30 in 30, 9/30/11 - "Lipstick Vogue", Elvis Costello

Elvis was my biggest love for a long, long time. First heard the second album around 1978 (it includes this song) and then just kept going. There was a time when I would have called him my favorite songwriter/performer/musician/Whatever. I still don't think there's any songwriter working in English who is better than he; certainly there are some folks out there who are just as good, though.

Now, as I am committed to deeply exploring country music, the influence that country music had on Elvis becomes far clearer to me. I still love him, but he's taken something of a back seat for awhile as I learn about artists I've missed out on, everybody from Waylon Jennings to Lefty Frizell to Gram Parsons to Vern Gosdin.

But Jesus he can do anything, Elvis (and if you've watched his TV show you will also know that his knowledge of ALL music is Beyond Encyclopedic) - among other things, he has a straight up country album, one of Sinatra-esque ballads, one with a string quartet, one with Burt Bacharach NOT TO MENTION all of his rock and roll albums, and a little masterpiece called King of America. (For the record, my absolute favorite is Get Happy.)

I chose Lipstick Vogue because I knew of this song when I was 15 and idly wrote those two words down on a Peechee and my mother demanded to know what that could possibly mean (she was not happy - I might also add she and I have still not had our birds and bees chat; I can't help but think that is related to her obvious fear of those two words in combination). Anyway, this live version has all the energy that he brought with him when he first came to our/my attention.

More info because why not finish 30 in 30 with a bang: swear to God this is true - Declan McManus became SUCH a huge part of my life that, anytime anybody mentioned Elvis, I always thought of Costello first, even when, in retrospect, it was clear they were talking about Presley and I was just being dense (with no disrespect intended to Elvis Aaron, I do like him, especially all that really early stuff)...

(This also happens to me on the CNN sports page, by the way, or on ESPN anytime there's a headline about a certain golfer, and they only use his first name, and it'll be December, maybe, and I'll not immediately comprehend why there's a headline-worthy story about that baseball team from Detroit that I love so much (and I mean this happens OVER and OVER again). Plus I really don't give a shit about golf or Mr. Woods, so there's that.)

Lipstick Vogue...

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30 in 30, 9/29/11 - "Debbie Denise", Blue Oyster Cult

And how could I leave these gentlemen out; it just wouldn't be right. I saw Blue Oyster Cult once a year from 1979 to 1986, and enjoyed each and every one of those shows. They get dismissed out of hand, I think, by a lot of people. True, they only had two hits, Don't Fear the Reaper and Burnin' For You (and outside the odd Godzilla or Goin' Through the Motions, people might not have even HEARD any of their other songs); true, once you get to their sixth record, Mirrors, the overall quality of the albums starts to dip. True, by the time you hit Club Ninja, maybe their 10th album, you've got a giant steaming bowl of shit in front of you (I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true.) So, when I say that there is a lot to like about their first five albums, well, maybe you'll concede me the point.

And I spent a lot of time listening to these albums in high school. The first three are guitar and drum heavy and tell tales of women burying corpses in quicklime, folks engaged in a variety of dominant and/or submissive activities, drug deals gone wrong in the desert (more corpses, natch); there are titles such as Harvester of Eyes, Career of Evil, Hot Rails to Hell. You know, typical AM fodder. But with Agents of Fortune ("The Reaper Album") in 76 and Specters in 77 they started mixing things up a bit (I think the word is "maturity"), got a few more keyboards front and center, and turned out some very fine slower songs and outright pop ballads (though often with a kink in the lyrics, to be fair).

I could have gone with either Fireworks or Death Valley Nights from Specters, two of my absolute favorites; or with Revenge of Vera Gemini from Agents (with Patti Smith on guest vocals, she co-wrote; this one has my favorite Cult lyric "you have slipped from beneath me/like a false and nervous squid"). However, Debbie Denise is the one I always come back to, the final song on Agents, a song that had a huge emotional impact on me as a kid (and with another Patti Smith co-writing credit, she was girlfriend to Alan Lanier, the Cult's keyboard player, in the early 70s). I thought it was beautiful and sad in high school; I listen now and see no reason to change that assessment...

Debbie Denise...

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30 in 30, 9/28/11 - "Carmelita", Warren Zevon

Possibly my favorite songwriter/musician. Not that I think he's the best, I don't; but I do think he's my favorite. He wrote some mediocre songs, and he wrote some bad songs, that's just a fact. But when he got it right, his songs were as good as anybody's, and he did it with SUCH an economy of language that I would often wonder how he pulled it off. Like this one. Three verses and a chorus, I think, and none of the verses that long. You're in, you're out - oh, but while you're there. Of all his great songs, and there are many - Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, Hasten Down the Wind, Lawyers Guns and Money, Mohammed's Radio, Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Desperadoes Under the Eaves (with my favorite single line of his: "But if California slipped into the ocean/like the mystics and statistics say it will/I believe this hotel will be standing/Till I pay my bill") - this is the one...

Mister Zevon died eight years ago this month. While Warren was dying Bob Dylan was on tour, and each night he played a Zevon song in tribute. High praise from a great songwriter.

I first became aware of him when the Excitable Boy album came out, 1978. I couldn't stop playing that one; I still love it. Fragments of his lyrics continue to make it into my writing today.

And, so the song - that's David Lindley on guitar; the audio is SLIGHTLY out of sync with the video, but the existence of the video trumps that for me - and this is Carmelita...

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30 in 30, 9/27/11 - "My Old School", Steely Dan

One of my favorite songs ever (I love it when people say that; how many songs are we TALKING about when we say that? 10? 100? 1,000? Something to sort out another day, I guess). Steely Dan put out some great music in the 70s, I think, though I have to admit Messrs. Fagen and Becker lost me post-Aja. And even Aja is a little ... oh, never mind. Anyway, all those amazing songs, the fantastic guitar work, Fagen's voice (not to mention named after a dildo). But this is the one I always come back to, no disrespect intended to Reelin' in the Years, Kid Charlemagne (one of my all time favorite lines - "is there gas in the car/yes there's gas in the car"), Deacon Blues, Bodhisattva, Show Biz Kids, Dr. Wu or any of the others...

The picture is not ideal, but the sound is clean, and here is My Old School...

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30 in 30, 9/26/11 - "So It Goes", Nick Lowe

I still put on my Best of Nick Lowe compilation if I've had a few cocktails and I'm seeking out groups of my absolute favorite songs. He's hit and miss at times, no doubt; but he's a good live show, and his 1979 album, Labor of Lust, which contained Cruel To Be Kind, was a great record from one end to the other (and another one that Music Plus guaranteed or your money back). I chose this one because I listened to it a LOT when I was 15. Well, I listened to the whole album a lot, I guess (though I can't seem to find it on CD, hence my purchase of the Best of).

Nick Lowe produced a bunch of the early Elvis Costello records; was a member of Rockpile and I THINK Brinsley Schwarz; was married to Carlene Carter (making him Johnny Cash's son-in-law for a time); and just seems like an all around good guy to me.

So It Goes...

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30 in 30, 9/25/11 - "I Go To Pieces", Rachel Sweet

This would likely be the 30 in 30 artist you'd never heard of (though she did have a hit pop duet with some feather-haired boy in the early 80s; Rex Smith, maybe?). She had four records from 1978 to 1982 or so, was from Akron, Ohio, was almost literally my age, and I had a major crush on her. I saw her at the Roxy in Hollywood in late 1978 or early 1979, I'm going to say, the evening of a day we drove out to Torrance to get her autograph at a record store signing. That night at the Roxy I was standing up at the stage pretty much right in front of her.

Did a quick bit of research on her now, and it turns out she's doing pretty well for herself as a TV producer, apparently, so I guess she saved her pennies and invested wisely. I chose something here from the first album, one of the first things I ever heard by her. Whether I would have been aware this was a cover at that time, I'm not sure. Her voice sounds good on this one though, I think; I see why she was a big deal to me...

I Go To Pieces by Rachel Sweet...

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David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" - I've Made 500 Pages...

(I just thought you'd want to know.)

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