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.
And now, everything I know about football (a.k.a. soccer):
Doo-di-dooo
Well that was informative wasn't it? I'm glad some of my well-spoken readers like a bit of footie (okay, okay no more attempts to use the lingo) and they can fix any mistakes I'm about to make. Speaking of mistakes, "Badge of Honour", the latest single from London's the Guitar Gangsters, belonged on my Best of 2009, it just got lost in the (iPod) shuffle. Thanks to Angry over at the delectable Days of our Youth for the recommendation.
I've known about the Guitar Gangsters (whose name always makes me think that English is their second language for some reason) for years. After all, they've been around since the late eighties neo-punk scene with such bands as Mega City Four and Red Letter Day. However, despite their slick Kray triplets image, their Cocksparrer-ish brand of punk always sounded a bit workmanlike to me.
After hearing the defiant roar of "Badge of Honour", I dug into their back catalog (including the scorching Razor Cuts compilation) a bit and pulled out this plum from 2000. It's a roughing-up of Sidney Carter's 1963 hymn, "Lord of the Dance". It might be a bit gospel-punk (a genre I've spent years trying to prove exists) but this is primarily religion as a metaphor for sport. On track four the GG's, never big on subtlety, strip the metaphor away for the so-called "Euro-Mix 2000" in which the words to "Lord of the Dance" are changed to being literally about football (and that's my cue to stop writing).
MRML can't apologize for being a mostly white-punks-on-guitars blog. It's not deliberate, it's just what we know! If I understood more kinds of music, for our current purposes let's say contemporary hip-hop, this might be a more well-rounded blog. But it ain't gonna happen any time soon. You see, keeping up with punk rock is like following a soap opera, tune in every few years and marvel at how little the plot lines have changed ("Johnny Rotten still thinks he's the ne plus ultra of punk?", "MaximumRocknRoll still thinks that music was perfected in 1981?", "Pennywise put out that exact same album again?"). But following hip-hop is like following IT developments - yesterday's coolest cutting edge is today's laughably-dated cast-off.
So don't mistake the Goats appearance here for tokenism (that might be my long-promised Kool Moe Dee vs. LL Cool J series). No, the Goats ferocious debut single from 1992 (!!) oughta appeal to most self-respecting punks. Rather than give a stumbling account of the multi-ethnic Philadelphia-bred Goat's place in hip-hop history, I'll tell you why they belong in the punk pantheon. Better yet, check it out yourself - that chanted chorus, that snotty anti-authoritarianism ("the hell with Stormin' Norman, I write rhymes Black, they be political and plus they be all of that"), that Stiff Little Fingers shirt!
The history of punk and hip-hop, both aggressive, seventies New-York bred musical rebellions, frequently intersected - from the Clash's "Magnificent Seven" to Blondie's "Rapture" to Afrika Bambata's "World Destruction" to Public Enemy's noise and the Beastie Boys entire shtick. That intersection was fruitful, except where it turned into outright cultural theft. Or as Dennis Miller (back when he was a comic) once said, "Oh behalf of all white people, I'd like to apologize for Vanilla Ice. We're sorry, we didn't know he was going to to do that. He didn't say anything about it at any of the meetings".
Don't leave the house without MRML's New Year's gift stapled onto your iPod (oh that wasn't the verb I needed was it?) Last time we dedicated a post to Die Toten Hosen we said "they have for decades have ruled the charts of their native Germany by mixing the swagger of glam rock, the aggro of '77 punk and and the sing-along choruses of schlager (a central and Northern European easy listening genre whose name sounds like a portmanteau of schmaltz and lager for good reason). Now I'm going to send you sprawling into 2010 with the sound of the Dead Pants (en anglais) curb-stomping Guy Lombardo.
It's a riotous 2:32 that, in tribute to "Auld Lang Syne's" Scottish author, Robbie Burns, has bagpipes alongside the loud guitars. Die Toten Hosen's take on this old folk standard recalls the Sex Pistols derangement of "Friggin' in the Riggin", there's even an exact moment where you can imagine someone shouting "Give it some bollocks" just before the song goes into overdrive. Who cares if the boys add some 'new' verses about "pubs in Inverness" when the song's such a blast?
The rest of this 1999 E.P. is filled out with two fine-sounding Deutsch sing-alongs as well as an unplugged versions of "Auld Lang Syne" and "Little Drummer Boy".
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.
(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.)
