UNFAITHFUL MUSIC & DISAPPEARING INK - Oct. 2015

[Jack of All Parades]

"If I had wanted to be a poet," Costello insists, "I'd have needed to be a damn sight more accurate with my word choices, but I didn't, and still do not, necessarily see poetry as a higher, superior calling to that of the lyricist."

For me this may well be the most telling sentence, or moment, in the book. For one who uses words with the precision and originality as he does with regularity, this statement startled me. I also do not believe it. His book comes most to life on the page in the chapters when he is fully engaged in remembering his creative processes in the formulation of works as disparate as Imperial Bedroom and National Ransom and King of America. He clearly relishes his word choices as he breaks down individual lyric sequences in those chapters. When he relates towards the end of the book his having a coffee with Dylan and how Dylan casually asks permission to read to him the lyrics of what would become "Pay in Blood" and he then counters with portions of what became "Jimmie Standing in the Rain" as if the two were engaged in an old fashioned 'cutting' session- and then seeing the glint in Dylan's eyes and at that moment knowing he had written something good- as acknowledged so subtly by the 'Master'-I know he values words and their slipperiness. Perhaps not a poet but he is a 'master'- his pride in that shines in those chapters where he takes on his songs.

There is an off-shoot of the main Library of America that publishes the selected work of American poets and in a sub-section the work of two exceptional lyricists[poets]- Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter. I one day envisage Mr. Costello with the same printed treatment.

[sweetest punch]

From a review on Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unfaithful-Musi ... s+costello

(...)
For your information (I couldn't find this info online anywahere): the unabridged Audio CD version of the book (read by the man himself) consists of 15 CDs and lasts 18.5 hours. It comes in a nice cardboard box, containing three neatly folded envelopes that harmonica out. 5 CDs per such envelope. That's quite a lot of value for your money

[sweetest punch]

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_29003753/ ... ing-oct-18

Northern California best-sellers, week ending Oct. 18.

Data from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association for the week ending Oct. 18.

NONFICTION

1. M Train by Patti Smith

2. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

4. Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello

5. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

6. Saving Capitalism by Robert B. Reich

7. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

8. My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl

9. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

10. Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly

[sweetest punch]

blog: http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/10/u ... -costello/
blog: http://blogcritics.org/book-tour-unfait ... -costello/

[johnfoyle]

Brief promo clip -


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRi979t3P0o

[Neil.]

There's a new animated promo video inspired by Barney Bubbles. It's good! Not many views though - the publicity dept need to get tweeting! http://youtu.be/JRUGkVcx5yY

Plus, there's no link in the blurb section below the screen to anywhere that you can buy the book. Not great for a promo vid. Maybe it's incomplete - the audio does sound a bit clipped at the end.

[sweetest punch]

The book will be reviewed in Uncut: http://www.uncut.co.uk/news/this-month- ... t-45-71419

[cwr]

That animated clip first showed up on the Blue Rider Press instagram (which may be why it feels clipped at the end).

(The Blue Rider instagram has only 13 "likes" and my re-gramming of it got 20.)

[johnfoyle]

Uncut, Dec. '15

[johnfoyle]

Win a copy -

http://wxrt.cbslocal.com/2015/10/26/win ... s-contests

[Jack of All Parades]

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/boo ... 02536.html

A review from some paper called the Evening Standard- I cannot tell if this individual read a different book from the one I read or if he just has an ax to grind. Though not a perfect book, I found the memoir most entertaining and enlightening even if one has an engaged acquaintance with the artist going back to 1977. Yes, some judicious editing would have been helpful at times but this review is just plain mean spirited. A good deal of the fun I had in reading the book was the vivid engagement EC has with the past and its non-sequential recollection for him as he recalls musical and familial memories which are clearly wound tightly together in his historical consciousness of the past sixty plus years.

[sweetest punch]

http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/ ... 5-November

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello (Viking, £25)


When it comes to songwriting, Elvis Costello doesn’t mess around. The artist formerly known as Declan MacManus has recorded almost 30 studio albums and penned countless tracks for other singers. Most of those songs are stuffed to bursting with puns, epigrams, dark allusions and cinematic imagery.

Costello will recall an episode from his childhood in London and Liverpool, often revolving around his father Ross MacManus, a club crooner who sang with Joe Loss’s dance orchestra. In the same chapter, he will jump ahead to his own stardom as the combative frontman of The Attractions, their hits including Pump It Up and Oliver’s

Army, then he’ll delve into his family history. All that’s missing is Costello’s own feelings about these incidents. While the virtuoso writing is never boring, it can be distancing.

Rather than opening up, Costello defaults to the jokes, slogans and wordplay of his songs. He doesn’t ponder the causes and effects of his considerable alcohol intake, for example, saying: “I drank a lot of gin. I thought it was a tonic.”

Costello’s facility for transmuting ordinary life into slightly cryptic fables is what makes him such a prodigious songwriter. But in an autobiography, it can come across as coy and even cowardly.

His first marriage, to Mary Burgoyne, merits fewer words than the concert he went to on the night his son was born. He doesn’t say much about his marriage to Cait O’Riordan, bassist with The Pogues, except that he gave her co-songwriting credits that she didn’t deserve.

And even when he is paying tribute to his third wife, jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, it’s more for her music than anything else. It’s intriguing but exasperating. If a pop star has a decades-long feud with his own bassist or if he marries a member of The Pogues when lead singer Shane MacGowan detests him, you want to know the gory details.

The only times when Costello is really frank is when he is talking about music in trainspotter-ish detail. He is fascinating on his favourite records and his growth as a recording artist, and he is particularly effusive on his amiable collaborations with Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and other musical heroes.

But even here, there are no revelations about these greats’ personalities or private lives: Costello focuses solely on their work. His book is almost essential as an idiosyncratic history of 20th-century pop music. But you might as well listen to the songs themselves to get to know the man behind them.

VERDICT: 3/5

[Jack of All Parades]

"The only times when Costello is really frank is when he is talking about music in trainspotter-ish detail. He is fascinating on his favourite records and his growth as a recording artist, and he is particularly effusive on his amiable collaborations with Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and other musical heroes.

But even here, there are no revelations about these greats’ personalities or private lives: Costello focuses solely on their work. His book is almost essential as an idiosyncratic history of 20th-century pop music. But you might as well listen to the songs themselves to get to know the man behind them."

This piece attempts to catch at a vibe that has been nagging at me since my reading of the book- as this writer rightly points out I think, there is a certain off putting quality to the reticence that too often creeps into the memoir- EC only escapes it at select points in his narrative as when he discusses his father's death and the time leading up to it and when he is recalling particular triumphs in the studio. His personal pain at certain low points in his adult life is palpable, however, as noted before. But too much of the book has an 'alien' observational quality about it as is stated in this writer's comments.

[manoutoftime]

Whilst reading the book I put together a Spotify playlist of most of the songs mentioned in the book.

Unfortunately The Beatles and Neil Young are not on Spotify, still 51 plus hours of music to enjoy from the encylopedia of music that is Elvish Costello

https://open.spotify.com/user/115978740 ... qNgvcV8FEl

[johnfoyle]

One time EC biographer Graeme Thomson's review of the book is in the Event supplement with today's Mail On Sunday (London). The beginning & end will give an idea of his qualified praise . It doesn't seem to be online - it should be up on the wiki site soon.


Edit - here it is!

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... er_1,_2015

[Jack of All Parades]

Was he reading over my shoulder when I put my thoughts about the book to virtual paper? Eerie...

[johnfoyle]

New Statesman, October 30 - November 5, 2015
Mark Ellen reviews Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... r_30,_2015

[charliestumpy]

Maybe if we contacted official EC etc publishers they might make available e.g. online a necessary index for this fine book.

[OnesNamedAlfie]

Whilst reading the book I put together a Spotify playlist of most of the songs mentioned in the book.

Unfortunately The Beatles and Neil Young are not on Spotify, still 51 plus hours of music to enjoy from the encylopedia of music that is Elvish Costello

https://open.spotify.com/user/115978740 ... qNgvcV8FEl

Brilliant. You've saved me a lot of time, thanks!

In my opinion the book is at its strongest when Elvis is discussing the effect of other people's music on his own life and art - he has the rare music-writerly knack of making one keen to seek out his enthusiasms.

[sweetest punch]

http://www.rte.ie/ten/reviews/books/201 ... aring-ink/

Elvis Costello Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Reviewer Rating: 5 stars

"I was also deliberately using words in a manner that did not always accumulate to literal sense. I reasoned that there could be multiple realities and moral perspectives, tenses and genders all in the same verses, telling myself that if you could do this in painting, then you could do it in song."

Whoa there, this isn’t your common or garden rock star writing his 672-page memoir, his Christmas doorstopper. We are not even talking ‘rock star,’ because Declan Patrick MacManus, aka Elvis Costello, is a kind of polymath of music who would of course curl his lip, Elvis-like, at the phrase ‘rock star.’

Noddy Holder, once the charismatic front-man with Slade, has also written work-related books. We doubt somehow that he would get into the kind of nuanced articulation quoted above, which can be found on page 69 of the very fine Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink.

So many celebrated musicians wander down the corridors or hover backstage in the pages of this vast dressing-room of a book, that it should come as no surprise that Slade come, however peripherally, into the story too, in the industrial town of Widnes, in Cheshire, circa 1971, when Costello was singing with a folk group called Rusty.

Costello is marvellous at evoking the period and that self-deprecatory note and sense of theatre of the absurd is firing on all cylinders. In Widnes, a few girls nursing Babycham asked - with a sneer – if his group knew any Slade songs. “None of our songs bore any resemblance to Come on Feel the Noize, so we gave up on Widnes, or maybe Widnes gave up on us,” Costello ruefully recalls.

Fast forward to 1974 and Elvis is going to see headliners Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in Wembley Stadium, with The Band and Joni Mitchell also on the bill. He pays particular attention to The Band. “I was astonished to see that Robbie Robertson was playing a rock star guitar like a Stratocaster, rather than the Telecaster he’d always been shown playing in photographs, “ he notes, as, of course only the hyper- circumspect EC would.

"Seeing those shots and hearing the shrill, piercing cries that I had assumed came from that guitar was the whole reason I’d finally traded in my Les Paul copy for a brand-new Fender." Ah yes, Declan, we feel your pain. Around this time , he was playing in what would become known as a `pub rock’ band called Flip City. They were modelling themselves on Brinsley Schwartz, and doing a set that included Hank Williams and Gram Parsons songs.

Paul McCartney, Al Green, Alain Toussaint, Chet Baker, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and many more folks you will recognise number among the glittering cast of characters, but always somehow placed in measured perspective by the memoirist. While there are some interesting sidelights into his personal life – a holiday in Russia with his son Matt, exploration of the conflicted relationship between his parents - the book mostly confines itself to the amazing musical odyssey. Costello once sneered the words 'Stairway to Heaven' into Robert Plant’s face, which the Led Zeppelin singer reminded him about years later. Plant had thought to punch the young upstart on their first encounter but apparently thought better of it.

The curious thing is that Costello loved lots of music in truth that really doesn’t remind us directly of the sublime, immortally impish music he cut with The Attractions, the band with which he is most associated. Clearly it all went into the mix and what came out was the glorious result of years of intense listening to pop - he loved The Beatles - jazz and blues and country. He recalls his admiration for early Elton John records, for instance, which would have been hard to credit as we listened to Get Happy. Elton would later become a great friend and Costello says he could write a book about his generosity and kindness.

He recalls his passion for Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey and Band and Street Choir albums, he marvels at the `muffled pulse’ of Mick Fleetwood’s drum on Man of the World. He raves about Peter Green’s playing on the latter track and, years on in the middle of his own thriving career, sees the blues guitarist on a London street, looking dishevelled and forlorn, his finger-nails grown long, a genius abandoned.

Costello's musician father, Ross McManus, looms large in the story and the portrait is brilliantly executed. The author was at his dad’s death-bed and he can break away from the surreal larks that characterise much of the first section to write prose of immense feeling when dealing with such a scene.

But thank God for Costello’s acerbic sense of humour which makes the experience of reading his memoir such scurrilous pleasure as you read first-hand of the anarchy and insouciance of being an Attraction at large in Tokyo and in the USA.

Paddy Kehoe

[sweetest punch]

http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/story/elvis-costello/ - includes podcast !!

Elvis Costello's Music May Be 'Unfaithful,' But It's Always Surprising

Burt Bacharach. The Pogues. Chet Baker. The Roots. Alison Krauss. The Brodsky String Quartet. Paul McCartney.

It's a far-flung litany of musical luminaries, and many of them make appearances in the new autobiography from Elvis Costello, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.

The book begins with a young Declan MacManus sitting in the balcony of London's famous Hammersmith Palais, watching his father rehearse with a big band. The musical and geographic horizons bolt outward from there, as Declan dons his boxy spectacles and, over the course of 600 pages and five decades, goes from angry young man to sophisticated orchestral composer, from punk rock ne'er-do-well to elder statesman, from amateur provocateur to the annals of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Elvis Costello joins Soundcheck host John Schaefer for a lengthy and thoughtful interview to talk about the first sounds he heard as a boy, to expound on the inspiration behind some of his many musical projects, and to explain why Bob Marley has Irish roots.

Songs heard in this episode:

Elvis Costello – Every Day I Write The Book
Elvis Costello, live at the Hammersmith Palais, 1983 – Oliver’s Army
Ross McManus & The Joe Loss Orchestra – If I Had a Hammer
The Beatles – Please Please Me
The Beatles – Penny Lane
Hank Williams – You Win Again
Elvis Costello – I’m Not Angry
Elvis Costello, feat. Paul McCartney – Veronica
Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Toledo
Elvis Costello & Brodsky String Quartet – Romeo’s Séance
Roy Nathanson, feat. Elvis Costello – Fire Suite from “Fire at Keaton’s Bar & Grill”
The Rolling Stones – Stupid Girl
Elvis Costello – This Year’s Girl (from “This Year’s Model”)
Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives (two excerpts)
Elvis Costello – Church Underground
Elvis Costello & The Charles Mingus Big Band – Invisible Lady
Elvis Costello & The Metropole Orchestra – My Flame Burns Blue (Billy Strayhorn song)
Diana Krall sings “When Summer Comes” for Oscar Peterson’s 80th birthday
Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding
Elvis Costello – Shipbuilding
Chet Baker – Almost Blue (Elvis Costello song)
Elvis Costello – Il Sogno (ballet score, two excerpts)
Elvis Costello – Less Than Zero
Alison Kraus – Scarlet Tide (song by Elvis Costello & T-Bone Burnett from the film “Cold Mountain”)
Elvis Costello – Radio Radio

[Jack of All Parades]

I am quite taken by the way this piece from The New Statesman playfully catches the tone of the book- it also does not hurt that it examines the book in an intelligent manner, as well.....unlike so many of the previously printed appreciations.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... W-7jzxiPUg

[johnfoyle]

Competition for a signed copy

http://zaphod.uk.vvhp.net/vvreg/10853-429689

[johnfoyle]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-t ... lo-review/


Neil McCormick

2 NOVEMBER 2015

Elvis Costello’s reputation for wordiness is so notorious that he even recalls Bob Dylan teasing his “highfalutin language”. “I can’t believe you used 'amanuensis’ in a sentence,” is Dylan’s sardonic response to Costello’s suggestion he hire a transcriber. “You could ask 20 people and they wouldn’t know what 'amanuensis’ meant.”

Costello fans will be impressed but perhaps a little daunted to learn that no amanuensis was used in the creation of this book. Following the example of such other notable lyricists as Morrissey, Neil Young and Dylan himself, Costello has composed his own hefty autobiographical tome, taking the kind of meandering, self-indulgent and idiosyncratic path through his affairs that would see a ghostwriter sacked on the spot and leave editors weeping.

Both fascinating and frustrating, the result is, at least, utterly authentic and reveals much about Britain’s most brilliant songwriter of the post-punk era.

Costello, real name Declan Patrick McManus, tacks backwards and forwards through his life. Yet the bones of another, earlier draft remain confusingly visible in the form of excerpts from short stories featuring an unappetising pop star named Percy Inch. It is an audacious approach that gives Costello scope for fascinating digression, but also leaves room for evasion.

Why he might crave this wriggle room soon becomes apparent. Sex and drugs are the titillating backbone of many a rock and roll tale but I don’t think I have ever read a pop autobiography quite so riven by guilt, shame and self-reproach. The musician, who has been married three times and is the father of three sons, remains mortified at the way he sabotaged his first marriage. His peculiar affair with groupie Bebe Buell is alluded to elliptically while he can’t even bring himself to repeat the words that led to his American stardom crashing in 1982, when he drunkenly slandered Ray Charles as “a blind, ignorant n----r”, which he blames on, “too much time talking chemically altered nonsense and laughing at my own jokes”.

“The trouble with finishing any autobiographical tome,” Costello acknowledges, “is that for every mildly diverting tale or precious memory, you eventually arrive at this thought: I don’t much care for the subject.” It is a danger implicit in any genuinely honest biography, flawed creatures that we are, yet Costello ultimately emerges as a clever, compassionate, self-aware man, brave enough to acknowledge his faults and fortunate enough to have overcome the worst of them.

[johnfoyle]

The U.S. edition of the book is thinner than the U.K. one. This is achieved by using finer paper. In London last Thursday someone had a copy of the U.S. edition. He let me compare them. I, randomly, opened it at p.145 in both editions and they both had exactly the same text. I thought maybe the thinner edition was achieved by using smaller text & had more words per page but that doesn't seem to be the case.