Life can be a joke, but I’m mostly not joking and most of my jokes are aimed at me (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
Elvis Costello had a drunken, unfortunate issue with the worst racist word. I don’t think many remember it now, but it was a big deal then.
I like to say “Don’t be offended unless someone is trying to offend you.”
Elvis Costello was trying to offend the people he said it to.
It concerned Ray Charles and I think Elvis Costello even loved Ray Charles at the time.
The people he tried to offend were offended, and they told others to be offended and it put his career on the brink. I don’t even mind that they were offended, and I don’t even mind that they put his career on the brink.
Who knows the agenda of the offended? Who knows Elvis’ agenda other than that he was drunk, but he probably would have said it sober.
Alcohol. I’ve never understood it, but it’s never worked for me like it’s worked for others. Other stuff has worked for me.
I don’t think he apologized but he said,
“It became necessary for me to outrage these people with the most offensive and obnoxious remarks I could muster to bring the argument to a swift conclusion and rid myself of their presence.”
My heroes admit when they are wrong and update their views. Worst case everyone is wrong, and you just have to keep a distance.
Apologies are just words. Actions speak louder than words. Elvis was defiant. I’m often defiant. Take it all in the way you want to take it in, but do it honestly with some rigor. If you do, you did the right thing for you, and you are right.
Elvis Costello likes to make ambiguous jokes. Trying to save his career covering this would have been a pretty funny ambiguous joke.
Actually, Ray Charles said, “Drunken talk isn’t meant to be printed in the paper.”
I don’t know whether it does or not, but I know how large the headlines are and how large the retractions are.
His next album was defiant and filled with jokes, but I don’t think it was a joke.
The title alone was better than a forced, career-saving apology.
The album didn’t really save his career that much.
It’s 20 songs, all kind of in the Ray Charles R&B vernacular, most under two and a half minutes.
Having that many songs on a vinyl LP was thought to make the vinyl LP sound worse at the time.
Everything about it is career destroying.
It was defiant. Who knows if it was an honest apology or a joke? I don’t think he knows now or did then.
When it was reissued in 2003, probably no one remembered the controversy, but he wrote in the liner notes (I miss liner notes), “It might have been tempting to claim that I had some noble motive in basing this record on the music that I had admired and learned from prior to my brush with infamy. But if I was trying to pay respects and make such amends, I doubt if pride would have allowed me to express that thought after I had made my rather contrived explanation … I simply went back to work and relied on instinct, curiosity, and enduring musical passions”
John Lennon often wrote about pride. The time you’ve heard the most is:
You know it’s up to you
I think it’s only fair
Pride can hurt you too
Apologize to her
Did you hear it or listen?
I don’t know how many copies Get Happy!! sold, I don’t really care, and I didn’t hear it until I was usually buying albums that didn’t make it past the top 100.
I don’t buy many albums at all anymore. I used to know the entire top 100 singles charts, had heard them all and had opinions on all of its entries.
I couldn’t name one song in the top 100 now if my life depended on it. I’m not proud that my yearning for new music has died through laziness and other concerns.
I still love Get Happy!!
Elvis Costello didn’t sound anything like R&B when everyone loved him.
He didn’t sound very R&B on Get Happy!!
It wasn’t a joke, but there were tons of jokes. Most of them were funny and productive. Most were aimed at himself and productive.
The video for the first single a cover of a little known Sam and Dave song called “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down” is a hilarious joke aimed at himself (just the title alone was).
Still doesn’t sound very R&B still sounds like Elvis Costello and the Attractions. The lyrics are both defiant and apologetic.
Elvis and his band are trying to dance like the Temptations. They aren’t making fun of the Temptations. They just can’t dance. They even paid someone to help them dance like the Temptations. They just can’t dance.
Some people looked into Sam and Dave after and some didn’t.
Then there was this cover of another song no one had heard, which started out as a black song, the biggest hit version of it may have been recorded by one of the whitest bands ever, and then Isaac Hayes recorded an 11 minute version. Elvis Costello recorded an Elvis Costello version under two minutes. Who knows which of them he used as his source? Probably, all of them.
Hilarious. All of it.
“I stand accused and I’m guilty, baby I always will be!”
“So guilty baby, I stand accused of loving you!”
Not even his words and Elvis Costello is one of the most gifted wordsmiths of all time.
These are his words and I love them.
You won`t take my love for tender
You can put your money where your mouth is
But you`re so unsure
I could be a miser or a big spender
But you might get much more than you bargained for
Checking on a checkmate
Grassing on a classmate
So beautiful and fortunate
You`re the one who hates to love
But he`s the one who loves to hate
He can fix you all for good
Because he is the neighborhood
You can get money for blood
Blood money for doing no good
Better tell me now, have you made your selection?
Are you ready for correction?
Cause the wages of sin are an expensive infection
It`ll make you bankrupt
Better pay up now, don`t interrupt
So in love, I`m so sincere
Just like a well-known financier
You know I’ve never been corrupt
I`ll pay you a compliment
And you`ll think I am innocent
You can total up the balance sheet
And never know if I`m a counterfeit
You won`t take my love for tender!
He’s bashing on a lover for caring more about money than love. He used to do this all the time. He did it more often than Eminem would years later.
His best loved song at the time and probably still today is “Alison” and he’s upset that his lover didn’t choose him. He bashes her a bit but he was pretty sympathetic at the end.
When I hear the silly things that you say.
I think somebody better put out the big light,
Cause I can’t stand to see you this way.
Alison, I know this world is killing you.
Oh, Alison, my aim is true.
My aim is true.
The thing I like most about “Love for Tender” is how many thematic puns he fits into under two minutes to bash his lover for her choice. It’s got to be over 20, but I won’t count because I probably can’t catch them all. Just for a joke, I did count. I pasted it into Microsoft Word and tried to eliminate the 172 words that didn’t fit the theme. I couldn’t find any!
Not even in “But your so unsure.”
Surety: Noun “a person who takes responsibility for another’s performance of an undertaking, for example, their appearing in court or the payment of a debt.”
It’s defiant. It has apologies. . It doesn’t sound like R&B. Sometimes all I can write about songs is “It kicks all kind of ass” and it does. He tells you that you can’t even believe whether he is telling the truth.
You shouldn’t trust him. Elvis Costello isn’t even his real name!
Later he released this.
I don’t have or want a rhyming dictionary, but if I need one, I either want it to be written by Elvis Costello or it to be a copy of the one Elvis Costello has.
They tried to teach me thematic puns in high school, and I didn’t want to listen. All the while, I was listening to music full of thematic puns. I don’t remember whether understood that at the time or not. Probably, a little bit.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to teach thematic puns to kids with that song. I can’t because I don’t have an advanced degree, my degree isn’t even in English, and even my nieces and nephews want to listen to their own music.
So if I have to teach them thematic puns, I have to do it with their music. They are there, even if I have to sift through all the F bombs; even if the thematic puns are about trying getting laid, and in between the singer just singing “I’m trying to F bomb you baby.”
Life is a joke.
Artists do what artists do, which is usually, defiantly whatever they want to do.
Laugh at it all.
Get Happy!!
Aristotle: Happiness depends on ourselves.
That’s a joke. I’ve never read any Aristotle. I was just taught that he often wrote about happiness.
Get Happy!!
