Free: Wishing Well

The singles chart at the start of the Seventies, before glam rock's sparkly hands got around its throat, was an eclectic place and you sometimes found quite heavy bands like Free having hits.

And music moved on so quickly then that it's surprising to learn that Free's singer Paul Rodgers was in a school bond with Bruce Thomas of the Attractions. It feels like they should have come from different generations.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions: Watch Your Step

This is immaculate. And doesn't he know it?

It's a live performance on American TV in 1981, introduced by someone who's been specially flown in from 1961.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions: Watch Your Step

An immaculate live performance on American TV.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions: I Can't Stand up for Falling Down

Because of Ed Davey's innovative election strategy of being photographed falling off, or nearly falling off, as many things as possible, I've found myself thinking of this record.

I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down was originally recorded by the Stax artists Sam and Dave as a soul ballad in 1967.

But the version I know is this much more uptempo one recorded by Elvis Costello and the Attractions for their 1980 album Get Happy!! 

Released as a single, it reached no. 4 in the UK singles chart in February of that year. And it still sounds great.

As to Ed's falling-off-things strategy, I'm with Andrew Rawnsley:

There is method in his malarkey. Much of the battle for the Lib Dems is persuading the national media to pay them any attention. If he has to play the good-for-a-laugh centrist dad to get himself on TV and in the newspapers, he reckons the pratfalls are a sacrifice worth making. You aren’t going to see Sir Keir Starmer on a paddleboard. Since no one thinks Sir Ed is going to be prime minister, he doesn’t have to do the gravitas thing. He also looks like a man who is enjoying himself, which is more than can be said for the stolid electioneering of his rivals.

Elvis Costello: Brilliant Mistake

Brilliant Mistake was written for Elvis Costello's 1985 album King of America, and provides that album with its opening track and title.

The critics agree the song is about Costello's own experiences in the US, both infatuated with and repulsed by the society he found there.

Maybe it was the infatuation that saw him discard his usual backing band The Attractions for all but one of the album's tracks.

Costello says he wrote Brilliant Mistake with The Attractions' sound in mind, but was disappointed with what they made of it and used The Confederates, a group of US session musicians he put together for the album, instead.

Mavis Nicholson talks to J.G. Ballard

Was Michael Parkinson the greatest chat show host on British television? He certainly has a strong rival for that crown, and one who was active during his Seventies prime.

Here's Mavis Nicholson talking to J.G. Ballard and on afternoon television too. If you search YouTube you will find a goldmine of her interviews, with subjects from James Baldwin to Elvis Costello.

Maybe it's no coincidence that she and Parkinson began in the era before no one appeared on a chat show unless they had something to sell. Intelligent conversation with celebrities was, I think, more easily achieved in those innocent days.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Man Out of Time

There's a smell of decay about the Conservative Party and, far from refreshing things, its leadership contest is making that smell worse.

Which naturally leads to me to a song about political scandal and self-disgust.

Elvis explains:

A lot of songs are about the sort of disgust with your own self. There were a lot of things that I wasn’t very happy with during that time. I wanted songs to blow up the world. I had mad ambitions. Not mad as in "ambition to be famous". I never wanted that. That just came as an accident of it all. 

But somehow you look at yourself and you're not happy with what you see. I didn't want to write a self-regarding song, so I cast it in the clothes of political intrigue and what was going on in the world at that time. 

There was a famous political scandal in England going on then. It all sort of got wrapped up in the song. Sometimes a song will have a personal meaning and a public meaning. "Man Out of Time" is one of those.

There are many who name this as his best song. And Wikipedia says

The bulk of the song came from a one take performance that Costello later described as "among the best that the Attractions and I ever caught in a single take".

Paul Rodgers and Bruce Thomas were in the same band

Is it just because I'm older now that I think popular culture doesn't evolve as quickly as it used to?

I don't think it is entirely. Compare 1961 and 1971 and you might as well be comparing two different planets. Compare 2012 and 2022 and the differences are much more subtle, even if I'm not the best person to spot them.

The reason for this preamble is that I have found another conjunction of musicians from the Sixties and Seventies who feel like they come from different eras. Let's give it my Trivial Fact of the Day Award.

In the past I have blogged about Billy Fury singing David Bowie and about Helen Shapiro and Marc Bolan and Richard Thompson and Hugh Cornwell being in bands together at school.

So here goes with the new example. Paul Rodgers came to fame at the turn of the Seventies as the lead singer of Free. His first band, formed in his home town of Middlesbrough, was The Roadrunners, which also included Bruce Thomas, later the bass player in Elvis Costello's band The Attractions.

Which gives me an excuse to post this immaculate performance again.

Six of the Best 812

"And it was certainly a dramatic landslide – with diners in the National Liberal Club dancing on the tables as victory after victory was reported." Mark Pack on the 1906 Liberal landslide.

ConservativeHome is a hotbed of Conservative Islamophobia, says Simon Childs.

Adam Segal looks at the prospect of China becoming a cyber super-power: "If this happens, the Internet will be less global and less open. A major part of it will run Chinese applications over Chinese-made hardware. And Beijing will reap the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington."

What went wrong with the Ben Stokes trial? The Secret Barrister explains.

JohnBoy pays tribute to the publisher John Calder: "John, who has died at the age of 91, was in his late twenties in the late 1950s when let in the light on dreary post-war Britain with his publication of a flood of progressive foreign writers and became the scourge of its conservative literary establishment in the process."

You can watch Elvis Costello and his band Flip City playing in 1974 on Open Culture.

Elvis Costello: Watching the Detectives

A fantastic live performance from 1978.

Later. If had had more time this morning I'd have said something pretentious like: "I always suspected this was a greater song than the studio version made it sound. This live version proves I was right."

Robert Wyatt: Heaps of Sheeps

Robert Wyatt is a sort of Gandalf of the music scene, but I find a little of his voice goes a long way.

I prefer, for instance, Elvis Costello's version of Shipbuilding to Wyatt's, though I'm not sure the cool kids would agree with me.

This track I do like though. It comes from Robert Wyatt's 1997 album Shleep, It is a collaboration with Brian Eno.

Trivial note. Robert Wyatt is the half brother of the actor Julian Glover, Their mother Honor Wyatt, a friend of the novelist Barbara Pym, adapted several of Malcolm Saville's children's books for BBC radio.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions: All This Useless Beauty

There has been a meme going around Twitter inviting people to confess their unpopular opinions.

I was going to tweet that I regard the Beatles as no better than half a dozen other British bands of their era, but I am not sure how unpopular that would be today.

So let me say instead that "The Beatles" was a really lame name for a band.

I could also say that I listen to Elvis Costello often but never list to Elvis Presley, but I suspect I am not alone in that in my generation.

And people much younger than us probably don't listen to either.

Six of the Best 630

"Is it possible for someone to crave something for so long, and then be deluded about why it happened? To strive and strive, only for the country to fall into a different, meaner, poorer future?" Sam Knight profiles Daniel Hannan, the man who brought you Brexit.

'Baby-boomer' is thrown about a lot these days, usually in a pejorative sense. But, as Flip Chart Rick explains, the concept does not really work in the UK.

"In her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, the American academic Deborah E. Lipstadt called David Irving, a British amateur historian, 'one of the most dangerous spokesmen for Holocaust denial'." Ian Buruma reviews Denial, a new film about Irving's unsuccessful libel action.

Jim Burt celebrates the rise of outdoor learning.

Elvis Costello grew up in England but is an New Yorker at heart, says Wendell Jamieson.

Catherine Hokin examines the strange case of the green children of Woolpit.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Watch Your Step

When East Midlands Trains warned its passengers to "Watch Your Step" I used it as an excuse to post the Spencer Davis Group cover of the song of that name by Bobby Parker.

But in the comments on that post Asquith sent to me to this terrific song from Costello's fifth album (and fourth with the Attractions), Trust. Like the best of his early work, it is perfectly poised between beauty and menace.

The video shows a live performance on American television. Elvis Costello was interviewed, and it is amusing to see him encountering a chat show host from another era. Note also that in those days he had far more of a London accent than we are now used to hearing from him.

Elvis Costello

#86106614 / gettyimages.com

Photographed in his psychotic bank clerk period.

Elvis Costello: The Other Side of Summer

I find that I featured Elvis Costello here back in 2009, so it is high time to hear from him again.

The Other Side of Summer comes from Costello's 1990 album Mighty Like a Rose. It has always sounded to me like a Beach Boys track but one that evokes a very different landscape from Californian beaches of the early 1960s.

Read the sleeve notes for the album and you will see I more or less had it right:

This album opens with “The Other Side Of Summer”. The arrangement is a pastiche of The Beach Boys after the fashion of The Beatles’ “Back IN The U.S.S.R.” In our case, the music and vocal parts take their cue from some of their early ‘70s album tracks like “The Trader” and “Funky Pretty”. 

The words are a catalogue of pop conceits, deceits, hypocrisies, and delusions. I include myself in this parade of liars and dupes. The track was cut in the vast Studio One at Ocean Way, Hollywood, where most of this record was recorded. It features our own version of the “Wall of Sound”: drums, two basses, two guitars, and four keyboard players (including my own efforts on electric and toy pianos). When this proved insufficiently powerful, we simply double-tracked the entire rhythm section before adding the glockenspiel, castanets, sleigh bells, and the vocal parts. 

It is not easy to isolate one instrumentalist in such a large ensemble, but I must salute Larry Knetchel’s towering piano part. Larry’s piano, organ, and bass credits include “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Good Vibrations”, and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, although you could barely get a word out of him about having played on these legendary cuts. His modest demeanour and utterly musical sense lent a lot to these sessions.

New Seekers: Anthem (One Day a Week)

I have become increasingly addicted to the reruns of 25-year-old editions on Top of the Pops. In early 1977 the charts were in an odd state: glam rock, which had dominated the earlier years of the decade was over, and nothing had really taken its place. There is some disco, but there are also a lot of near-novelty records.

The current no. 1 from 25 years ago is Don't Give Up On Us by David Soul, whose popularity rested almost entirely as a fame as an actor in Starsky and Hutch.

Last week's edition had some pretty obscure songs, but as I was 16 when it was first broadcast I knew almost all of them. There was Romeo by Mr Big (who sound like a halfway point between Sailor and Yes) and Jack in the Box by the Moments (who, like many Black vocal groups from this era, now seem rather elderly to modern eyes - no wonder their music was sad and wise).

But there was one song I had forgotten: I Wanna Go Back by the New Seekers. In a way this was surprising, because the New Seekers had been a very successful group only a few years before. But if you heard that edition of Top of the Pops you will know that "forgettable" as the word for this song - in fact you have probably forgotten it.

The New Seekers were formed in 1969 by Keith Potger, a member of the original Seekers who had enjoyed enormous success in Britain in the 1960s. At first they had a slightly alternative vibe, but they then gained enormous fame with I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (which had begun life as I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke in a TV commercial).

After that they almost won Eurovision, before having a few hits which featured Lyn Paul banging out songs that were would-be standards or sounded as they had come from shows. Looking back, they sounded a little dated even at the time. By 1977 they were on the way out as a chart force, though I Wanna Go Back was a minor hit.

All this has been a prologue to say that last week's Top of the Pops led me to look at the New Seekers' discography and to discover another of their minor hits. Anthem was another minor hit from them in 1978 - and I certainly do remember it.

It has a very sixties feel, but that is not surprising as it turns out to be a cover of a song originally recorded by the Australian band Procession in 1967. It still sounds rather splendid today.

Stick with Top of the Pops 1967: Punk and New Wave will hit it later in the year. At the time they felt like a breakthrough to something new: with retrospect, I wonder if acts like The Jam and Elvis Costello were not a final flowering of the sixties pop sensibility before synthesisers and dance music took over

Half Man Half Biscuit: Fuckin' 'ell it's Fred Titmus

With The Duckworth Lewis Method being released tomorrow, it is time for this while it is still the best song about a spin bowler. (Thanks to Hywel, in a comment on that post, for the inspiration.) And here it is, live from Frome.

Half Man, Half Biscuit are a band from Birkenhead, known for their humorous lyrics (and humorous titles in particular) and concern with the minutiae of provincial life.

A 2001 Guardian article by Kevin Sampson gives a good portrait of the band, even if he does think that Fred Titmus is a "fiery Yorkshire pace legend".

As readers of this blog will know, Fred Titmus is a former Middlesex and England off spinner who was evacuated to Rutland as a child during World War II and the subject of a famous anecdote about amateurism and professionalism in cricket.

Lord Bonkers add: In fact, there have been many songs about spin bowlers:

• Single Bedi - Noosha Fox
• The Man with John Childs in his Eyes - Kate Bush
• Norwegian Underwood - The Beatles
• Take Me Home, Wilfred Rhodes - Olivia Newton John
• I'd Like to Teach the World to Singh - The New Seekers
• My Funny Valentine - Elvis Costello

The May 1979 meme

I appear to have become Iain Dale's go to man for memes as he has tagged me with another one.

How old were you?

19

What are your personal political memories, if you have any?

I was not involved in the campaign - my first election campaign was the council elections the following May where I helped a young Julian Cummins. I voted in Harborough by post (for the only time in living memory the Liberals finished third).

I also remember staying up all night watching the results. I suppose they should have been depressing for a Liberal, but in those days our expectations were so low that they did not seem that bad.

Political views held?

I had joined York Liberal students the previous October.

Where did you live?

Goodricke College, University of York.

School/College/Workplace?

I said Goodricke College, University of York.

Favourite TV programmes?

In those days the television room used to fill for Not the Nine O'Clock News, but I did not watch a lot of TV at York.

Favourite band/music/etc..?

It would have been The Jam and Elvis Costello. I was just starting to discover classical music too.

And I now tag Disgruntled Radical, Eaten by Missionaries, The Real Blog, Norfolk Blogger and Liberal Bureaucracy.

Elvis Costello: Radio Radio

With Youtube threatening to block UK access to its music videos, it is time to stop following tangents like Matt Monro and Carla Bruni. Back to serious music.

This grainy video of a live performance captures Elvis in his two-minute-single period, psychotic bank clerk period, when he was rumoured to be the only artist whose sales fell after he appeared on Top of the Pops. (For something more sophisticated try Man Out of Time or the recent When I was Cruel.)

Back in 1978 Elvis certainly was cruel. It his music and that of The Jam that reminds me most of my university years. Is it just me, or is the reputation of The Clash higher now than it was at the time?

Later. The original video disappeared, so here is a similar one.