I heard this song long before I heard it performed by Elvis Costello. In college, a friend’s band covered it in a very different arrangement (a little punk, a little Prince if I remember it correctly).
At the time I wondered where the guy had dug up this obscure Elvis Costello song. I had all of Costello’s albums by then and considered myself a serious fan, so it was weird to hear “new” material.
Today’s selection marks the end of the line for Elvis Costello’s studio album releases, but despite everybody’s assumptions yesterday, I’m not ready to shut down the Costello Weekends just yet.
Over the next couple of weeks I will feature some of the many B-sides and alternate tracks that Costello has released over the years. Each of the CD reissues of his albums contains a treasure trove of material — songs that wound up as other songs in vastly different forms, covers, discarded tracks that are better than the album’s they were cut from, all sort of marvelous odds and ends.
I’ll spend two weeks on those before retiring old Elvis and giving somebody else a shot.
A mere six months and 24 albums after I started the Elvis Costello weekends, I arrive at the man’s most recent album. 2010’s National Ransom picked up where Secret, Profane and Sugarcane left off, using the same musicians, similar styles and even nearly identical cover art.
But while the former album felt half-assed (by Elvis’ standards), National Ransom is a rich and resonant work — for my money, the most consistently great record he’s released since King of America.
Back in early July, 2008, the same month I started this Song of the Day series, I posted this video clip. It was the first song I ever posted on Meet Me In Montauk, just weeks before Meet Me In Montauk became dedicated to posting songs.
As such, I figured I’d give it an official spot in the lineup, and the honor of becoming my 1,000th Song of the Day.
My title for the original post was “Best. Performance. Ever.” and I stand by that lofty assessment of Fiona Apple’s interpretation of Elvis Costello’s classic ‘I Want You’ (with Elvis himself on guitar).
It’s funny that I’ve described Elvis Costello’s Secret, Profane and Sugarcane as “modest” and “minor” by his standards.
The opening track, ‘Down Among the Wine and Spirits,’ is introduced like this in the album’s elegant liner notes: “A Former-Champion Prize fighter Discovers His Name Printed Just Above The Liquor Licensee.”
Other songs on the album have similar introductory explainers: “A Dissatisfied Woman Fears Talking In Her Sleep,” “P.T. Barnum Reads An Abolitionist Pamphlet While Manufacturing Souvenirs Of The All-American Tour,” “Profane Adaptation Of Pious Song Performed By Acclaimed Nightingale,” you get the picture.
Meet Me In Montauk 