"Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" docu.

Pretty self-explanatory
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by MistakenForLilies »

This looks stellar!
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by Fishfinger king »

Sky+ already set for the 90 minute version!
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03gq719#features



Elvis Costello: why are there 2 versions of the documentary, a 60 min and a 90 min?

Jan Younghusband, Head of Commissioning, Music and Events TV says:


"We were delighted when Mark Kidel approached us with the news that Elvis Costello had agreed to a new interview as the foundation of a 60 minute documentary about his life and work. BBC Four is very much the musician’s channel, with Friday nights now a major music destination for our TV audiences. In recent years we have been concentrating on putting the musicians centre screen, presenting programmes, and speaking about music making, as this gives the perspective from the engine room, a truly authentic insight. We were delighted to commission the 60 minute programme. As things went along it became clear that there was potential for a longer version of the film. As we had already set up the Friday night on BBC Four, with other great moments from the Elvis Costello archive, and we didn’t want to break this up, we decided to show the longer version of the new documentary on Saturday night as well. We hope our audiences will enjoy both the Elvis Costello night on BBC Four on Friday and then come back to watch the longer version of the documentary on Saturday night. Both versions of the film will be on the BBC iplayer. Many thanks to Elvis Costello, and I hope you will enjoy both documentaries and the night."


The same link has a listing of the 34 songs used/extracted in the documentary.


Steve Nieve Alison

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Pump It Up

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Oliver’'s Army

Elvis Costello and Brodsky Quartet Pills and Soap

Elvis Costello and The Sugarcanes The Delivery Man

Elvis Costello and John Harle When That I Was And A Little Tiny Boy

Joe Loss & His Orchestra You're The Cream In My Coffee

Ross MacManus and Joe Loss & His Orchestra If I Had A Hammer

Joni Mitchell, Russ Kunkel, Pete Kleinow and James Taylor California

Elvis Costello Poison Moon

Elvis Costello and Clover Less Than Zero

Elvis Costello Alison

Elvis Costello & The Attractions This Year's Girl

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Radio Radio

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Pump It Up

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Lipstick Vogue

Elvis Costello & The Attractions High Fidelity

Elvis Costello & The Attractions I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Why Don't You Love Me

Elvis Costello & The Attractions Sweet Dreams

Elvis Costello and Robert Wyatt Shipbuilding

Declan Patrick MacManus and Paul McCartney Twenty Five Fingers

Declan Patrick MacManus and Paul McCartney The Lovers That Never Were

Declan Patrick MacManus and Paul McCartney So Like Candy


Elvis Costello Brilliant Mistake

Elvis Costello Poisoned Rose

Elvis Costello and Brodsky Quartet The Birds Will Be Singing

Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve, Davey Faragher, Pete Thomas, Brian "Breeze" Cayolle, Amadee Castenell, Joe Smith, Sam Williams and Allen Toussaint The River In Reverse

Elvis Costello, Steve Nieve, Davey Faragher, Pete Thomas, Joe Smith, Sam Williams and Allen Toussaint Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further

Elvis Costello Still

Elton John, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall Makin' Whoopee

Elvis Costello Quiet About It

Elvis Costello Mystery Dance

Elvis Costello and The Sugarcanes Cinco Minutos Con Vos
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by sweetest punch »

Mark Kidel writes in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-ki ... 11513.html

Elvis Costello: Making the First-Ever Documentary Portrait

It's exciting that, after three years of hard work on the first documentary portrait of Elvis Costello, it will premiere on the BBC next week. Called Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance, it was commissioned by BBC Four who are broadcasting both the feature-length version and the 60 min cut.

My story with Elvis goes back a lot further though. Back in 1977, I managed to get a gig as the first rock critic of the New Statesman: writing about popular music was starting to establish itself as a serious business, in the trail of the American stars Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs. The 'straight' press could see that even if Dylan didn't exactly equal Keats, running stories about rock music could win over younger readers.

It was on my watch at the venerable NS that a new single release came my way: a friend worked at Stiff Records, the legendary maverick label which brought us The Damned, Wreckless Eric and Ian Dury. It was called Less Than Zero and was written and performed by an unknown with the unlikely name of Elvis Costello. That someone should have the chutzpah to steal the name of the King of rock'n'roll seemed preposterous: Elvis Presley was still alive at the time. This, I told myself, had better be good! And it was just that: I couldn't quite believe what I heard. It was as if this new artist were channelling the whole history of popular music, without weighing himself down with knowing ironies and references. The new Elvis sang with a mixture of heart-breaking vulnerability and uncanny self-confidence, qualities that have stayed with him ever since.

Although this wasn't quite the moment yet when pop could have been said to eat itself, this was the time when rock music lost is innocence and musicians became hyper-aware of its history. Punk smashed into most traditions, self-consciously reaching back to a freshness that had probably never existed. Although he surfed the high energy wave of punk, Elvis Costello's approach was more subtle: there was the neo-Buddy Holly look, the geekiness of the black-rimmed glasses undermined by the skin-tight jeans and Dr. Marten boots. But most of all, a deep love and knowledge of a very wide range of music: from the start, the boundaries between mainstream pop, rock, Southern soul, country and jazz were blurred. What is extraordinary about Costello is that he seems to have listened to everything: styles, riffs and rhythms have entered into his bloodstream, and provide the rich ground from which he endlessly creates: over thirty albums, which evoke the spirit of so many different genres and artists, from Schubert Lieder to Abba, from British folk to the Beatles and from experimental jazz to New Orleans R & B.

With such a rich and varied story, even the feature-length version omits Elvis' collaborations with Chet Baker and Roy Orbison, to name just a couple of major artists who have gladly worked with him. This relentless zest for collaboration - the latest with The Roots, a seemingly unlikely choice which turned out very well - mystifies those who would like to set an artist firmly into a predictable category and yet delights those who share his broad-ranging tastes and enjoyment of experimentation. One of the reasons we clicked - this time around, for we had met back in 1977, when I interviewed him for a profile in the Observer - was that we both listened to music very widely: never indiscriminately but not just within one or two genres. We both go to the opera, but also love the less well-known stars of Southern soul - singers like James Carr or O.V. Wright. We are moved by Beethoven's late quartets but we also groove to the subtle drumming of Roy Haynes, one of the last survivors of the Charlie Parker era.

Universal Music, Elvis's record company, flew me over to Vancouver to have breakfast with him. His manager warned me that Costello had no interest whatsoever in doing a documentary. I'm fairly used to the business of persuading recalcitrant subjects for the films that I make - I have waited up to ten years with some. I travelled to Vancouver with two DVDs of films I had made: the first-ever and only portrait of the great classical pianist Alfred Brendel and a film about the brilliant maverick Robert Wyatt. You couldn't imagine two more different artists and yet, I knew that Elvis shared my enthusiasm for both. He later told me that he sat down with his wife Diana Krall, and that they enjoyed both films. This was one of the factors, I am sure which led him to embark on the documentary.

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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by sulky lad »

Especially looking forward to the Sugarcanes version of "Cinqo Minutos " :roll:
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

I can't bloody wait for this. I'm out Friday, but as luck would have it, a gig I was due to play on Sat has been cancelled - hooray! I have nothing more hi-tech than a VHS (yes!) to record it with, but I guess I will, so it can accompany the Bowie: Five Years and the Ron S one from the same wonderful channel. Hope it appears on YouTube too, and will probably watch it on iPlayer a couple of times.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by cwr »

I tweeted this to Mark Kidel:
@Rivers47 Any idea when fans in the US will get a chance to see "Mystery Dance"? Any chance of a theatrical screening in NYC?
His response:
@connorratliff BBC Worldwide selling to TV. There may be one-off screenings around the USA. Organise one!
I wonder if there's a way to get someplace to arrange for an NYC screening of the doc?
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/mystery-d ... s-costello

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Mystery Dance: On filming Elvis Costello

Seeking the 'Rosebud' in the Elvis Costello story
by Mark Kidel


Wednesday, 06 November 2013


Making a film about an artist with the phenomenal range and creative effervescence of someone like Elvis Costello was never going to be easy. There have been over 30 albums since he started out in 1977, hundreds of songs, many of which are as brilliant as anything written in the last 50 years, and a series of collaborations with artists including Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Bill Frisell, Chet Baker, the Brodsky Quartet, Emmylou Harris, T-Bone Burnett and many others.

Portraits of great artists and musicians inevitably throw up a similar creative conundrum: I encountered it with Ravi Shankar, Alfred Brendel, Robert Wyatt, John Adams — to name but four. As a director, you have to find a way to tell what can be a complex and wide-ranging story which has taken place over a period of decades. You have to distil the complexities of real life into a coherent dramatic arc. There are key moments, particularly significant relationships or decisive turning-points, all of which illuminate a person’s biography. And there are also abiding interests or passions, the things that reveal a kind of logic beneath the chaos of a life lived to the hilt.

His natural rebelliousness was channelled politically - rather than through family dynamics

For me, with Elvis, the relationship with his father proved to be the key to telling his story, and not just because of the uncanny physical likeness and body language, or Ross McManus’s evolution from bebop pioneer in the Liverpool of the 1940s to being a singer with Britain’s most popular dance band. It’s often said that, as we grow older, we subtly grow into the parents we tried so hard to distance ourselves from. Elvis’s dad was so cool that there was never any need for his son to rebel and, although he originally set out to be a songwriter, he was from the start drawn to the business of being an entertainer: not surprising, as he would regularly watch his dad rehearsing at the Hammersmith Palais and other venues. His natural rebelliousness was channelled politically - rather than through family dynamics - and expressed as a fierce antagonism towards all institutions and tyrannies, a horror of hypocrisy and a deeply felt anger about injustice.

Elvis talks, in the film, about how his father passed on stage clothes and shoes to him when he was a teenager, as if the young Declan were indeed stepping into his dad’s glamorous persona. He admits as well that jackets or suits have been, with very few exceptions, central to his look, as well as a kind of comfort. There has been a sense in which Declan has modelled himself on his dad, the man who was so adept at covering the whole range of pop and rock hits of the Sixties. Elvis would continue to relish the repertoire of classic hits, and still dips into it enthusiastically whenever he is on stage.


Ross McManus (pictured above with bandleader Joe Loss and his son Declan a.k.a. Elvis) passed away in the early months of our work on the film, and I was concerned that Elvis, at this moment of grief, might decide he wasn’t comfortable with being involved in a film that examined his life. To my relief, the opposite happened and he plunged into photo albums and scrapbooks, more than happy to share these with the camera. He was clearly very proud of his father – and had obviously always been so. But he was also aware that Ross had given up his true love – bebop – because it didn’t earn him a living. With a child to support he needed to do something more lucrative. His talents as a vocalist and a mimic served him well as one of the featured vocalists of the Joe Loss Orchestra. And while Elvis clearly respects his father’s decision to take the commercial route rather than stick with jazz, this is a dilemma that has haunted his own life. If anything, there has been a refusal on Elvis’s part to slavishly follow the lure of the dollar. He has had hits, and he has at times gone for hit-making material, but he has also repeatedly turned his back on the formulaic and taken creative risks.

His dad, of course, is only one dimension of Elvis’s sense of belonging to a family that reaches back into his Irish ancestry. When I made films about music in Mali, I was struck by the importance of musical dynasties: you are born a griot and you must honour those who have come before you. In the feature-length version of the film this Saturday (BBC Four, 11.45pm), there is a sequence in which Elvis talks with obvious empathy about his paternal and maternal grandfathers, the former a trumpeter in the army who later played on the cruise ships and came back from New York laden with smart suits. The latter was a very young volunteer in the First World War: wounded and captured, and - as with so many of his contemporaries who were lucky to survive - profoundly traumatised by the things he had seen, but unable to talk about them.

There is a danger, of course, in reducing someone’s life to a simple story. With Elvis, I hope I have evoked the connection with his father in a way that viewers might be able to attach as much or as little importance to the clues that are scattered through the length of the film as they wish. The important thing, I feel, with a documentary of this kind is always to leave things open enough for each person who watches to take away the story that perhaps resonates with their own.

Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance will be broadcast on BBC Four on Friday 8 November at 9pm, and the feature-length version on Saturday 9 November, 11.45pm. They will also be available to view on BBC iPlayer for seven days after transmission
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03gq71 ... /interview

Interview with Director Mark Kidel on making the documentary


Mark Kidel is a documentary filmmaker and writer who lives in Bristol, England. His award-winning films include portraits of Boy George, Ravi Shankar, Rod Stewart, Bill Viola, Iannis Xenakis, pianists Alfred Brendel and Leon Fleisher, Derek Jarman, Balthus, Tricky, Robert Wyatt and American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars. A pioneer of the "rockumentary", Kidel was also the first rock critic of the New Statesman and contributed pieces on rock, soul, and world music, to The Observer, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian.

When did you first come across Elvis?


Back in 1977, I was the first person to write a regular rock column for the New Statesman. A friend in the music business, Paul Conroy, who was then working as general administrator with the maverick label Stiff Records - and went on to sign the Spice Girls to EMI - sent me the first single by an unknown with the unlikely name of “Elvis Costello”. You have to remember that the “Pelvis” from Memphis was still alive and there was something almost sacrilegious about adopting his name. The alias Declan McManus had chosen reflected a remarkable self-confidence, something which Elvis Costello has displayed throughout his life.

What was the single?


It was “Less Than Zero” a strange song with references to the fascist leader Oswald Mosley. What struck me most was the mixture of strength and vulnerability in the voice, and the incredible originality, both in terms of melody and in terms of lyrics. This was clearly someone to watch out for and I devoted the whole of my column to this new voice. We then met, as I’d proposed a profile to the Observer Colour Supplement. I went to his second gig ever with the Attractions – the supercharged band that was put together to take his first album out on the road, an album that’d been recorded with the American country rockers Clover - at the Woods Centre in Plymouth, which was almost empty; they gave a blistering performance. Punk was around and Elvis had something of that ‘taking-no-prisoners’ energy, but it was also as if he were deftly channeling decades of pop and rock history, a kind of deranged yet knowing Buddy Holly. He was mesmerizing. Not a great guitarist, but the Attractions - tight as could be - made up for that.

What’s so special about Elvis Costello?


Well, first of all I think that, as a songwriter, he’s in a class with Paul Simon, Lennon-McCartney, and Bob Dylan. He’s not just a great popular musician, in tune with his times, but he has an uncanny way with words. He may be more of a poet than any of them – except perhaps Dylan – as many of his lyrics are so allusive as to be impenetrable. They are obscure and yet they grab your attention, make you think. He loves to play with clichés, draw out hidden meanings, and he does it with acerbic wit. He’s rarely easy listening and that may be one of the reasons, many people find him ‘difficult’. He’s also someone who has refused to be pinned down by style, and he has a phenomenal knowledge of music – rock, American musicals, jazz, soul, country, folk – I’m always astounded by what he has listened. Of course that all started with his dad doing covers of hits for the Joe Loss Orchestra, as Elvis recalls in the documentary: his dad would bring back white label singles to learn new songs by the Beatles, Trini Lopez or the Stones, and young Declan would get to hear them all. Many people find his cleverness off-putting. He is an encyclopedia and not just of the completist or trainspotting variety. He loves music. He is the ultimate fan!

How did the film come about?

Once again, my old friend Paul Conroy was involved: he now puts together box sets for Universal, Elvis’s label, and he suggested that I might do a film with Elvis. It didn’t look good and his manager told me that Elvis had no interest whatsoever in doing a documentary. Even so, Universal flew me to Vancouver, where Elvis was then living, and we had breakfast together – mad, but true. I imagined we’d spend an hour or together, but the meal lasted over three hours. We talked about music – what else? It helped that I’m, along with many of my generation, someone who listens to opera as well as gospel and blues, Charlie Parker and bebop as well as Tamla Motown. So we meandered around, discussing the finer points of the jazz drumming of Max Roach and Roy Haynes, the underrated qualities of southern soul singers James Carr and O.V Wright, and the best interpretations of Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise”. What won him over in the end, was that he was intrigued, I think, by the two films I gave him as calling cards – portraits of the classical piano giant Alfred Brendel and the rock maverick Robert Wyatt. He and Diana Krall (his wife) watched and liked them very much. Alfred is in the new documentary – an extract of an encore I shot at his very last British recital in Dorset – as is Robert, singing his version of Elvis’s great political anthem “Shipbuilding”.

What was Elvis Costello like to work with?



He was amazingly generous. At the start, we had to postpone filming as his dad was very ill in hospital. I feared the whole thing might collapse. His father died not long after, and I expected Elvis would naturally withdraw from public engagements, and certainly not want to expose himself to documentary cameras. I don’t think one can underestimate the importance of his father on Elvis and the film hopefully makes this very clear – that closeness actually just got more intense. Elvis was sifting through family scrapbooks, and coming up with loads of amazing stuff that he wanted to share in the film. He was also thinking hard about how much his father’s experience had shaped him: not least the fact that his dad had given up the music he loved – bebop – because it didn’t pay the bills, he now had a child (Elvis), and thrown himself into more lucrative singing with a dance band. You can see that mirrored in Elvis’s own refusal to be commercial – to repeat himself if an album is a hit and sells well. He has tended to do the opposite, confounding his fans with sharp turns in his career. I find that pretty impressive. Others think he’s just inconsistent and tries his hand at too many different things.

What were some of the great moments in the filming?



Making a film about someone like Elvis Costello is a real treat. I just watched the film I made ten or so years ago about Ravi Shankar and I realize that I am amazingly privileged to be able to make these films about such incredible creative people. Elvis is the same – there is no one quite like him, in terms of range – you know stuff with a string quartet, or co-writing with Burt Bacharach. So although the mechanics of making these films are never easy-going, the reward lies in working with great people and great music. I never thought I’d stand in Paul McCartney’s studio, listening with him to demos he’d written and recorded with Elvis several decades ago. We’d just filmed the interview, and Paul suggested I might like to use some of the demos in the film: none of them had ever been released or heard in public, just rough versions with vocals and guitars and a bit of piano, recorded the very day they were written. So he got one of his engineers to pull the files out, and there we were, listening to the stuff, both of us finding the energy and rhythm of the songs irresistible, smiling away and moving to the music side-by-side. He was visibly moved – there’s something about the rawness of those recordings that you rarely get with stuff recorded more seriously.

It was also great to meet T-Bone Burnett, someone I had admired from afar, and whose production work, notably for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, I had really liked. He spoke so eloquently about his work with Elvis – with a marvelous sense of story-telling and timing. And all of that in Nashville, that was my first visit to the country capital: a much smaller place than I had imagined, where all the music people know each other, and you can sense that this has something to do with the lasting quality of the music that is made there.

And last but not least, the pleasure of meeting Allen Toussaint, with whom Elvis has worked several times. One of my heroes too – all those great Lee Dorsey hits in the sixties and much more. What a gentle guy! There’s a nobility in the way he talks about music, and a generosity when he speaks of Elvis that is very rare. We were only with him for an hour or so, but it is not a time I would easily forget. All those qualities are there, somehow, in his music. And that Elvis should want so much to work with him, and promote his music all over the world, says a lot about Costello’s own generosity, and his love of music.


as I’d proposed a profile to the Observer Colour Supplement.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... r_25,_1977
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by buzz »

Don't know if this is publicity for documentary but it seems the BBC have woken up to Elvis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazin ... r-24848550
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/posts/Elv ... tery-Dance

Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance

Mark Kidel Director


Thursday 7 November 2013


Making films about major artists and musicians is all about access: not just having enough quality time with them but also a matter of them being prepared to open up the family album, search the attic or spend a little time looking through forgotten boxes of memorabilia.

Elvis Costello was particularly keen to help in the BBC Four documentary I directed, Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance.


His father Ross McManus sadly passed away during the time we were preparing the production and this led to him discovering a great deal of material he hadn’t seen before.

Not least some very evocative photographs of his dad playing the trumpet in bebop jazz groups that he led in Liverpool and Birkenhead in the late 1940s and early 50s, as well as scrapbooks full of gig flyers and programme notes that Elvis was happy to share with us.

Elvis had also recently found a show-stopping piece of film of his father with the Joe Loss Orchestra, the leading British dance band of the 1950s and 60s.

Elvis first showed it to me in a New York restaurant. I had seen footage of Ross on YouTube, in black and white, but this was in screaming colour: Elvis’s dad was dancing away to a cover of the early 60s hit If Had A Hammer.


Moments like that are unforgettable – when you come across a piece of archive that you know is going to provide a film with one of its highs.

Later, Elvis' archivist, who looks after the Elvis archive and official website, produced some footage of Elvis and the Attractions on tour in 1978.

Four young musicians clearly on the rampage, taunting the audience in classic punk fashion and driven by the energy of a band who know they are making it big in the USA.

Material like this tells a story in a way that words cannot, and we were lucky that it came our way.

Telling the story of a person’s life requires the best archive possible – and with Elvis Costello, we were more than well served.

Not least as he engaged so unreservedly with making the best documentary possible.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

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Irish Independent
- clash of the Elvis' !
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.timeout.com/london/tv-review ... tery-dance


Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance
Fri Nov 8, 9-10pm, BBC4

By Gabriel Tate

Fri Nov 1 2013
Time Out Ratings
4/5


‘The most brilliant British songwriter of his generation’? Actually, ‘Mystery Dance’ is by no means as uncritical of its subject as that introduction – which would surely have Costello himself scoffing – would suggest. Mark Kidel’s film offers a whistlestop tour of an eclectic life and career, taking in left-wing politics, drug- and alcohol-fuelled faux pas and serial musical reinventions with everyone from Allen Toussaint to the Brodsky Quartet. Plus, of course, a handful of angrily magnificent songs, the finest of which – ‘Shipbuilding’ – is given due prominence.

The outtakes and rare footage that tend to form the backbone of such profiles include a fine duet with Paul McCartney in full ‘Oh, Darling!’ mode and some enjoyable confrontational concert film, while Costello himself is in garrulous, self-mocking form. Elvis fans will be well pleased – and may even want to hold off until tomorrow, when an extended version featuring more of the man’s live performances, recording minutiae, family background and later years will air on BBC4 at 11.45pm.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by sulky lad »

I enjoyed this right up to the point when the credits rolled and started with a list of The Imposters followed by "other musicians " and then listed first The Brodsky Quartet and then Bruce Thomas :shock: - not even a mention of the name Attractions.
Well, I'm really p***ed with that to be honest. Elvis mentions that there's little point in writing an autobiography at one point because no-one will believe him - and then he allows the producers (or indeed decides himself) to re-write history by omitting the most powerful backing band which at least gave him a platform which then allowed him to build on his stupendous talent.
We all know Bruce wrecked the second coming by falling out with Elvis (though no-one except maybe Steve and Pete would know the real truth behind that as well) and that the two of them could never work together again but that final credit listing made my blood boil. I'm not denigrating The Imposters, heaven knows I've followed them around enough to prove how much i love their performance and ensemble playing, I just wish there didn't seem to be the need to twist the knife a bit further into the corpse of The Attractions ! :evil:
Last edited by sulky lad on Fri Nov 08, 2013 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

A well made introduction to Elvis would be the best thing to be said about the 60 minute show just broadcast. A lot of themes are covered but , literally, fade away way too quickly. It really would be best to wait to see the 90 minute version before commenting in detail. It'll be interesting to see if elements of Elvis personal life, post childhood, are explored in more detail. Given that his three relationships informed and inspired so much of his work it 's staggering to see that not once do the names 'Mary Burgoyne' and 'Cait O'Riordan' appear in the 60 minute show. The brief use of a photograph of Ms Burgoyne indicates that maybe she'll feature more in the longer version. Similarly his fourteen years living in Dublin are not refer to at all. Surely the theme of why Elvis has chosen to live in exile from his native country has to be explored.


Mark Kidel
has written -

With Elvis, I hope I have evoked the connection with his father in a way that viewers might be able to attach as much or as little importance to the clues that are scattered through the length of the film as they wish. The important thing, I feel, with a documentary of this kind is always to leave things open enough for each person who watches to take away the story that perhaps resonates with their own.


That theme is indeed evoked, most poignantly in Elvis's explanation of how it factored into his version of Jesse Winchester's Quiet About It . It is ,of course, ironic that the Elvis' recording of it is so obscure.

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

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... iscostellh


So, in short, wait for the longer version of this show!
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... um=twitter



Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance, BBC Four, review

Mark Kidel’s film was a deftly constructed trip through a restless, shape-shifting career, says Gerard O'Donovan


By Gerard O’Donovan

10:05PM GMT 08 Nov 2013

There was a moment in Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance when the man born Declan MacManus recalled how, starting out in the Seventies, choosing the name Elvis as part of his musical persona was “almost a heresy”. It chimed exactly with my own experience of seeing him for the first time back then when even with the iconoclasm of punk raging all around the chutzpah of claiming The King’s name seemed an extraordinarily ambitious statement of intent (not least for a spotty youth in a bad suit and geeky Joe 90 specs). And yet this Elvis lived up to his own billing, crafting some of the most memorable songs of the late Seventies and Eighties, and gaining a reputation as a great songwriter, collaborator and musical reinventor of both himself and other people’s music.

Mark Kidel’s film was a deftly constructed trip through a restless, shape-shifting career, allowing Costello to revisit significant moments of his past. But it couldn’t be called a full biography as it only ever touched on the personal in order to shed light on the musical journey. Even so, it was particularly good at bringing out the extent to which Costello was drenched in music from birth, and the enormous influence his musician father Ross (a stalwart of the Joe Loss Orchestra) had not only on his tastes but also his rebellious determination not to sing “other people’s songs” but to write and perform his own.

Captured brilliantly was the intensity and aggression of Costello’s early years with the Attractions (though not so well the vulnerable romantic who always peered out from underneath) and his increasing disillusionment with fame, the rock’n’roll lifestyle and the industry's demands for hit after hit. Always you sensed the shadow of young Declan’s father behind Costello’s restlessness, the yearning to move on and stretch the boundaries of his talent - whether by appropriating country, jazz or classical forms, or collaborating with the likes of Paul McCartney, T-Bone Burnett, Allen Toussaint and the Brodsky Quartet.

There were some impressive and incisive contributions, from McCartney and Burnett to early collaborators like Nick Lowe and Steve Nieve. But we rarely got a sense of what else might have been at work in Costello’s life other than this almost coldly relentless quest for musical reinvention. Few sources were offered for the other essential part of his creative gift, the deep emotion of so many of his lyrics. In the end we left Costello looking like at man who, at 59, is more at peace than ever with himself and his achievements, yet still something of an enigma. Perhaps the extended, 90-minute version of Kidel’s film, which BBC Four airs on Saturday November 9 at 11.45pm, will shed further light for those of us curious enough to invest the extra half hour.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by scielle »

For those outside of the UK - you can watch it on BBC iPlayer using Hotspot Shield Elite and selecting "UK" as your VPN location. Worked for me!
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

The 90 version is much more comprehensive & satisfying. I've pages of notes which I 'll comment from later once I've had some sleep - except to say I think I spotted Sulky in the footage of the audience at the Birmingham show, !
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by sulky lad »

I was probably ranting about Bruce Thomas or trying to get free tickets off Pete :lol: :oops:
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by sweetest punch »

Can anyone tell what the 90 minute version covers more than than the 60 minute version?
Is the 90 minute version available on iPlayer yet?
Is someone going to upload this to Dime?
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by krm »

60min version available on kickass.to now!
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by caliban10 »

iplayer 60 min version:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ery_Dance/

The iplayer website is only linking to the 60 minute version currently, as far as I could find. I found the 90 minute version via the iplayer app, going to the BBC4 schedule and picking the saturday night 11.50pm time slot. Hopefully, the iplayer website will fix this.

It wasn't bad, a lot better than some previous attempts at an EC doc. Quite a bit of stuff I'd never seen or heard others say about him before (Nick Lowe, for example). Still, the usual bad music documentary cliches abound: things out of chronological order, more detail to the first half of his life than to the second half, weird mixing of material from different eras that don't really go, little mention of later pop/rock records after getting into the classical, Burt B, Allen T eras, etc. I thought if you're going to do a documentary deliberately talking about influences, than you should probably do it in chronological order so you can see how the different things he did & people he worked with influenced his subsequent projects. As previously stated here, his story needs Ken Burns to do the 10 hour version with more detail. And, personally, I'd use a lot less film of Elvis talking about his life. I think other people have a much better perspective on his career & everything he's done as a whole, than he does.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by johnfoyle »

'North marked a transition in my life, a end of a way of living, to the light coming into my room' said Elvis as stills of Diana Krall and the sleeve of North appeared in both versions of the documentary - and that is the sole , vaguest reference to fourteen years living in Dublin and , in effect, Cait O'Riordan.

It served to highlight how , basically, laudatory and accommodating the show was to Elvis . Which, of course, is what he's due and if Mark Kidel was happy go with that , and do it so well , why not go with it. We're all fans so it's something, on one level, we should agree with. But...surely a element of being a fan of Elvis is to agree with and ,perhaps, try to emulate his willingness to be contrary and generally accept that he can rub up people the wrong way. It would have been interesting to get someone on camera to say how they just hate him/ think he's a racist etc. And get Elvis to comment on that , say he couldn't give a fuck etc. A little bit of grit , a bit of a barney.

Given how damning the 'light coming into the room' comment is as regarding all that work he did in the 1990's and pointedly dedicated on the sleeves to Cait it must have a been a condition of making the show that the period was so skimpily covered. Given her role in sparking his interest in the actual Juliet letters he continues the policy of dropping reference to that , as he did on the 'Letters re-issue on Rhino. It really must have been, on reflection, a awful part of his life, considering this seeming unwillingness to allow it be chronicled.

So , what extra was in the 90 minutes?

My rough notes , taken as I watched it , include -

Emmylou Harris talking about him , and that tv show they did , shown in black and white , from the Ryman , with Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings , with the bit from Scarlet Tide with the 'admit you lied and send the boys back home' line.

Tramp The Dirt Down is shown, mixing a 1980's live performance with one from the 2012 'Spinning Show in Birmingham, UK.

Loads from that 2012 show, including Elvis and Steve sound-checking , doing Still

Talk about learning the first song he did on guitar Fleetwood Mac's Man Of The World

Talk about Brinsley Schwarz and Flip City , with the latter's version of Radio Soul playing in the background.

A visit to Whitton , talking in the street outside the apartment block he lived in the 1970s, though it was bit quieter for their visit, unlike when I went there and was deafened by the ceaseless roar from aeroplanes on the approach to Heathrow.

A lot of a demo from that period of a song called 'I Can't Turn It Off' is played .

A tv performance of Shot With His Own Gun by Elvis 'n Steve.

A extended segment of Elvis, in Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Ban Bang garb, visiting the narrow back streets of Liverpool that his grandparents lived on, the camera just about not showing muscly men in suits who seemed to be in attendance to protect the visitors.

Talk about feeling peculiar when hearing Cilla Black's version of Anyone Who Had A Heart - ' the song - not Cilla'.

A lot of God Give Me Strength as Elvis walked into the audience in Birmingham in '12

A lot of fiddling about with sound recording apps on 'phones and tablets , with a piece of a song used as a example, a piece that features the line ' And the moon is high' , followed by howling sound effects , much hilarity from Elvis.

Both versions of the show finished with Elvis saying stuff about wanting to spend time with his sons , ' go on the road and make a bit of money' . He also makes a general comment along the lines ' It's been much more wonderful than I deserved'.

Much food for thought.
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Re: "Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance" - docu. - BBC4 Nov. 8 '1

Post by docinwestchester »

krm wrote:60min version available on kickass.to now!
Thanks! Downloading now.
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