costa Mesa, California in the mid-90s with some friends (a couple of Robs and a member or two of The Unband), heatedly arguing over Elvis' contested merits. In a nutshell, their assertion was that they were tired of pretending to like Elvis -- as you were evidently supposed to do -- because they collectively felt that he failed to rock with the same reckless abandon as, say, AC/DC or Black Flag or Celtic Frost or the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or Killing Joke or Motorhead or Sham 69 or _______ (insert your favorite here). Outnumbered and outgunned, I vainly tried to cite myriad examples from Elvis' early catalog that justifiably won him the title "Angry Young Man of the New Wave," but I was still losing the debate. I was shut down and we moved onto whatever new ridiculous topic was on our minds that day.
But I never admitted defeat. While, yes, Elvis Costello has become a revered elder statesman of the singer/songwriter gang -- recording title songs for Julia Roberts flicks with the likes of Burt Bacharach, composing chamber music with the Brodsky Quartet and hanging out with wife/soppy-jazz practitioner Diana Krall -- there was a time when he was just as pugnacious, aggressive and bellicose as the punkest of the punks.
I remember buying my first Elvis LP, Armed Forces at Crazy Eddie on Third Avenue back in high school, based on the strength of "(What's So Funny `Bout) Peace Love & Understanding?" Awash in garish, Pollackesque paint splatters, the album visually bore all the trappings of the punk records I was immersed in at the time, but there was obviously more going on here than three-chord blitzkrieg. The songs had more depth, craft and substance than your average ditty by the Dead Boys. Elvis clearly knew his way around a resonant pop song. By the same token, rockers like "Goon Squad" (a knowing sneer at the uniformity of punk) gave listeners a nod that Elvis was fully aware of what was going on at the time.
Anyway, blah blah blah. There's more than enough evidence out there to support the fact that Elvis Costello is quite entirely capable of rocking your face off, but imagine my late-in-the-day glee to find my friend Glen E. Friedman (no stranger to that which credibly rocks), basically RE-AFFIRMING my argument with this blog post. Glen stumbled upon the footage below courtesy of Dangerous Minds and was duly impressed. To quote the man himself, "he's no joke!" Amen! It made me want to call up those smug fucker friends of mine and re-start the argument! Ah well...
Commence rocking!
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