Elvis when you least expect it

[johnfoyle]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/cyndi- ... 30326.html

Girl still wants to have fun

Steve Dow
February 8, 2008
Advertisement

It's very late on Sunday night in New York and Cyndi Lauper is contemplating the busy Monday ahead. She has to take her 10-year-old son Declyn to school, work out with her fitness trainer and get the studio equipment ready for her visiting Swedish songwriters and co-producers to record one last vocal.

She hopes the unnamed rhythm and hip-hop-influenced album will be finished in the few days before her appearance as a presenter at the 50th Grammy Awards this Sunday. After that she'll fly to Australia for shows in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and finally Brisbane.

"My life is so retarded," she says in that thick, nasally Brooklyn accent. "I look around and go, 'Where's the camera? Are we getting punked?'" She laughs. "I lay my gym clothes out, take the kid to school, then I gotta be back for the Russian trainer, who says" - Lauper switches to a brusque Russian accent" - "'I am going to kick your glutes!'"

The pop star who shot to fame with Girls Just Want To Have Fun in 1983 still makes a new album every few years. She is still beloved of critics for her vocal range and branching out from singing and songwriting to playing instruments and co-producing her work. Audiences can expect all the old hits "but I'll sneak a few new songs in if I can," Lauper says.

The 54-year-old singer-songwriter's husband, the occasional Law & Order actor David Thornton, has been on location in Serbia for the film Here And There - in which Lauper has a minor role - and should be home midweek.

Meanwhile, Lauper has meetings with a stylist to discuss clothes and a trip to the CD store to seek inspiration for an album cover. Not to mention dinners with and reading to Declyn, who was named after Declan MacManus, aka Elvis Costello.

Declyn has recently "turned on" his mother to hip-hop, which they sing in the car. Long enamoured of children's jump rope chants, Lauper has written one hip-hop number for her new album that began with herself and her drummer; her ambition was to "sing like a drum".

"But I'm not a rapper," she says. "I hate the way I speak; I hate the fact that I have a really bad accent. You know, I can't stand my speaking voice."

Isn't that what makes her so distinctive? "For you! For me it's horrifying!"

Lauper's new album, her first with all-new material since Shine in 2001, is?due out in less than a month. Midnight has passed yet still she talks, and talks.

Thank goodness she has a Russian trainer to kick her glutes into action. It's hard to imagine Lauper carrying out the instructions of anyone else.

For her last album she had wanted to make a blues record but Sony pressured her for an "unplugged" CD of her greatest hits. The Body Acoustic, released in 2005, was a subdued but sweet reinterpretation of the likes of She Bop and Time After Time, on which Lauper simultaneously sang and played dulcimer and guitar while Sarah McLachlan and Ani DiFranco were guest vocalists.

Such collaborations made the project "bearable", even helped her develop as an artist, Lauper says, "but now it feels like I'm not going to listen to anyone again. I'm going to do what I want to."

Not everyone sees things Lauper's way. Junior Vasquez, co-producer of Lauper's critically lauded but commercial fizzer Hat Full Of Stars album of 1993, told New York magazine last year: "Cyndi Lauper and I are great friends and I think she's immensely talented but she's a control freak with bizarre ideas. She's a royal pain in the arse to work with."

Perhaps Vasquez should have listened to Girls Just Want To Have Fun: "Some boys take a beautiful girl / And hide her away from the rest of the world / I wanna be the one to walk in the sun."

Lauper says Vasquez is "sweet" and a friend but producers such as him "don't work with artists. They work with people who come in, they tell 'em what to think and [the singer leaves]. They're the king.

"But I was doing a co-production with him and that's completely different. And honey, you'd better be in control of your own project because if you're not, who the f--- is?

"What he hated was my playing the dulcimer. And I said something to him about his personal life that he perhaps thinks I shouldn't have said. I tried to call him and he didn't call me back. So I started playing the dulcimer on his answering machine. I thought it was funny and obviously he didn't.

"When I look back, I see all these guys who weren't used to a woman saying, 'I have this idea.' Well, I'm sorry, turn the album on the cover and see whose picture is on it and what's the big name, right? Would he say that about David Bowie?"

Lauper will be in Sydney performing during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. Human rights have always been important to Lauper, raised by a working-class mother in Brooklyn, among a neighbourhood of "Shakespearean, happy, nutty, sad" people that influenced her unique sense of dress and style.

Lauper almost sounds disappointed she's heterosexual. "When I was a kid, all my friends had come out. I thought I was gonna be just like all my friends. Then, when I wasn't, it was weird for me. I had to tell them I was straight."

In the 1990s, Lauper's older sister, Ellen, came out. "With Ellen and my friends, all the people I loved when I was growing up, I got to see discrimination first-hand - not just because of the colour of your skin but because of your preference."

Lauper has performed at various Gay Pride events in the US. Last year she headlined the True Colors tour, alongside Deborah Harry and comedian Margaret Cho, in support of human rights.

"I always say to Declyn it's great when you see somebody that's different from you. I always count my blessings when I do because if there wasn't someone who was different from me there would be this uniformity that everyone has to conform and be the same thing; dress the same way, wear their hair the same way. That's what it's almost become now."

Cyndi Lauper is playing March 2, State Theatre, 136 100, $99-$135. February 29 and March 1 sold out.

[johnfoyle]

http://kieferbenny.blogspot.com/2008/02 ... ngton.html

Kiefer Sutherland was born in the same hospital , St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, as Elvis........well fancy that!

[johnfoyle]

http://redtailboa.net/forums/boas/41571 ... -self.html

Stagazer posts to a reptile forum -


For over a month, Veronica holed herself up in her hide box. I never saw her come out. She didn't even stick her head out. She shed in the hide box and stayed in there. She ate and went back into the hide box. She seemed to lose all interest in her regular activities--scoping out the cage, pooping on the decorations, popping her little head out to watch the movement around her......then.....One day I was playing some music. Her song came on ("Veronica" by Elvis Costello). I cranked it up and started singing it to her. At that moment I looked in her cage, and this is what I saw (no joke).



Up popped her little head from the hide box. She stretched her head out as if she was trying to "listen" to the song. I don't know how, but I think Veronica knows her song. It was pretty dang adorable.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Sounds like a scene, if rather over human-dominated, from the latest and last great Attenborough series Life in Vold Blood.

[invisible Pole]

Not sure if this is the right thread to put it, but anyway .....

I was just going through the Band of the Day section in Guardian and found an article on a band called Idle Lovers.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/newbands/st ... 57,00.html

This Hackney quintet are full of gusto, but Paul Lester can't help thinking of a defanged Elvis Costello

Thursday February 28, 2008

Hometown: Hackney, London.

The lineup: Daniel Shepherd (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Matthew Bate (guitars), Sebastian Jaquest (bass, backing vocals), Andy Goodman (drums, vocals).

The background: Hard to believe now because he's almost been written out of rock history, but time was when Elvis Costello exerted an influence verging on hegemony. Think of how many column inches are devoted these days to Pete Doherty, Alex Turner and Thom Yorke, and multiply several-fold: that was the extent to which Costello dominated critical discourse in the late '70s and early '80s, before he became the sensible, mature craftsman of the postpunk era, before Morrissey replaced him as the quote-worthy rock laureate. He was Dylan and Lennon rolled into one bespectacled, bendy-legged, nerdy, nervy package, his every album was greeted with quasi-religious awe, and the rock scene was littered with legions of sub-Costellos trying to grab a piece of his tuneful but angry young man action.
Over a quarter of a century later, Elvis Costello is starting to get name-checked again by new bands. Take Idle Lovers, who are making music so in hock to early Costello, the EC of My Aim Is True and This Year's Model, that it borders on karaoke or tribute act territory. The nagging guitar lines, the breakneck pace of the bass and drums, the breathless delivery of the lyrics - they're all there on the London four-piece's debut single Big Impression and companion track Down At The Funfair - there's even a burst of rock-reggae on the latter à la Watching The Detectives. The only thing missing, apart from Costello's oft-overlooked but uncannily inventive melodies, is the sense of savage social satire even underpinning the songs about sex'n'love'n'romance. Idle Lovers are a de-clawed, defanged Costello, and as such they recall those groups or artists who emerged in his wake like Squeeze or Joe Jackson in the name of New Wave, all sound and fury signifying nothing beyond a vague dissatisfaction with the status quo and, more specifically, girls.

Still, there is a determination on the part of Idle Lovers to do what they gotta do that should be applauded. They even roped in a producer, Premen, for Big Impression who hasn't just propelled the likes of Klaxons, Mystery Jets and These New Puritans towards mainstream acclaim but who has worked with Costello himself. Idle Lovers' single-mindedness is reaping rewards: Graham Coxon invited them to support him on his recent homecoming show at Goldsmiths College, they've shared stages with the View and Babyshambles and they've been given their own club night, also called Down At The Funfair, at the trendy Shacklewell Arms in north-east London, a night, apparently, of "dark quirk-pop cabaret". The savage irony, of course, is that, were Costello working at the top of his form today, his most famous song would have been titled I Don't Want To Go To Dalston.

The buzz: "They write top-notch toe-tappers and for that I thank them" - Phill Jupitus, BBC6.

The truth: Full credit to them for attempting to bring last year's - century's - model back in vogue, but it's all a bit characterless.

Most likely to: Get girlfriends called Natasha when they look like Elsie.

Least likely to: Make a third album influenced by Abba and Kraftwerk.

What to buy: Big Impression/Heart Condition is released on April 28 by PopGrooves.

File next to: The Libertines, Any Trouble, Joe Jackson, The Jags.
Links: myspace.com/theidlelovers

[martinfoyle]

Film columnist and big Elvis fan Dave Poland neatly uses an Elvis quote in this great piece

http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/arch ... s_tha.html

The truth is, America likes where Hillary Clinton has been in recent weeks. A majority of people long ago became comfortable with the game of The Clintons playing the victim while wielding a knife. And as we learned years ago, it doesn’t even matter if the lie is exposed. We just change the conversation. It doesn't really matter whether there was a vast right wing conspiracy or whether he had sexual relations with that woman... what mattered was that it was a private matter. Because we wanted our hero to match our expectations, we changed our expectations. We are able to rationalize almost anything because the disappointment that comes with getting truly upset about it is just no fun at all. The deep, dark, truthful mirror is for others.

[verbal gymnastics]

It might have been better to quote that Hillary will one day will have to face the deep dark truthful mirror.

Good excuse to drop in an EC lyric though!

[Richard]

The movie Dan In Real Life with Steve Carell & Juliette Bonoche.

Elvis' Human Hands sung by Sondre Lerche.

The soundtrack is full of Sondre Lerche, accoring to IMDB the director Peter Hedges is a big fan of hers.

[And No Coffee Table]

The soundtrack is full of Sondre Lerche, accoring to IMDB the director Peter Hedges is a big fan of hers.

Sondre Lerche is a he.

[Richard]

Yikes - thanks for the correction. The voice even sounded male.

[johnfoyle]

The soundtrack is full of Sondre Lerche,

see

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2 ... 0%A6Lerche

[johnfoyle]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/foo ... 40,00.html

Restaurant review

Matthew Norman
Saturday March 15, 2008

Guardian
Tom's Place 6.75/10 (though that's only because I added 1.25 points in the hope of avoiding domestic ructions)

Telephone 020-7351 1806.

Address 1 Cale Street, London SW3.

Open All week, 11am-11pm (midnight Thur-Sat )

The tone for what would prove a lunch beset by marital skirmishing was set within seconds of being seated in Tom's Place, Tom Aikens' determinedly self-righteous new fish and chip joint, when I noticed a brand of fizzy drink on the beverage list. "God no, please," said my wife, "not your Elvis Costello drivel all over again."

Low-level telepathy is one of the joys of long and arduous wedlock, or so the people at Relate assure me, and here was a classic example. All I'd said was, "Oh, look, they've got R White's lemonade" and from that she foresaw the ensuing sequence of events in crystal clarity.

First, I would remind her that Costello's dad wrote and sang the Secret Lemonade Drinker song in that much-loved old telly commercial, with the pubescent Elvis on backing vocals. Next, I would point out, perhaps needlessly, that Tom's Place is in Chelsea. And then I'd start singing (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea.

"One note and I'm off," she continued, evidently recalling my last rendition in a restaurant, heavily in drink, with Elvis himself sitting at a nearby table - an incident frequently invoked at times of heightened tension in the 15 years since, although very seldom by me. Recalling that she had the house keys, I fell silent and reflected on a rhyming couplet.


"They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie," as Elvis sings it, "I don't want to go to Chelsea."

Tom's Place, it struck me as we took in a room that is half affectionate pastiche of a 50s seaside chippie and half American diner, is the exact inverse of that lyrical character. With the bottles of Sarson's on the table, tartare sauce served in tiny cardboard tubs and a cameo among the side orders for the "chip buttie", it makes a bold stab at playing Elsie. But the clientele and, especially, the prices, not to mention the sacrilegious dearth of pickled onions and cucumbers, suggest that even if she has swapped the string of pearls for something garish from Accessorize, it's Natasha tarting it up for a jape.

Not that Aikens isn't deadly serious himself. We know this because, while he tends in person to his Michelin-starred place down the road, he appears here on a loop on a flatscreen TV sandwiched between faux portholes, looking very grave as he chats with Quentin Knights, "Skipper, The Sea Spirit", and assorted sustainability experts about the need to protect stocks of threatened fish such as the haddock by cooking only with unthreatened species such as the pollack and the hideously ugly, big-headed gurnard.

Hats off to Aikens for embracing an important cause, for sure. But whether you really wish to watch him banging on about it while you eat, even with the sound thankfully muted, is another matter entirely. So is the question of whether you want to pay £12 for a fairly meagre portion of Marine Stewardship Council-certified cod. I know Elsie wouldn't. Judging by the clientele packing this jolly upstairs room (downstairs is the takeaway bar), Natasha certainly would.

So would my wife, who loved everything about the place, from the jolly decor to the splendour of the orange marmalade ice-cream and apple-y deliciousness of an English white called Bacchus Reserve. She raved about her pollack and fat chips, deep-fried in beef dripping as the Creator intended (Leviticus), justly lauding crunchiness of batter and freshness of flesh within. She sanctified her mushy peas, too.

Whether she would have been quite so enamoured had she been the one sat facing the aforementioned TV screen I cannot say, but although I liked my cod and especially my side order of onion rings (the frying here is superb), the aggregate of minor irritants was way too much. One was being told, by an incredibly endearing young chap from Turkmenistan whom we ended up wanting to adopt, that they had run out of skate. Another was the styling of that lustrous fish as "ray", Natasha presumably spending more time in the Dordogne than in Harry Ramsden's.

"Don't be so bloody silly," said my wife when I harrumphed. "Would you say Steve Irwin was killed by a stingskate? Have you heard of the surrealist photographer Man Skate?" It was, as I say, that kind of lunch.

Other Natashoid touches include the absence of brown sauce (why?) and substitution of Heinz ketchup with an effete, homemade tomato sauce (why?), irksomely right-on resinous trays rather than big, white plates, and the elegant mothers at the next table engaging in the traditional chippie debate that pits Eton against Winchester.

"This place is great, and you're just a crashing, inverted snob," my wife said, concluding our own brief debate about whether it is ever seemly to trendify, preachify and in any way poncify such an earthily sublime experience. The one thing we did agree about, though, is that, if you must, this is as technically accomplished a way of doing so as there probably is.

But when it comes to fish and chips, really, who on earth wants to go to Chelsea?

The bill

Pollack and chips £11.50

Cod and chips £12

Onion rings £2.50

Mushy peas £2.50

Green leaves £2.50

Two glasses Bacchus Reserve £11

Subtotal £42

Tip £6

Total £48

[Otis Westinghouse]

Brilliant! I have the paper, but have hardly looked at it and would have missed this. I love the image of him drunkenly singing Elvis in Elvis's vicinity. And the world's first ever, one can be sure, use of the adjective 'Natashoid'!

[johnfoyle]

http://www.nugget.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=953394

The North Bay Nugget, Canada
March 22 '08

In control; Songwriter sober, 'enjoying the journey'

Posted By George Varga
( extract)

Steve Poltz has discovered that sitting on top of the world - or at least feeling like you are - can sometimes be a simple matter of achieving a clear-eyed perspective . . . literally.

"It's been three years now since I stopped drinking, and it makes travelling so much easier," the world-hopping troubadour said recently from Sydney, the last stop on his Australian tour.

"Creatively, I'm more available for when the songs arrive and I need to write them; I can work harder. And I think (being sober) has made me a more focused and maybe more genteel person."

Make that a much more genteel person.

"I don't feel like my life is in danger now, like I used to think when I'd go out on a drinking binge with friends," the Canadian-born singer-songwriter said. "I don't have that worry anymore."

Poltz has learned some valuable lessons.

One of the most important is that genuine satisfaction and fulfilment come not from the glitz and glitter of rock 'n' roll stardom, or near-stardom, but from devoting yourself to a job you truly love. Perhaps the best way to illustrate how he came to this realization is to compare his homespun career as it is today with how he was faring at the end of the last decade.

It was the late spring of 1999, and Poltz had good reason to feel smug as he awaited the start of a sold-out concert in London by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. Having recently completed a tour as the opening act with his former protege, Jewel (in whose band he also performed at the time as a singer and guitarist), Poltz found himself seated in London next to one of his longtime heroes, Elvis Costello.

Costello, it transpired, liked Jewel, whose first Top-10 hit (1996's You Were Meant for Me, from her 11-million selling debut album) was co-written by Poltz. To add to Poltz's excitement, he and Costello both had songs featured on the just-released film soundtrack album to Notting Hill, the hit romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. So, his conversation with Costello was as a peer, not just a fan, and both heartily sang along during many of the vintage selections in Springsteen's concert.

It was a heady time for Poltz and, in some ways, a simpler time, as well.

"Back then, I didn't even have an e-mail address!" he recalled with a laugh.

[legman open to offers]

When I was Cruel was playing in whilst I was mattress shopping in Mattress Firm. Wierd.

By the way, mattress shopping is one of the top beatings ever to endure.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news ... ac7b92a4e2

Malcolm Parry, Vancouver Sun
Saturday, March 29, 2008

MAYBE SHE'LL BE THERE: Stellar jazzer Diana Krall was in Barbara-Jo McIntosh's Second Avenue Books To Cooks store this week. The event was a tribute for restaurateur John Bishop, whose cookbook Fresh was rated 2006's best by McIntosh's customers.

It's been 15 months since Krall stopped eating for three -- herself and twin sons Dexter and Frank. But she and singer-husband Elvis Costello still duck into Bishop's Fourth-off-Yew eatery "whenever we want a private dinner together." For him, that's usually scallops or sable fish. Krall favours "lamb, spot prawns, oyster stew, scallops -- and the bread."

http://www.bishopsonline.com/

[johnfoyle]

Very indirect Elvis ; 'Less Than Zero' related any -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 649197.ece

The Times
March 31, 2008

Max Mosley faces calls to quit as Formula One chief after ‘Nazi’ orgy

(extract)

Max Mosley, one of the most powerful men in world sport, was under pressure to resign as boss of Formula One’s governing body last night after he was exposed enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.

The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

[scielle]

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/s ... 000&k=1962

"Av-ril! Av-ril!... Screeeeaaam!" If the early-career Elvis Costello tracks blaring over the PA had anyone thinking they were at another rock reunion concert, the waving glo-sticks and ear-splitting shreeks that greeted the pre-show blackout indicated otherwise.

[And No Coffee Table]

An unexpected sighting on Google Maps!

That theater has been demolished since Google's photos were taken.

[verbal gymnastics]

Your post reminded me that I recently walked past what was the Royalty Theatre in London where Elvis spent 6 nights in November in 1986. It is now called The Peacock Theatre.

[scielle]

Red Shoes, on As It Happens (CBC Radio), following a story on papal footwear -

"[Pope Benedict's] custom-designed, blood-red shiny loafers simply ooze Italian moda."

[verbal gymnastics]

A couple of weeks ago the excellent film Dodgeball was on Channel 4. The advert for it played Pump It Up.

At the time I thought I'd post this invaluable piece of information but I never got round to doing it. I hope your lives are complete now

[spooky girlfriend]

A couple of weeks ago the excellent film Dodgeball was on Channel 4.

It really is an excellent film, isn't it?

I hope your lives are complete now

Absolutely, verbal. And it's all because of you.

[jmm]

Sitting in the NO airport waiting to board the same flight back to Newark - he's accepting lots of compliments on the great show with Allen last night, including ours!!

[verbal gymnastics]

How cool is that?!