A rare photo of "The Elvis Costello Experience" , April 1980

Pretty self-explanatory
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johnfoyle
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A rare photo of "The Elvis Costello Experience" , April 1980

Post by johnfoyle »

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 99,00.html

( extract)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the long-ago days when politics mattered, just about everything you did — and certainly everything you wore — was an ideological statement. In the summer of my first year at Cambridge, Elvis Costello played the May ball. He greeted the revellers with a sneering “Hello penguins,â€
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verbal gymnastics
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Post by verbal gymnastics »

Was that the only time he ever played The Attractions' Arms Race?
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Otis Westinghouse
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Wish he'd play a ball now! I'd have to use my, er, contacts to get in. I have a suspicion he hasn't played Cambridge since apart from solo at the Folk Festival in '95 (which I missed due to a wedding). Steve's leg must still have been a bit wobbly at the second gig! I know someone who was there in 1980 and loved it.

John: the Wiki seems to have carried over a deficiency that I recall was on the original ec info listing: the immortalised-in-Trust's-liner-notes gig in Guernsey and the one soon after in Jersey are both omitted. These were between Canvey Island and Maastricht

Guernsey my first ever gig of any sort, as the regulars will recall me bleating about in the past. At the risk of endless self-repetition: I grew up in Jersey, had become a fanatical EC fan in '79, adored Get Happy!! and the moment I heard he was playing our neighbouring and much despised sister Channel Island of Guernsey, got permission from my folks to head over with a few chums, stay in a B & B, trying to not get beaten up by virtue of being from the wrong island (rumour was on the night after the gig that the locals were trying to scout our sort out). Having had an advance on months of pocket money to get there and pay for the ticket, there was no question of going to the Jersey gig.

These two gigs should be listed! I recall being amazed when someone who was also at the Guernsey one appeared on this board a few years back. For those who don't recall, the Trust notes refer to the battery of guitar pedals he used to compensate for only having two Attractions due to Steve's leg, and that survivors of the gig are too scarred by the sonic battery to talk about it to this day. Not all of them! Graeme Thompson writes about them on p. 125, describing them as 'catastrophic'. Not how it seemed to me, though I was deaf for days after. No bootlegs are known to exist, sadly!
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And No Coffee Table
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Post by And No Coffee Table »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:These two gigs should be listed!
I just added them. But do you have more details? Exact dates? Names of venues?

Am I correct in assuming that they weren't actually billed as "The Elvis Costello Experience" at the time, and EC just came up with that name for the Ryko liner notes?
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Otis Westinghouse
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Thanks for adding. Never kept the ticket, sadly. Not even sure what day of the week it was. Easter holidays, probably. It might have been a Friday with Jersey the next day, so possibly April 4 and 5. Thompson says Nottingham was the last night of the English tour, when the Wiki listing shows Canvey Island as this. Elvis got fed up and announced melodramatically he was jacking it in, which was not uncommon, but this time it was more serious. Steve N went to America and did his leg in. Elvis decided he wasn't jacking it in after all. I think there may have been some suggestion of the gigs being cancelled - it's all very hazy. Venues were Beau Sejour, St Peter Port, Guernsey and Fort Regent, St Helier, Jersey. It was all happening very quickly, and within no time the were off to Maastricht with Martin Belmont.
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Azmuda
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Re:

Post by Azmuda »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:Thanks for adding. Never kept the ticket, sadly. Not even sure what day of the week it was. Easter holidays, probably. It might have been a Friday with Jersey the next day, so possibly April 4 and 5. Thompson says Nottingham was the last night of the English tour, when the Wiki listing shows Canvey Island as this. Elvis got fed up and announced melodramatically he was jacking it in, which was not uncommon, but this time it was more serious. Steve N went to America and did his leg in. Elvis decided he wasn't jacking it in after all. I think there may have been some suggestion of the gigs being cancelled - it's all very hazy. Venues were Beau Sejour, St Peter Port, Guernsey and Fort Regent, St Helier, Jersey. It was all happening very quickly, and within no time the were off to Maastricht with Martin Belmont.
Some info on the Jersey gigs:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Elvis-Costello- ... 1675784094

Image
Azmuda
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Re: Re:

Post by Azmuda »

Azmuda wrote:Some info on the Jersey gigs:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Elvis-Costello- ... 1675784094
Oops. The dates on the flyer raises more questions than answers.
johnfoyle
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Re: Memories of Elvis at a May Ball

Post by johnfoyle »

Image

A rare photo of "The Elvis Costello Experience" . In April 1980 after Steve Nieve was in a car accident Elvis did a few shows with Bruce & Pete as a trio.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... -0x_Jersey
http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... x_Guernsey

Related -

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johnfoyle
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Re: A rare photo of "The Elvis Costello Experience" , April 1980

Post by johnfoyle »

From Elvis's note for the 1994 reissue of Trust -

'The cast and content of the album was determined by events during 1980. By the end of the "GET HAPPY" tour, in which we played only seaside towns and places not usually on the concert circuit (and in some cases found out why!), my self-induced fatigue had convinced me to take the melodramatic decision to quit show business. Steve Nieve then departed for California where he was a passenger in a serious car accident. However by the time this occurred I had come to my senses and decided to fulfill the commitment to a European tour. With Steve unable to rejoin the band for some time we decided to make no attempt to find a keyboard deputy. My first solution involved the purchase of a Marshall stack and three hundred effects pedals and fuzz boxes. The debut of "The Elvis Costello Experience" was a disaster which very few of the traumatized Channel Islanders, who were subjected to it, are willing to talk about. For the remaining dates in Europe we were joined on guitar by The Rumour's Martin Belmont, who masterfully learned our adapted repertoire in doubletime.'

For the 2003 reissue -

I was just telling Nick Lowe for the fourteenth time that our next record was going to cross the melody of Armed Forces with the rhythm of Get Happy!!, when one of the drummers present elected to do his party trick. This involved cutting the necktie of one of the other bar patrons with a pair of scissors borrowed from the hotel kitchen. In the movies of Laurel & Hardy or The Three Stooges, this is achieved in one smoothly satisfying snip, but drunkenness and blunted blades meant that the clumsy hacking went on long after the joke had died, and the victim had recovered from his surprise at being assailed by a drinking companion and started to become irate.

We were on the Channel Island of Jersey, a deeply conservative tax-haven belonging to the U.K. but improbably close to the French coast. It was hardly the most likely location to be starting out on a European tour, but then this was hardly a typical tour. Steve Nieve had recently been injured in a car accident in Los Angeles, and I had taken the rash decision to take to the road in a trio format.

Our opening-night concert, on the nearby island of Guernsey, had been a disaster that few of the traumatized audience members will talk about to this day. Having equipped myself with a terrifying stock of guitar pedals and a ferocious cocktail of mind-bending liquids, we stumbled through two more such wretched nights before enlisting the help of Martin Belmont, a guitarist from Graham Parker's band, The Rumour. Once he arrived we went rampaging through Europe, occasionally finding the energy to play concerts featuring the two-guitar format that can be heard on one track of this, my fifth album (and sixth record release) in four years.
johnfoyle
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Re: A rare photo of "The Elvis Costello Experience" , April 1980

Post by johnfoyle »

A file of photos of the show in Guernsey on sale here

https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/co ... /110340693
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