I can’t remember if I got it at the Woolworths on the corner of East 86th Street and Third Avenue or the King Karol just a block to its south, but I bought Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces when I was in high school, strictly on the strength of its inclusion of “(What’s So Funny `Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” which — to my ears, at the time — packed all the energy and wallop of Punk Rock without subscribing to its nihilism and negativity (not that I really had a problem with either of those sentiments). I interpreted it as Elvis breaking away from the pack, carving out his own niche and making an earnest plea for sanity in an otherwise insane era.
Some elements of that might be accurate, but the truth of the matter is that Elvis didn’t actually write the song, his producer singer/songwriter Nick Lowe did, and did so several years prior to advent of the British Punk scene. Somewhat ironically, it was a different track on Armed Forces that found Elvis venomously lambasting British Punk, that being “Goon Squad.”
But regardless of its origin, “(What’s So Funny…)” remains arguably the quintessential Elvis Costello track (although my personal favorite of his will always be “Beyond Belief”), so much so that, considering how much music the prolific artist has written and released since Armed Forces, one almost takes it for granted. That said, the song exploded into my headphones, earlier today while I was running an errand, and the sheer, sprawling impact of the recording — a wall of guitars and keyboards, punctuated by Elvis’s earthy lower-register — hit me like a hammer. Pete Thomas’ stiff-backed drumming alone, bursting with machine-gun fills, is still so astonishingly great.
And, of course, without belaboring the obvious, 42 years (!!!) after the release of Armed Forces, the sentiments assertively expressed in “(What’s So Funny `Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?” have never been more relevant.
The video is kind of hilarious, as well. Pump it up, indeed.
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