Bulldog

Well, this didn't take long did it Sorry for the lateness of this one - I've been cut off from the internet for the last week or so...


As someone who admittedly maybe listens to a bit too much of the guy's music over so many other rich and deep back-catalogues available at his fingertips thanks to the wonders of teh interwebz (just have a look at my lastfm profile for proof), recommending one Elvis Costello album and one only to a newbie who, credit to him/her/it, is cool enough to want to check the guy out, always makes for quite an annoyingly difficult task. I've said before however many times I might have done (even in this thread alone) that there's so much more to the man than the bespectacled face on Oliver's Army, or the one that croons at you over the credit sequence for that godawful Notting Hill flick or whatever (I'm sure any fanboys would say the same about their respective artists of choice, but hey). Usually, I find it's the earlier stuff that makes for the best starting point, but the trouble with that is that, more often than not, it'll lead to someone picking up a copy of My Aim Is True, listening to it about 50 times in 48 hours and not really wanting to go any further than that, thinking that that's as good as it gets with Costello. As you may have noticed from my feeling the need to start this thread in the first place, that attitude irks me a little.

It irks me to the point that I'd gladly tell anyone not to get My Aim Is True to start out, but instead seek out a copy of this compilation. Taking Liberties is, of course, not some slap-dash best of released very early in a prolific artist's career (Costello had only been a professional musician for some 3 or 4 years when Columbia released this), but is instead a fascinating and very, very worthwhile compilation of the classic sounds of the earlier, new wave Elvis Costello that you have to look a it harder for than, say, Watching the Detectives, Pump It Up, Peace Love and Understanding or whatever. Every song on this compilation makes for what I'd call a good song at the very least myself as well. It's a superb collection of B-sides, one-offs, demo versions, region-specific releases and other rarities which provides the perfect snapshot of Elvis Costello at the start of what's turned out (and is continuing) to be a very prolific career.

Thanks to the frankly marvellous reissue campaign than Costello and Rhino Music have taken on over the last 10-15 years, and all the enthusiastic digging through the vaults required, all these songs aren't so hard to find as they once were, which is just fine really as, like I said, this compilation can easily stand on its own two feet as a very fine album. As I've also already said, this album encapsulates the best known new wave sound of Costello, and was released just before the man started to experiment with jazz, torch music, classical and so on. Frankly, this album should be on your to-do list if only for three of the songs which easily stand among Costello's finest. Two of these are outtakes from the wonderful Get Happy album, the gorgeous ballad Just a Memory and the uplifting Getting Mighty Crowded. Crawling To the USA, recorded for the soundtrack of the 1979 Americathon movie, is another one of Costello's very best, being a great, jovial slice of surf pop. Other highlights include the demo of Black and White World (which, incidentally, is much better than the version recorded for Get Happy), all of the outtakes from Armed Forces (especially the ambitious Wednesday Week and the pumping Clean Money), the jazz standard My Funny Valentine, the lively This Year's Model outtake Big Tears, among others.

Basically, if you're looking for a good starting point for Costello, or even a few of the slightly rarer songs or just an encapsulation of the man's early sound, get this album - it'll do you a world of good. It should prepare you nicely for all the wonderful music the man would record over the following 10 years.


A quick word about something else that's been on my mind and is vaguely relevant to this thread as well...


^ How cool is that cover? I just love it myself - a terrific work of photography if ever I saw one. Alright, I'm not exactly an anorak when it comes to photography myself, but the grim, downbeat kinda sense I get everytime I look at that picture is always there for me. If I was in a particularly pretentious mood, I'd call it a picture that radiates a very gentle, mellow atmosphere. It's something about the black and white setting, the puddles on the sidewalk, the glistening of the rainfall onto the cobbled road in the old-fashioned looking, suburban setting which is almost inspirational to me.

Shame the album beneath it's so boring. Not bad exactly, just...y'know, boring. I've already been through all this earlier in the thread, but I'm just listening to this again now. Don't take my word for it though - what I find boring is probably fantastic to some. As a matter of fact, it is. I remember when I used to hang around the closest thing Elvis Costello's got to an official message board, and this album would get quite a bit of praise over there. I've seen a few glowing reviews on amazon as well. Anyway, the reason I'm listening to it again as I type this is that I've finally got a hold of an audio rip of this lovely song...


...which I think is something that really should've made the album named after it rather than being left in relative obscurity as a bonus track on the Japanese issue of this album. Also, talking of not taking my word for gospel, I played that song to a mate of mine a few years back and he totally hated it, so there ya go. The other two outtakes, the jazzy Too Blue and the lively Impatience, are easily a couple more of the best songs from the North sessions.

Anyway, I've gone on quite long enough here. I just needed to get all that off my chest