Newest Podcast Episode

The newest episode of Old Dad's Records is up, and episode 47 has a theme of angst. I start with Rush's "Subdivisions" and discuss the genre of suburban angst songs, as well as Neil Peart's humble mastery, may he rest in peace. After that I dig Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True off of my pile of old records and discuss his poetically toxic masculinity. I end things up with Control Top, a current punk rock band that has a great track taking down people with Type A personalities.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "Night Rally"

As I always do in times of depression and stress, I have turned to music these past trying weeks. I remembered last night the late 70s-early 80s Elvis Costello tunes referencing fascism. There was a rise of racist nationalism in the late 70s akin to what we're seeing in the world now, which he decried, along with the rise of Thatcherism. His songs drew a straight line from the history of the 1930s and 1940s to his time, forcing the listener out of their complacency.

"Night Rally," which closed out 1978's This Year's Model, was a reaction to the fascistic National Front, which was then brazenly parading down the city streets England. Unlike the rest of the album, which is dynamic and rhythmic, "Night Rally" starts as a slow, dirge-like march with Costello's vocals foregrounded. It is a grim start, the first verse ending with the lines: "They're putting all the names in the forbidden book/ I know what they're doing but I don't want to look." The chorus lifts the song upward, the intensity increasing: "You think they're so dumb/ You think they're so funny/ Wait until they got you running to the night rally." It's a warning: these ridiculous people marching in the streets could just win. As the song rises and rises, Costello's voice getting louder, he tosses off a line about "a melody to get you singing in the showers" which I've taken to be a clear death camp reference. The dirge becomes a rousing jeremiad against complacency in the face of evil, but then goes into a strange echo at the end, a sign that resistance may indeed be futile.

Most people think this is a minor Costello song, but it's always been one of my favorites. The vocal has such passion, the passion of a man crazed by the thought that others fail to see the heinous threat right in front of their faces, and frightened that the soft ones will get swept up with the fascist mob. It's a feeling that I've had a lot lately.

Track Of The Week: Elvis Costello "Man Out Of Time"

It's February, the most miserable month of the year.  I am currently listening to the Republican presidential debate, which is making me even more miserable.  However, both the month and the debate have given me inspiration for my track of the week.

Some albums are season-coded in my mind, and seem to fit best with certain times of year.  For whatever reason, I associate Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom record with February.  It might be that I first heard it in the winter, and thus the songs were burned into my mind with associations with slushy sidewalks and grey skies.  It also has a kind of cold classicism in it, especially in Steve Nieve's elegant piano playing, which is prominently featured.  It's also a sign that Costello had stretched out from his nervy New Wave beginnings into something very different.  It's an album I really love, but it also marks the end of his stunning six album run from 1977-1982 (I don't include Almost Blue, since it's really more of a side project/novelty album.)

"Man Out Of Time" is a song about a vulgar yet powerful man, and as such reminds me of so many of the clowns I see before me on the Republican debate stage tonight.  I can't hear the lines "He's got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge/ He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege" anymore without thinking of Donald Trump.  I could apply that to a lot of the other fools sharing the stage with him.  The song is about the disgust one feels in encountering a person with a lot of wealth and prestige who is a complete piece of shit. Bourbon and this song are two of the few things capable of getting me through this debate, where multiple of these specimens are on display.

Classic Albums: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, This Year's Model

Sometimes thanks to the fates or the unknowable vicissitudes of the universe, I get turned onto the exact right music at the exact right time in my life.  I was lucky enough to experience such a moment of grace at the end of senior year of high school, when I picked up my first Elvis Costello album, This Year's Model.  At that age I was an awkward romantic obsessed with women but too socially maladjusted to do much about it except blow multiple dating opportunities with cute girls due to my inability to woo them properly.  (Evidently not talking to someone because you're too afraid to say the wrong thing might make her think you're not interested.  Who knew?)

I was a young man in need of a different kind of love song, a love song steeped in frustration and bitterness, and Elvis Costello gave me plenty of those songs.  (I actually lived out an incident of the kind described in "I'm Not Angry" where my love interest "went upstairs with the boyfriend while I'm left here to listen.")  Costello just seemed like he understood me, from the nerdy classes to his nervy voice.

This Year's Model's sound struck me then, and it still does.  Bruce Thomas' bass is full and up front, Pete Thomas' drums hard hitting, and Steve Nieve's organ, not Costello's guitar, usually carries the melody.  The organ and bass dominated sound, split between the high and low end, gives musical embodiment to the emotional tensions of the lyrics and Costello's voice.  The first track, "No Action," makes it apparent from the beginning that for all its lyrical acrobatics, this record is going to rock hard.  (In fact, I was a little disappointed initially when I started listening to Costello's later output, since it is much less hard edged.)  The tempo is jacked into fifth gear right from the start, and the key lyric "Every time I phone you I just want to put you down" makes it pretty clear that the listener can't expect love songs with happy endings.

"This Year's Model" and "The Beat" shift back into mid tempo, but positively drip with menace and romantic frustration.  Perhaps to break the tension, the next track is "Pump It Up," the best known track on the album and probably the catchiest, anchored by a killer Nieve organ riff.  Once you delve beneath the rave up on the surface, however, the lyrics are a desperate cry of sexual frustration.

From there, side one closes out with "Little Triggers" and "You Belong To Me," which are strongly reminiscent of sixties pop.  "Little Triggers" could pass for a doo-wop homage, and "You Belong to Me" sounds like a much more conventional love song, complete with a catchy hook.

Not to worry, since side two opens with "Hand in Hand," which turns the old love-song forms on their heads.  The romantic title has a sinister intent, when Elvis croons "If I go dooooooowwwn/ You're gonna come with me/ Hand in hand" with musical backing worthy of a Brill Building pop number as performed by the Electric Prunes.  It's a great set up for "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea"'s herky-jerky rhythms and snake and ladder organ lines.

With the mood building, This Year's Model shows why our shuffle playlist rather than album oriented listening habits have hurt us.  Just when you think that things can't get any better, the bright acoustic guitar lead of "Lip Service" cuts through the speakers, a ray of sunshine amidst the claustrophobic sound of the other tracks.  Or so you think, until Costello starts singing with a voice that's grainy and snarly even by his standards.  When he gets to the chorus and accuses everyone of "just going through the motions," my 18-year old non-comformist self felt like he had met his artistic life mentor.

I felt the same thing on "Living in Paradise," when I head the line "the thrill is here but it won't last long/ better have your fun before it moves along/ and you're already looking for/ another fool like me" and on the driving "Lipstick Vogue" with "sometimes love is like a tumor/ you have to cut it out."  Those words seemed to sum up my major frustration of the time, in that I felt such passionate emotions for other people but I had no way of converting those almost torturous feelings into anything real.

With things brought up to such a fever pitch at the end of the record, Costello breaks from emotional matters to politics with "Night Rally," a song aimed at the rise of neo-fascist groups like the National Front in the late 1970s.  It's a sort of anti-anthem, slowly building up to one of Costello's best vocal performances.  When he hits the verse that starts "Oh I know I'm ungrateful" with such passionate fervor, it gets me every time.  Perhaps he included that song last to remind his listeners that there are more important things in that world than our own emotional turmoils, a message I would not have accepted at age 18, but will fully acknowledge now.