Elvis on cover of MOJO, December 2015 issue

[FAVEHOUR]

http://www.mojo4music.com/22116/elvis-c ... -magazine/

Dave

[Neil.]

That's a fine magazine cover design! Love the way the CD cover works with the front of the mag.

[verbal gymnastics]

As if the Elvis article and the CD aren't enough, there also a Bob Dylan Bootleg Series booklet

[Goon Squad]

As if the Elvis article and the CD aren't enough, there also a Bob Dylan Bootleg Series booklet

...................and a Jeff Lynne article ! ( )

[Mr. Getgood]

And an article on the Beatles also! That's my top 3 covered!

[johnfoyle]

Subscribers get their copy early - Dave in Somerset has & posted the tracklist for the cover cd

1. Lil Pony - Georgie Fame
2. She Used To Love Me A Lot - Johnny Cash,
3. Lonesome Road - Gene Austin
4. Her Hair Was Red (written by Amy Allison) - Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
5. It Takes Time - Otis Rush
6. Overachiever - Larkin Poe
7. Flutter - The Unthanks
8. Tom Dooley - Doc Watson,
9. Little White Lies - Annette Hanshaw
10. Jubilee Street - Nick Cave & His Bad Seeds
11. Tears Inside - Ornette Coleman
12. Guess I'll Go Back Home This Summer - Jack Teagarden
13. Ghosts - Jesse Winchester
14. The Birds Will Still Be Singing - Steve Nieve
15. It's Over - Hal Prince (who, as we know, is Ross McManus)

[Hawksmoor]

Looks quite promising - there's quite a lot of tracks I'm not familiar with there, so that will be a good listen. A few ('Overachiever', 'She Used to Love Me a Lot') are things I've gotten into recently because of the EC connection, and they're fab, so yeah - looking forward to this.

[Mr. Getgood]

Ooh, I wasn't aware that Elvis is a Nick Cave fan. Anybody know of any collaborations/onstage appearances between the two?

[oliversa1]

Got my copy this morning.

[johnfoyle]

I've got & read a copy also. Given the amount of rehashes some of us have been hearing lately of Elvis's life, along with reading the book, it's safe to say there is little new in it. It's interesting to see that the introduction says the book is part of a "triptych" , the double cd collection, the book and the DVD of the Liverpool concert (that'll be briefly in the cinema here next week) .

The account of the time around MAIT is a bit spotty. In between interview excerpts, there's a narration of happenings. We're told that Stiff turned him down but Nick Lowe persuaded him to give it another go. Other accounts , of course, say Stiff were more accepting from the start. Similarly we're told MAIT was Rolling Stone magazine's album of the year for 1977 where other accounts say it was , at best , in a list behind the Sex Pistols and , er, The Eagles and James Taylor. I could go on but you get the idea.

The 15 page feature is filled out with side columns featuring comments from Pete Thomas , Allen Toussaint, Paul Cassidy & T Bone Burnett ( who mentions he first saw Elvis in concert in Boston in 1977 , not the debut in San Francisco I'm sure I read him say elsewhere) , along with a two page 'Elvis Costello in 20 songs , by Tom Doyle' . At the end of the text on p. 75 we're told the feature continues on p.82 when it actually resumes on p.79. Some of the photos are relatively rare and printed better than I've seen elsewhere.

The cd is packaged with a single, folded leaflet of credits. Two pages of the magazine are given over to Elvis's track-by-track comments , either specially done or relevant extracts from the book. The Hal Prince track is , of course, Ross. In the magazine a photo of Ross is used - in the leaflet it's someone who doesn't look like him. The 'special thanks' section in the leaflet lists , among others , people from the record companies of some of the artists . It also , intriguingly , includes 'Steve Berkoff'. Not, surely , the famously contrary actor? The cover photo , the big headphones one, is credited to 'Alamy'. That photo has been circulated so much that I've been told it's been hard to figure out who took it. A hunt around the Alamy site narrows it down a bit , in that they source it to 'Mirrorpix' in 1977 , so it may have been all too rare tabloid photo from the period, before Jake & co. restricted photographer's access.

In short , the feature is a good, accessible account which will hopefully bring more attention to Elvis.

[sweetest punch]

Elvis Costello: A Life In Clips

21 solid gold performances underlining the relentless quality of this month’s MOJO magazine cover star. Watch them now.

Elvis Costello has come a long way, from the country-rock flavoured songcraft of My Aim Is True, via the spume-flecked new-wave R&B of This Year’s Model, whence he has grown into one of our most sophisticated, inventive and prolific songwriters, a man at home in any genre from blues to bluegrass to ballet.

This month, with his hefty new memoir hitting the shelves with a loud crash, he reviews his long career in a 15-page cover interview in MOJO magazine. It’s fascinating stuff, as Costello and his collaborators paint the man in full – the stage performer compared by T Bone Burnett with The Incredible Hulk; the classical composer praised by the Brodsky Quartet’s Paul Cassidy (“his ear is as good as it gets”) and the songwriter who spears his faults and infidelities with painful candour.

All these aspects are reflected in the following 21-vid salute to the man born Declan MacManus and variously dubbed The Imposter, Little Hands Of Concrete and Napoleon Dynamite, but mostly, simply Elvis Costello.

Swipe and enjoy!
http://www.mojo4music.com/22183/elvis-c ... -in-clips/

[johnfoyle]

A few of Elvis's comments for the cover cd

[verbal gymnastics]

And for the first time ever, I know the song he inserts into Help Me (which in turn was inserted into Watching the Detectives)

[bronxapostle]

And for the first time ever, I know the song he inserts into Help Me (which in turn was inserted into Watching the Detectives)

missed it...what do you mean VG???

[verbal gymnastics]

Otis Rush - It takes time

[krm]

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

[sweetest punch]

Great article on his career. Most interesting are the last paragraphs:
(...)
Being free - that is another reason he's paled on making LPs. "What I did after the last record solely credited to me (National Ransom, 2010) was I detached myself from this... motor that had been running the previous 30 years: you put a record out then you tour that record. I hated that. I'm not out "promoting" an album, I'm out doing what I've always done, play songs."
But is he still writing songs?
"I aim and I'm planning all sorts of things. There are three (stage) musicals in different states of play - two with Burt Bacharach, one of which I fear may have fallen foul - theatre politics are a different structure to the record business - and another is still developing. There's a lot of songs written - maybe 30 or more that Burt and I wrote. Some of them are so killer. So what's the next thing? It might not be that a (new) record is the best way to introduce it. How did they get songs out of people before there were records? They went and played them. I like that idea."
(...)

[Otis Westinghouse]

Nice comments on the wonderful Unthanks and Flutter is a great choice from a superb album. Saw them touring it earlier this year and was very impressed, even if, sadly, they didn't play Shipbuilding.

[johnfoyle]

Some rather jaded responses in the latest issue