Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Pretty self-explanatory
User avatar
wordnat
Posts: 175
Joined: Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:52 pm
Location: Boise, Idaho

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by wordnat »

I couldn't disagree more with that. I think Dylan's entire career has been a reaction to public perception of him and his work. A skinny Jewish kid named Rob Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota, reinvents himself as a New York folk singer with a balderdash biography about him being a kid who ran away to join the circus. From then on, any time he feels the public at large is starting to develop some sense of who 'Bob Dylan' is, he does a 180 on then. From protest singer to psychedelic folk artist to electric blues artist to country singer to Born again Christian to his modern incarnation as the contemporary successor to his blues heroes. Every so often he'll do something like the Victoria's Secret commercial or a Christmas record to remind people they really don't know what he's going to do next.
Dylan can get away with it and never have to explain himself, because the mystique has always been a part of what made Dylan Dylan. EC's never built his image on being an unknowable mysterious genius.


You’ve half-convinced me, but I think we're talking about two different Dylans (and let's just leave your surname out of this -- I'm confused enough already).

The young Dylan definitely cared about his career, but that kid's been gone since "John Wesley Harding" or so. True, he remains a master manipulator to this day, but that doesn't mean he actually cares about his work's reception this late in the game. He's an "unknowable mysterious genius" as you say, and he's completely above the showbiz fray....
alexv
Posts: 772
Joined: Tue Dec 16, 2003 2:32 pm
Location: USA

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by alexv »

I would say it differently, Jeremy:

Dylan can get away with it and never has to explain himself, not because he has a mystique that has always been a part of what made Dylan Dylan. Bobby Z, unlike the EC we all love, is an unknowable mysterious genius, mistique or no mistique. You can call him anything you like, and it would probably fit, positive or negative, but he's on a whole other level from EC or all the others for that matter, IMO. EC's relationships with record labels just can't compare with Dylan's. As others have noted Dylan's back cataloque is priceless. Just think of the covers!! He's a prestige act for any label, and a moneymaker. EC qualifies as a prestige act, on a lower level, but without the sales or the covers.
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Alex, you hit it head on- that Dylan catalog is golden and has been so from day one- just witness last year's "The Witmark Demos"- his material has been covered from day one and continues to be consistently covered with success for many others. I am hard pressed to come up with any consistent mining of EC's catalog by other artists; he will never match Dylan's level. It just will not happen no matter how much he wills it. No one will carry a prestige act who doesn't sell or provide a continuous source for profitable covers. He seriously needs to look long and hard at the Radiohead model.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
Poor Deportee
Posts: 671
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:30 pm
Location: Chocolate Town

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by Poor Deportee »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote:Alex, you hit it head on- that Dylan catalog is golden and has been so from day one- just witness last year's "The Witmark Demos"- his material has been covered from day one and continues to be consistently covered with success for many others. I am hard pressed to come up with any consistent mining of EC's catalog by other artists; he will never match Dylan's level. It just will not happen no matter how much he wills it. No one will carry a prestige act who doesn't sell or provide a continuous source for profitable covers. He seriously needs to look long and hard at the Radiohead model.
Just to pipe in here...I would definitely agree that Dylan is in a class by himself, both artistically, and commercially as far as 'prestige' acts go. His achievement towers, IMHO, over that of his contemporaries, most of whose work would not even have been possible in anything like its existing form without the synthesis he invented; and, from the postwar era, only The Beatles' music has a comparable chance of enduring for indefinite future generations. Lord knows, I think highly of EC, but I don't think legacy is in that league. If EC has a shot at "lasting" it will likely take the form of one or two songs that carry on and become standards long after his name has been mostly forgotten ('Almost Blue' being the leading contender here); he is unlikely to (say) be studied in universities in 200 years' time - one possible destiny for Bob Dylan, to enter the canon of official western culture - or become a consistently rediscovered and absolutely seminal figure like Robert Johnson - the other likely fate for Mr. Zimmerman. But I've hijacked the thread into something else (EC's likely artistic legacy) so it's time for me to take a powder. :mrgreen:
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
jardine
Posts: 801
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2010 12:59 pm

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by jardine »

interesting wee bit from the tbone thread re: retirement, etc.


V: You're been tremendously prolific the past year. Why?

B: The (music industry) seemed to be collapsing to the degree that I thought I just better become my own industry.


so, e.c., there's a label and a direction and some hope for ya!!
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD- hell he is already in the curriculum witness Christopher Ricks's regular and annual public lectures on him at Boston University. You know he has passed into academia when he is regularly referenced-witness his citing as example for instance in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. But then Pinker, as Otis reminded me a while back, also cites EC as a favorite, so what do I know.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
when i was cruel
Posts: 348
Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 8:47 pm

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by when i was cruel »

I would just like to post these real quick

Allmusic 4.5/5
Slant Magazine 4/5
Popmatters 8/10
Consequence of Sound 3.5/5
The A.V Club B+
Rolling Stone 3.5/5
Spin 7/10
TheMusicEdition 9/10

Considering that most of these are good I think Elvis took it toooooo harshly
It's not the days when you leave me, but all I fear are the nights.
User avatar
Jack of All Parades
Posts: 5716
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:31 am
Location: Where I wish to be

Re: Elvis Costello retires from making albums....

Post by Jack of All Parades »

While scrolling through past threads back on page 45 came across this trenchant post by Alexv. It speaks directly to this latest brouhaha and features his usual telling wit combined with great common sense. We need to stop moaning and get a grip as Alex pointed out back some five years ago. It is worth repeating here:

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... f=2&t=4947


"Where do I begin!! The inevitable combination of a lazy, stupid reporter and our bullshit-spouting hero is a recipe for recycled bull-shit.

"Iggy Pop, the punk movement's revered figurehead, a 60-year-old intellectual"---Iggy is an intellectual? Interesting. Every time I've seen him, he's seemed focussed solely on the state of his impressive abs.

"A decade ago, he seriously considered giving up music when one of his finest albums of impeccably crafted pop songs sank somewhere between a disinterested record company and an oblivious public. Its title was prophetic: All This Useless Beauty. "---EC giving up music is like me giving up breathing: will only happen when I die. The fact that he may have said that, means nada. I think he said he'd stop recording, in any case. Did our intrepid reporter do any digging to see if EC took any steps towards fulfilling his threat? Of course not, that would be professional and not shilling.

"When explosive singles such as Watching the Detectives, Pump It Up and (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea cast him as the fresh prince of rock vitriol, he already had an escape clause."--His escape clause was the Ray Charles incident. He's been trying for a hit single ever since then, in various interesting ways of course. I recall an interview with Musician back in 82 where he raced across a London street, risking vehicular homicide, to get a copy of a music mag and see how Everyday was doing in the Charts.

"Shortly afterwards he called a moratorium on interviews, the better to short-circuit the media cult that had presumed to write his life script. And so began a vicious relationship with the music-media establishment, a stubborn face-off between artist and industry"--Before Get Happy the act was angry EC; after the Ray Charles incident, it was the "you are out to get me EC"; the current EC will talk to anyone who calls, faxes, e-mails or bumps into him at Elton's house. Does this behavior translate into a "vicious relationship with the music-media establishment"? Don't think so.

"But a larger reason that he finds himself an eccentric aberration rather than a leading light in pop culture is his breathtaking disregard for its values: lowest common denominator appeal and consequent enormous commercial reward."-- The reason he's where he's at, despite his herculean efforts at pop success, is that he is a 50 yearl old playing pop music, where hits are for kiddies, and he's never been more than a highly respected, and successful, cult act. We like him. The pop loving kiddies don't: they rarely go gaga for balding, middle age, singers with a soft middle, no matter how good his stuff is (and it has been good).

"Today, Elvis Costello lives in New York City with his new wife, jazz artist Diana Krall, as far as he can reasonably get from the pop-obsessed culture that first lauded and then all but rejected him."--Yes, hanging out with Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mike Myers is as far from the "pop-obsessed culture" as you can get.

"You know what? I don't like English people that much!"--Translation: as soon as they buy my records again, I will love them. Until then, Morrissey can have their Idol loving selves."
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
Post Reply