Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Pretty self-explanatory
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krm
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Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Post by krm »

This recently appeared on youtube, and as I have never seem it before why not share it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aem_12lUJ4Q

That beard!

johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by johnfoyle »

Thanks!

From April 1990, there seem to be more musicians involved than the wiki listing has - I must make inquiries & get names etc. Also - and I won't swear to it - but this seems to have a different vocal than the released recording.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... vous_Ghost
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Jack of All Parades
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Struck by the posted photos yesterday of the recording sessions for the "Lost Basement Tapes" songs how much Jim James' beard is looking like this predecessor. :wink:
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
The Gentleman
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by The Gentleman »

johnfoyle wrote:Thanks!

From April 1990, there seem to be more musicians involved than the wiki listing has - I must make inquiries & get names etc. Also - and I won't swear to it - but this seems to have a different vocal than the released recording.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... vous_Ghost
I had the same thought. At first I thought it was the studio track, but at least on first listen it struck me that Mary Coughlan was even singing different lyrics toward the end there. Am I right here?
MOJO
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by MOJO »

EC was ahead of his time with the beard. Check out this article. People would pay big money for EC's look now.

Stubble-challenged guys are forking over up to $8,500 for the beard-boosting procedure...

http://nypost.com/2014/02/25/hipster-wa ... ansplants/
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by johnfoyle »

I'll have a close listen to both formats tomorrow.
Poor Deportee
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by Poor Deportee »

I wonder what it's like to have a part of your life known to hundreds of thousands of people as The Beard Years? :?:

I never minded the look, he resembled a total Tom O'Bedlam. Suited the utterly mad material he was doing at the time.
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by And No Coffee Table »

The Gentleman wrote:At first I thought it was the studio track, but at least on first listen it struck me that Mary Coughlan was even singing different lyrics toward the end there. Am I right here?
Yes. The lyrics are different from 2:45 to 2:50, but I don't know quite what she says. (Something about a "horse's hoof"?)
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by johnfoyle »

The studio recording is probably different to the video soundtrack, or maybe it's just a better mixed one.

There is indeed a change in the lyric in verse five.

In the studio recording the first two lines are sung by Mary , with Elvis taking over to sing the last two lines -


The hinge in his backbone would bend to applause
But his dancing was not quite as lively of course



In the video Mary does all of the verse, singing different words in the last two lines. After multiple listens the best I can guess is that she is singing

'Him not being talkative' and some other words , followed by a line which goes something like ' blame on his horses hooves'.

I've sent e-mails to Donal Lunny & Fiachra Trench regarding the sextet - more when & if I get a response.
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Vid

Post by johnfoyle »

Fiachra e-mails -

Dear John,

I remember the session well and the musicians who participated, but I had forgotten that there was a video crew there.

The string players were:
Violins: Michael Healy, Fionnuala Sherry
Violas: Padraig O'Connor, Elizabeth Csibi
Cellos: David James, Rosemary Elliott

I believe the correct name for the studio is Windmill Lane Recording Studios, Ringsend Road…

Good wishes,

Fiachra
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Post by johnfoyle »

Image

Image


Charity store find- €I.
emotional_fascism076
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

Did anyone save the clip?
Who on earth is tapping at the window?
johnfoyle
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Post by johnfoyle »

Found this while looking for something else -

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... _June_1991

Creem, June-July 1991

(extract)

While maintaining his London pied-a-terra, our idiot (to borrow from one of his own titles) lives comfortably in a Dublin hillside home with a garden and a pond and a wife, former Pogue Cait O'Riordan. He contributed an exquisite duet with singer Mary Coughlan to Bringing It All Back Home, Irish filmmaker Philip King's history of the pingponging collisions between Irish music and the rest of the world's. Now that the singer's gone Hibernian, should we call him Kunte Kostello?

"There's nothing worse than people who've just discovered their roots," he observes quite rightly before launching into an informative thumbnail history of Irish folk's relationship to traditional American music. "I stand slightly to one side of all that as I'm neither a traditional folk musician or necessarily what you would call Irish. I have some Irish background and live there most of the time.

"I was interested in subverting a couple of rather tired old myths in 'The Mischievous Ghost,' one of which is that everybody in Ireland is a flute-playing leprechaun with these terrible epigrammatic sayings. The other is that the romantic, self-destructive poet is necessarily a good thing. I thought that was a good subject for a song about a poet who's taken with the romantic myth and inconveniently dies peacefully in his sleep one day, leaving the whole industry that celebrates his so-called wild inspiration high and dry. So they dig up the corpse, paint him up a little bit and put a hinge in his backbone so they can use him like a puppet. It's a sick song, actually."

Musically, "The Mischievous Ghost" combines bodhran drum and Uillean pipes with a string quintet, the latter in homage to Irish composer John Fielding, who invented the nocturne and escaped Ireland only to die of drink in St. Petersburg. "They used to have to drag him out of bed to do concerts," Kostello says. "It sounds kind of familiar to me."
emotional_fascism076
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Re: Elvis during the early beard years-Mischievous Ghost Video

Post by emotional_fascism076 »

Great read.
Who on earth is tapping at the window?
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