Bulldog

Maybe Busy Bodies isn't so bad as a lot of other songs I could mention. I wouldn't say any of the Armed Forces tracks are, no matter how weak I think they are in comparison to, say, Oliver's Army, Two Little Hitlers, Peace Love & Understanding etc. Each song does have its merits, but one thing I've always disliked about Busy Bodies is that lyric. It just uses different kinds of wordplay to say the same thing - promiscuity wears you out. It wouldn't be so bad, but if the musical backing or melody isn't that strong (to me, anyway), it just comes off as a bit pompous and clever-clever if it comes across as just showing off like that, which is why I love the simplicity of the Party Girl lyric so much. Any bloke who's never felt like the character in that song simply hasn't lived.

If there's a positive to leaving Clean Money off AF, it's that it ended up as an even better song on a much better album. You'll often find Costello recycling his more obscure lyrics and musical ideas like that. There's one outtake from Trust called Twenty-Five To Twelve which gets revamped several times before it appears as the Invisible Man on Punch the Clock - not the best album it could've ended up on, unfortunately.

Yeah, I've got all the double-disc reissues of the man's albums, and they're basically all worth the trouble of finding hard copies of if only for the sheer effort that's gone into them. There's an accompanying essay penned by Costello himself to each album from My Aim Is True up to All This Useless Beauty which are each very in-depth and anecdotal, and really give you your money's worth.

And that's not even taking all the demos and outtakes into account either. The Get Happy one's just great. To be honest I never really listen to the demos that much, but I can tell you that the demo for Black and White World is much better than the album version - one of the very few weak points on Get Happy. Two of the outtakes, namely Getting Mighty Crowded, Just a Memory and an absolutely gorgeous, slow-burning version of I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down are some of my favourite Costello songs ever.

Trust had some fantastic songs left off it, so you should definitely look out for that reissue too. There's a song on it called Sad About Girls which is my joint-favourite song that Costello's ever sung (along with Six-Fingered Man on the River In Reverse). Seriously, as a Costello fan, you just have to find a way of listening to it. I'd offer to upload them for you, but for some reason I only uploaded the actual outtakes from the sessions to my computer and didn't bother with the demos, and my hard copies are on the other side of the country! Nevertheless, if you want the bits of the package I've got on me at the moment, just let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

You should definitely look into both those reissues those, as they're well worth it. The packages even make Costello's weaker albums like Goodbye Cruel World, Punch the Clock and Kojak Variety worth the fuss too, as I find myself listening to all the bonus material supplied waaaaaay more than the albums themselves.

I know the feeling