The Festivus Gets The Best Of Us

It's like Christmas, only it's all herky, jerky and the ties are thinner.  A special, special thanks to my good friend Elke for this fantastic DVD:

It's hard for me to watch it, particularly the early eighties stuff, and not think:

a.)  oh yeah, that's where I learned to dance;

b.)  the pink socks, the razor thin tie, the big, horn-rimmed sunglasses...yeah, that explains every photograph ever taken of me in highschool;  and

c.) no one likes or appreciates, or has worse taste in music less than the suits at record companies.

They don't get the music, they don't like the music, they call it "units", and, if there's one lousy unrepresentative song on an album of twenty songs, they'll put it on MTV.

That doesn't have anything to do with this DVD.  It's fantastic!  It just made me laugh that someone actually thought it was a good idea to make a video out of "So Like Candy".  People who like Elvis didn't even like that song.

And nobody bothered to promote Blood And Chocolate at all.

Well, I don't make a living doing this.  So I don't have to be stupid.

One of my favorites, herky, jerky, New Wave thuggish--Mick Jones on guitar!  Never released this one.  No video.  And it's just as well. 

Some things are too good to ruin with bidness.  You know, they're better than all that.

Might be money under the bridge.  But I'd bet Elvis, himself, is just about glad.

Thanks, again, Elke.

Comments

[veronica]

Costello's only value to me is that he wrote a song called "Veronica," deflecting the need for me to mention a song of the same title by Onxy, which is horrifying and an irritant to Veronica's everywhere.

[ricky]

He also wrote a song called "Alison", which caused me to spend nearly a decade and a half trying desperately to marry a woman named Alison.

Just so I could play it for her on my guitar.

Veronica is a nice song, as well. Though, it's about a crazy old woman. So there's that, too.

[Elkit]

Ricky, my very good friend: my pleasure! I'm going to watch mine again now, with the commentary on. And then I'll have to watch about ten more times until I have figured out which one bit is my favorite. Right now, I am rooting for the duet with Daryl Hall.

[ricky]

The commentary is okay. The best part is during the video of "You Little Fool" when, at the end, Elvis is "acting" and his voice over tells us, "I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed."

And it's hilarious.

My favorites are still the early, amateur stuff. No money. No production. Everybody is drunk on the set.

It's totally pre-MTV, Brit punk/New Wave stuff.

It really took me back.

[Karen]

Love me some Elvis.

When I first got Blood & Chocolate, I played it nonstop -- just kept flipping the album over and over again. The girl in the dorm room next door complained frequently, but after that semester she dropped me a postcard to say that she ended up BUYING the damn album because she missed it so much!

[ricky]

I absolutely loved Blood And Chocolate. It was some wild holwing noise after the terrific, but understated King Of America.

And it was all the more amazing that Elvis could write and record and release Blood And Chocolate the same year as King of America.

I mean, most musicians, it takes them a couple of years to turn out a decent record.

Elvis? When he feels like it? He can turn out two great albums in the same year.

And neither of them sounds like the other.

My Blood And Chocolate story: once, when I was in highschool, I drove a long, long way, all the way from Connecticut to the Merriweather Post Pavillion to see Elvis Costello and the Attractions on the Goodbye, Cruel World Tour. Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit, featuring some of Graham Parker's Rumor and Squeeze's Paul Carrack, opened for him.

It was a great show. A week later, I caught his next show at Forrest Hills Stadium in Queens.

During the show, Elvis introduced a song by saying, "This one is brand new. I just wrote it."

And he launched into a really sarcastic Dylanesque song, that was so Dylanesque, in the music and lyrics, that everyone was laughing because we all felt like Elvis played a little trick on us and actually played some obscure Dylan B-side.

A couple years later, Blood And Chocolate came out and I hadn't even pulled the wrapper off the album before I recognized a song I had already heard.

It sounded totally different on the album. But it was the same song.

It's goofy. But I'm a fan. So I always got a huge kick out of the fact that I was one of few--twenty thousand or so--people who first heard that song.

Shut up! I know it's silly. But I already said: I'm a fan!

It's short for fanatic. A nice word for nut.

I'll always get a kick out of that.