UC San Diego Daily Guardian, April 4, 1980: Difference between revisions
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'''''Get Happy!!'' transcends new wave with his own voice, singing against dehumanizers | '''''Get Happy!!'' transcends new wave with his own voice, singing against dehumanizers | ||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
Since a lot of rock critics have burnt the midnight oil trying to justify their calling The Clash's ''London Calling'' record the hottest double record set since Exiles On Mainsheet, I've been tempted t& retaliate with my own declaration. Elvis Costello's It record, ''Get Happy!!'' (I would | Since a lot of rock critics have burnt the midnight oil trying to justify their calling The Clash's ''London Calling'' record the hottest double record set since Exiles On Mainsheet, I've been tempted t& retaliate with my own declaration. Elvis Costello's It record, ''Get Happy!!'' (I would have written) is the greatest double rock record since ''Blonde On Blonde''. With the gauntlet thrown to the floor, warring factions would man the ramparts and try to pick each other off with sniper-tongued pot-shots. | ||
This is all nonsense, of course, nonsense on two counts. First, despite the fact that ''Get Happy!!'' contains 20 songs, it is in fact a single record with 10 selections per side, where Dylan's double set'' Blonde On Blonde'', with several songs going well over three minutes, holds less material. | This is all nonsense, of course, nonsense on two counts. First, despite the fact that ''Get Happy!!'' contains 20 songs, it is in fact a single record with 10 selections per side, where Dylan's double set'' Blonde On Blonde'', with several songs going well over three minutes, holds less material. | ||
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Costello is a songwriter of course, and one wouldn't belabor a comparison between him and Goddard beyond a simple point: like Godard, Costello shuffles music styles and makes use of them the way ''he'' wants. He does this through his lyrics, which along with Steely Dan's are the most disturbing, dense and difficult in rock. Often times, Costello enjoys writing a lyric with no literal meaning against a melody that evokes something else entirely. In "Secondary Modern," with a soft croon over a melody that could pass for some of the blander efforts of Jackson Browne, Costello sings: ''"This must be the place / Second place in the human race / Down in the basement / Now I know what he meant / Secondary modern / Won't be a problem / Iii the girls go home..."'' The melody, as pleasing as anything else could be, says one thing, but the lyrics, full of sparse details and indirect innuendo, deny that pleasure. Costello's aim seems to be to set us up in the visceral plane, and then to pull the rug out from under us once the words sink in. Dangerous activity. | Costello is a songwriter of course, and one wouldn't belabor a comparison between him and Goddard beyond a simple point: like Godard, Costello shuffles music styles and makes use of them the way ''he'' wants. He does this through his lyrics, which along with Steely Dan's are the most disturbing, dense and difficult in rock. Often times, Costello enjoys writing a lyric with no literal meaning against a melody that evokes something else entirely. In "Secondary Modern," with a soft croon over a melody that could pass for some of the blander efforts of Jackson Browne, Costello sings: ''"This must be the place / Second place in the human race / Down in the basement / Now I know what he meant / Secondary modern / Won't be a problem / Iii the girls go home..."'' The melody, as pleasing as anything else could be, says one thing, but the lyrics, full of sparse details and indirect innuendo, deny that pleasure. Costello's aim seems to be to set us up in the visceral plane, and then to pull the rug out from under us once the words sink in. Dangerous activity. | ||
Lack of space makes it impossible to go into a song-by-song account, but here are some of the choice tracks. "Motel Matches," set in a gospel vein, is abstracted teenage heartbreak, an implied story of a lover's concern for his girlfriend's | Lack of space makes it impossible to go into a song-by-song account, but here are some of the choice tracks. "Motel Matches," set in a gospel vein, is abstracted teenage heartbreak, an implied story of a lover's concern for his girlfriend's loose ways. "Opportunity," a jaunty tune in a stiff gallop tempo that concerns, incredible enough, the Hider and Mussolini baby boom campaigns. "Man Called Uncle," is an excellent hard rocker where Costello condemns beautiful people who've resigned their free-will so that they could become mere sexual play things to rich people, and expressing a tacit yearning for real love without usury. | ||
Costello's main theme throughout is that he's against anything that keeps people from becoming the human being he'd like to see them become, against those institutions that divide people, denatures them, turns them into a mindless horde that consumes, kills, and continually destroy each other. | |||
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Revision as of 20:41, 20 January 2016
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