The BBC got pretty much every surviving Stiff vet - The Damned, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Devo, Madness, The Pogues plus, of course, label honchos Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera - to talk up a storm for this hour-long doc.
Before the Impostors, the Attractions and even Clover, Elvis Costello had another, more mysterious backing band named Flip City. Back in the mid-seventies, Flip City would have been labeled pub rock, a nebulous term for a non-grandiose country-r&b-rockabilly amalgam which later birthed punk rock. Unlike Joe Strummer's pub rock band, the 101'ers, Flip City, featuring Mich Kent (bass), Malcolm Dennis or Ian Powling (drums), Steve Hazelhurst (guitar), Dickie Faulkner (percussion) and one Declan P. MacManus (guitar/vocals), don't get a whole lot of play in the official narrative. On the Rykodisc re-issues their one contribution is referred to as a "pre-professional recording" (quotation marks theirs). Costello himself further labels his pre-professional work as "blatant imitations" and, "steps in my apprenticeship".
However, for Costello watchers of almost all types, these variations of themes, styles and songs that he would pursue his entire career are endlessly fascinating. Highlights include the proto-"Allison", "Imagination is a Powerful Deceiver" the rough draft of "Radio, Radio", called "Radio Soul", and the early version of "Living in Paradise" which proves how much of Elvis' rapid-fire wit was in place by this time. Finally, we get Elvis and the boys grappling with Bob Dylan's magnificent "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". The result is an enjoyable, if imperfect, approximation of what would have happened if the Band (sans Dylan) had taken a crack at the song. If you're a fan at all, don't miss out.
While I have never forgiven Goodbye Cruel World (even E.C. disdains it), it's far from my Costello cut-off. In fact right up till the end of the eighties and Spike, Costello burned a bright flame. However, the erratic material and showier singing of the nineties alongside the side-lining of the Attractions and that beard kinda killed it for me. Sure I dutifully listened to the Brutal Youth (even tried wrapping my head around The Juliet Letters) and When I was Cruel et al but little of it hit on a gut level. I'm sure in my next Costello phase (I've had about four), I'll be eating my words and buying some over-stuffed Kojak Variety re-issue.
So if you cut Elvis off somewhere before Almost Blue (I love old country but Elvis sings his own material best) you miss out a lot. To help you catch up (or just remind you), here's a concert from the Punch the Clock tour. With the TKO Horns and more in tow, it's a chance to hear the first six years of Elvis' career in a different, slightly cracked, light.
MRML Readers keep leaving us your Elvis-related comments. Here's some more samples:
I saw Elvis at Bogart's in Cincinnati Ohio in 1978. Still have the ticket stub. The Show was $2.94 + 0.06 tax. It was an awesome show. During one point in the show, Elvis walked through the audience from table-top to table-top while continuing to play. I saw him again in 1979 in Dayton Ohio at the Victoria Theatre for the Armed Funk tour. Again, an awesome show. By that time, the ticket price had increased to an astounding $7.00. (Anonymous)
Saw Elvis many times. Every show was outstanding, his gigs use to go on and on and on. 2hrs, 3 hrs even. me and my mate john always positioned ourselves at the front. Many times came out soaked to the skin with sweat and often losing items of clothing. Managed to get backstage at one gig at De Montfort Hall when he was supported by The Pogues, I thought I could drink in those days but Jeez I was ill for days after. Along with The Jam gigs I attended at the time I have never seen such power and intensity. Fucking brilliant!!!! (Sir Charlie Palmer)
This performance from an FM radio broadcast of a show from the Agora Theatre in Cleavland on December 5th 1977 rips. The video from below is from August of '77 but packs the same punch.
The sound quality of this bootleg (released both under the title Angry Young Sod and just it's date and location) is stellar, the performance fevered and once again we get to hear the mighty Attractions attacking songs from My Aim Is True.
MRML Readers: Leave us a comment about seeing Elvis live! ("I saw Elvis at the Nashville in Kensington (I think the entrance was 50p) and I thought he was crap. Then I heard his first single "Less than Zero" and realised that he was brilliant, but I hadn't noticed. I then saw him many more times and bought all of his early album and also his most recent album(which is a real classic). I wish I could of said I spotted him before anyone else, but I didn't." says garychching.) Angry Young Sod CD
(Now if only someone would release the whole concert with Eddie Money's opening set as Here We Are Living With Two Tickets to Paradise, the word would just be that much better of a place.)
When did you first hear Elvis Costello? Well I'd surely heard him as a child in the seventies but my first adolescent exposure to Elvis was with via a TDK Cr02 90 min. cassette with his 1977 album My Aim is True on side A and his 1985 album, Goodbye Cruel World on side B. Tape makers can be cruel people, I should know. The juxtaposition of the sublime, like "Mystery Dance" and the sub-prime, like "Inch By Inch" made this tape the musical equivalent of trying to sit through a double feature of Raging Bull and Alvin and the Chipmunk: the Squeakquel.
Now music scribes like writing about Elvis Costello almost as much as they like writing about Dylan because they both represent the power of the words to stand almost equal with the music. After all, comments like Ira Robbins, "Elvis Costello is the King Kong of contemporary music looming so large over everything that admirers and detractors alike are compelled to take note of his most trivial actions" probably inspired David Lee Roth to quip something like, "Most music critics prefer Elvis Costello to Van Halen because most music critics look like Elvis Costello". But we've got good cause for our championing. Like Bringing it all Back Home every second of My Aim is True is crammed-to-claustrophobia with cleaver, jagged word-play carried by fiery melodies that make you forget that Clover(a.k.a. Huey Lewis' the News) is playing in the background.
So now it's time to offer some Elvis Costello you may not have heard. With his catalog being constantly re-issued (I've stuck with those ever-so-succinct Rykodisc versions) a few of these tracks might be available but certainly not in this configuration. This bootleg contains much of his work for the BBC between 1977-1983, from My Aim is True to Punch the Clock with nothing from Goodbye Cruel World at all. The set is notable for the first Peel session including four songs from that first album done with his greatest backing band, the Attractions as well as rarities, re-workings of classics and a cover of the English Beat's "Stand Down Margaret". It's time to listen to Elvis again.
"Sex,Drugs, Rock n' Roll and Chaos" is the (bastardized) title of the final track on this L.P , featuring Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis and Ian Dury) and it's a pretty damn good summary of the whole enterprise. The enterprise was to gather the eminent Stiff artists of 1977 and send 'em off all together on a package tour like Motown did with its stars back in the sixties.
Those Motown shows were, witnesses say, professional, polished performances whereas the Stiff shows were, often, a shambles albeit a glorious shambles. Look at those lovable losers grinning out at you from the cover, as if to say, "We were third tier sloggers but now we've got a shot at the top." Sure enough, everyone of those grinners, save Wallis, took a serious shot at the pop charts, all with some, if varying, levels of success.
Nick Lowe's was long known for his love of just bashing the music out (hence that "Basher' nick name). That reckless spirit, which made Nick a conduit between the old pubsters and the angry kids, permeates this record. Nick's prominent on both versions of the cover (with poor E.C. hiding at the back). Nick's tunes here include his best released version of "I Knew the Bride" and a fun obscurity, "Let's Eat", Wreckelss Eric's songs - "Reconez Cherie" and "Semaphore Signals" are a bloody mess (and bloody good - much more here) while Elvis C. and the Attraction attack "Miracle Man" and, shades of Imperial Bedroom, cover Bacharch-David's "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". Larry Wallis only gets to play his best song ("Police Car") so that polio survivor and funky eccentric Ian Dury can get three songs (counting that pile-on version of "Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll" that ends the album). Enjoy this raw document because it seems impossible to imagine prominent label nowadays with a roster of such resolute individuals surviving.
True, London Calling and The Clash remain the band's most crucial works. However, as distillation of each Clash man's strengths; Paul Simonon's dubby bass, Mick Jones' spidery riffs, Topper Headon's dense beats and Joe Strummer's malaria-fever dream spiels, the song "Straight to Hell" is unbeatable .
The song was recorded on New Year's Eve 1980 for a planned double album entitled, Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg (later judiciously pruned by legendary rock producer Glynn Johns into the single, if uneven album, Combat Rock). When released as a double A-sided single with "Should I Stay or Should I Go?", that hit completely overshadowed "Straight to Hell". Like a sleeper cell, the song waited, gaining strength, till now, twenty-some years later, when between M.I.A., Lilly Allen, Josh Rouse not to mention Elvis Costello and Jakob Dylan, "Straight to Hell" is ubiquitous.
I came to the song through a T-shirt. In early eighties Winnipeg, a pre-teen heard the Clash in fragments; a radio track here, a stolen cassette there and even that friend's-sister's-husband's L.P. of London Calling with the blessed lyrics sheet! And T-shirts. That skull n' bullets icon and that blunt order, "Straight To Hell" conjured up a raging Clash anthem attacking religious sectarianism. So imagine my shock and disappointment upon discovering that the song was a lengthy, somber Asian-reggae ballad.
I soon saw the error of my snap judgment. The music is hot, sweaty, tense and claustrophobic - The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now transmuted from celluloid to vinyl. Everything's percussive; Mick's playing congas with sticks, Joe's beating a lemonade bottle wrapped in a towel against Topper's bass drum and at one point Joe's panting drowns out everything.
Lyrically, Strummer is at the summit of his power, channelling the raw voices of Woody Guthrie, Allan Ginsberg and Bob Dylan into a seething and menacing State of the World address that roams from Britain to Vietnam to America.The song's brutal account of the world's indifference to its outcasts, makes it like a modern version of Woody Guthrie's, "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)", which decried American mistreatment of Mexican migrant workers back in the forties. This compassion, melded to to such startlingly original music, is what keeps the song alive; after all, the poor, the homeless and the dispossessed are not only still with us, they're now pounding on our doors.
The Clash - Straight to Hell (Live from New York!)
Now, for the masochistic-obsessive, MRML presents twenty-two different versions of "Straight to Hell". You may listen in the jukebox below if you're really strong enough to endure it as one consecutive onslaught
{MRML READERS: Make sure to leave a comment on "Straight to Hell", the original or one of these covers!}
*A number of these songs are still in print, so if you do download them, for educational purposes only, please remove the files from your computer within forty-eight hours.
1. The Clash
This is edited 7" version - it's too damn short but check out that vinyl picture disc up above!
2. Elvis Costello and Jakob Dylan*
An Elvis and a Dylan (but the not the most iconic ones) make a curious combo that reveals the flexibility of a song, that did not sound so malleable on first listen. (Video here)
(*Thanks to Marky Dread for the nice rip)
3. Amy Loftus and Will Kimbrough
Americana Americans Amy and Will's may not have performed the only alt-country version of the song but it is amongst the most striking covers herein.
4. Steve Ketchen & the Kensington Hillbillies
These Canadians also play the song country-style (or as they describe it "Stan Makita at the Grand Ole Opry") but with more of a bluegrass feel.
5. Lilly Allen (feat. Mick Jones)
Lilly, Joe Strummer's god-daughter, got Mick Jones to sing and play on her cover, which has a few virtues, none of which include having come to any personal understanding of her Godfather's words.
6. M.I.A.
Brit-sensation M.I.A. didn't start the revival of this song but by using the guts of the song and adding a more violent take on the misery Strummer surveyed in his version, she created a 21st century anthem from it ("Paperplanes" video here).
7. Skinnerbox
Of course there's rocksteady version by these first-year Psych lovin' NYC'ers.
8. The Menzingers
While these boys from Scranton, PA pound the shit out of this song to great effect, they also succeed in making the original song seem even stronger.
9. The Pogues (with Joe Strummer)
This legendary Anglo-Irish band did a full-blooded Celtic-punk run-through of the song live (seeing it almost stopped my heart) but none of the recorded versions really capture that intensity.
10. Phil CodySomewhere between Dan Bern and Ani Difranco in the nineties New Dylan sweepstakes was Phil Cody, a performer of singular intensity. (video here) 11.Emm Gryner
Emm must have figured that if Tori Amos had gained fame by tinkling the ivories on an alternative rock anthem (see Tori's version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit") then she could ten-up Tori with an album of alt-rock standards called Girl Versions and so she did.
12. Josh Rouse
American singer-songwriter gives the song a Valium.
13.Bill Janovitz
This former leader of Buffalo Tom does a kinda bare-bones, college-dorm version but with just a hint of malice.
14. Balsam
These Swedish pals of the Hives performed a credible version during what seems like it must've been a pretty burning night of tributes to Joe.
15. Chum
SoCal band make the song instrumental surf-rock.
16. Joe Strummer and Latino Rockabilly WarThis song was a constant in Joe's repertoire and one always senses that he understood that it was one of his crowning achievements. (Mescaleros video here)
17. Red Letter Day
This U.K. band (in 1991, they played the Clash to Mega City Four's Buzzcocks) try to make "Straight to Hell" sound like an outtake from Give 'Em Enough Rope with a little less success than I'd have wished for.
18. Cienfuegos
Argentinean band do a Latin-tinged version partly sung in Spanish, all of which woulda made Joe happier than a pig in shit. 19. Moby feat. Heather Nova
In case you haven't heard enough moody version yet, let a former member of of the Vatican Commandoes and Bermudan-Canadian alterna-chick Heather Nova do one more.
20. Hot Club de Paris
At first this U.K. band's acoustic Brit-pop version is just sorta there but it grows on you...
21. The Great Depression
My fellow Danes (on my father's side anyway) do a quiet, menacing take, which reminds me a bit of the National's version of "Clampdown".
22. The Clash
The whole 6:52 one from Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg, later released on The Clash on Broadway box set.
The Clash - Straight to Hell (live at the US festival, 1983)
Straight to Hell
(The Clash)
If you can play on the fiddle
How's about a British jig and reel?
Speaking King's English in quotation
As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust
water froze
In the generation
Clear as winter ice
This is your paradise
There ain't no need for ya
Go straight to hell boys
Y'wanna join in a chorus
Of the Amerasian blues?
When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City
Kiddie say papa papa papa papa-san take me home
See me got photo photo
Photograph of you
Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Of you and Mamma Mamma Mamma-san
Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood bamboo kid
It ain't Coca-Cola it's rice
Straight to hell
Oh Papa-san
Please take me home
Oh Papa-san
Everybody they wanna go home
So Mamma-san says
You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime U.S.A.?
In Parkland International
Hah! Junkiedom U.S.A.
Where procaine proves the purest rock man groove
and rat poison
The volatile Molatov says
PSSST...
HEY CHICO WE GOT A MESSAGE FOR YA...
VAMOS VAMOS MUCHACHO
FROM ALPHABET CITY ALL THE WAY A TO Z, DEAD, HEAD
Go straight to hell
Can you really cough it up loud and strong
The immigrants
They wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere
Most likely could be any frontier
Any hemisphere
No man's land and there ain't no asylum here
King Solomon he never lived round here
Go straight to hell boys
"Straight to Hell", it should not be forgot, also begat a wretchedly wonderful Alex Cox punk rock spaghetti western (in which Joe stars) - you'll get the idea from this scene.
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
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Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
