Chicago Reader, March 22, 1979: Difference between revisions
(fix scan error) |
(+text part 3) |
||
Line 17: | Line 17: | ||
What's so funny 'bout this purposefully abrasive approach to career-building is that it has worked in today's Bee Gees world. The difference between Costello and England's other angry New Wave pugs, of course, is that his songs arc resolutely tuneful pieces that owe great and tangible debts to the best pop-rock of the original British Invasion. Consequently, what was significant about his sold-out Aragon appearance wasn't the sheer number of fans, but that many of them were younger rockers who previously had tended to reject the new music as attitudizing without attendant showbiz panache. Hard to believe, but the kids still don't know that the Ramones have more intrinsic value than glam-bang bands like Angel. Costello's refusal to become the New Wave's darling has allowed him to walk the line between cult music And mass entertainment, and his recent successes have put him on the brink of combining these heretofore incompatible audiences. | What's so funny 'bout this purposefully abrasive approach to career-building is that it has worked in today's Bee Gees world. The difference between Costello and England's other angry New Wave pugs, of course, is that his songs arc resolutely tuneful pieces that owe great and tangible debts to the best pop-rock of the original British Invasion. Consequently, what was significant about his sold-out Aragon appearance wasn't the sheer number of fans, but that many of them were younger rockers who previously had tended to reject the new music as attitudizing without attendant showbiz panache. Hard to believe, but the kids still don't know that the Ramones have more intrinsic value than glam-bang bands like Angel. Costello's refusal to become the New Wave's darling has allowed him to walk the line between cult music And mass entertainment, and his recent successes have put him on the brink of combining these heretofore incompatible audiences. | ||
These speculations would be so much banter were it not for Costello's already formidable recorded repertoire, for without the beat, his ranting manner would be seen as so much posturing. Musically, Costello is a stone-hard classicist, a Buddy Holly for this brave new world. The Holly allusion is not considered lightly — both men write songs that weave complicated webs with simple threads, juggling basic chord and chord and rhythm patterns --?-- --?-- toward creating --?-- --?-- --?--. Their --?-- --?-- --?-- --?-- --?-- verse-and-chorus structures are thrown into the mixmaster, and out come songs that are nothing more or less than three minutes of rhythmic persuasion. Costello knows, as Holly did, that great rock and roll need be nothing more. Within this songwriting approach, the two men struck upon disarmingly similar lyrical approaches. Though In a philosophical sense they are worlds apart — Holly's world view pitted his Youthful romantic bombast again an unreceptive adult world, while Elvis operates out of a paranoid scenario where both literal and romantic politics have already corrupted each other — they composed with the belief that their world could be sufficiently defined within a snappy beat. | |||
Revision as of 23:53, 14 October 2016
![]()
|
Photo by Paul Natkin.
![]()
|