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My screenplays and one-act plays are now available from 1stbooks.com


Essays


Alfred Hitchcock
Anne Bradstreet--Her Personal Poems
Edward Albee's "The American Dream"
Edgar Allan Poe's Hidden Feelings
Henry Miller and Joseph Heller
Watching Elvis Costello
Images of Woody Allen
Elvis Costello (1977-1984)
Elvis and Juliet


Alfred Hitchcock: The Techniques He Uses
To Make Audiences React To His Films

Although Alfred Hitchcock has never won an Academy Award for directing motion pictures, he is still considered to be one of the finest directors living today. Books have been written about him by directors themselves who were trying to find out what makes Hitchcock tick. They all came to the same conclusion. Hitchcock has been able to consistently entice the audience into becoming a character on the screen. Through clever techniques, he enables the audience to actually have feelings for characters he develops. It seems Hitchcock has found that by merely forming characters on a realistic human level, audiences could accept them.

To Hitchcock, realism need not be simple. By approaching a theme from several directions, even the most basic situations can be transformed into crucial experiences with complex characters acting them out for the audience. Naturally, these characters must be formed expertly, and many directors cannot take this on, but Hitchcock can. Hitchcock has been known to "break the rules of the movie game." That is, he can cast highly respected actors and actresses and turn them into burglars, agents, and even murderers right before their fans' eyes. After seeing this, the audience is shocked, and thus, an effect is created by one of his films.

Hitchcock is also known to give the audience a "double surprise" in his films, and the second surprise is always more shocking than the first. An example of this was when Janet Leigh, a well-liked actress, played a thief in Hitchcock's Psycho. The audience was surprised at seeing her play a thief, and even more surprised when, while taking a shower, she is brutally stabbed by Anthony Perkins.

However, even though the characters, casting, and surprises in a movie might be good, the stories from which the characters were taken must also be good. Hitchcock chooses his stories (or screenplays, as they are referred to in Hollywood) from books that he has enjoyed, and from plays that he considers for audience enjoyment and adapts for the screen. Occasionally, Hitchcock writes a story for one of his own films.

Hitchcock has a way of taking a badly constructed story and turning it into an excellent film. He can create hypnotic atmospheres and outrageous events such as that even an occasional movie-goer will notice them. Having always pleased the audience, Hitchcock has received special recognition in that he is one of the few directors who has total control over the script, casting, and editing in his films. Certainly, this gives him an advantage over the many directors who must rely upon other people to do these jobs for them.

Hitchcock understands that if a director has all of the main aspects of filmmaking in his power, it is his main job to keep them under control. Even such small items as the soundtrack, synchronization, and publicity of a film must not be forgotten. Many directors' films have been degraded by these minor details, but Hitchcock remains to be an all-around specialist and excels at every image. The camera seems to be his main aspect, though, and mainly because he effectively shows the audience exactly what he wants them to see. He gives the camera its maximum impact and seems to film the thoughts of characters at the same time. Hitchcock realizes that when an audience knows what a character is thinking, suspense builds, and the audience cannot help but to have feelings for the character.

Both critics Pauline Kael and director Francois Truffaut have said that Hitchcock knows precisely where to put the camera, particularly in close-up situations. Examples of this are the scenes in which Robert Taylor is nearly devoured by a gruesome flock of birds in The Birds, and the frightening extra close-up stabbing of Oscar Homolka by Sylvia Sydney in Hitchcock's Sabotage. Although not all of Hitchcock's films have become hits, it is the scenes similar to these that make even his worst films interesting to watch.

In almost all of Hitchcock's films, although it may seem that suspense has built up throughout the movie, it is probably just an individual scene that is causing the suspense to occur. The audience usually does not realize this because they are too involved in the film that they are watching.Only the more expert viewers will see that all of Hitchcock's scenes are very solid, and that each tells a little story in itself. When a movie is totally composed of individual scenes like this, it usually turns out to be either very good or very bad. Consecutive scenes also tell a story, even it the individual scenes that make it up do not. Most directors use consecutive scenes to tell a story that the audience is not acquainted with. In Hitchcock's case, his consecutive scenes tell a story, but are actually sequences of human experience that the audience is familiar with.

Thus, through all of these technicalities, we find that Hitchcock's films not only create and sustain emotions, but also clarify and simplify the most complex relationships between human beings. Hitchcock has directed fifty-three films to date, and in each there is something that arouses the audience. Whether it be the characters, actors, stories, surprises, camerawork, or merely the knowing that the person making the film knows exactly what he's doing, audiences will continue to enjoy the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the many ways in which he made us respond to them.

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Anne Bradstreet--Her Personal Poems


Anne Bradstreet was the first important woman poet of England, and she was also the first poet of America. She was born in Northhampton, England, most likely in 1612. Her father, Thomas Dudley, was known to compose poetry and he is considered to have inspired Bradstreet's writing skills throughout her early years. By the time that Bradstreet was seven years old, she was already quite well acquainted with the Bible, which would also serve as a domineering force in her poems. Bradstreet always liked to read, though there was not much hint of her wanting to become a poet until she left for America in 1630 on the Arabella.

Just as most of the women of her time, Bradstreet acquired most of her knowledge of the world by her eleven years of schooling. It was no secret that Bradstreet was often ill with rheumatic fever both as a child and as an adult. She met her husband, Simon, when she was sick and in bed for some time. She would later express what it felt like to be so close to death so many times, and what it was like to be in love with Simon. During King Charles' reign in England, women were a threatened minority, and although Bradstreet herself was not particularly rebellious, she implied nothing about this prejudice until she was actually settled in America, where what she wrote about would generally not be censored.

Bradstreet's character took on a mature livelihood during the time between her seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays. It was then that she began to take pride in being a woman in a world run by men. By the age of nineteen, she had acquired fine literary knowledge, and she looked to other developing writers for insight. Eventually, she began to criticize the various writers of the time, and she soon started to write many personal poems that were not meant for printing. Most of Bradstreet's shorter personal poems are written about her husband and her children, and there are some that center on her father and others that tell of her sickness and intimate feelings.

Generally, Bradstreet's personal writings express courage and the ability to handle responsibility. They can actually be considered meditations of various lengths. Bradstreet's poetry about her husband shows the one main emotion that she felt toward him--endless love. Probably not even her words could express her feelings for Simon to the deepest extent, but she still can be said to have been one of the greatest romantic poets of the age.

A poem entitled A letter to my husband absent upon public employment actually consisted of three letters, each telling that she and Simon were bonded in love, no matter how far away from each other they were.

It is true that Simon Bradstreet had political duties and that he traveled often. Even when he was gone for the shortest while, Bradstreet was known to miss him. Bradstreet's second letter in the poem concerned her want for Simon when he was not around. She really writes this section to Phoebus, the sun God, rather than to Simon. In it she begs Phoebus to make Simon stay home more often. She finishes the poem by saying:

The third and final letter of the poems directly relate herself to precious animals, roaming freely. She appeals to her husband:

As can be seen, Bradstreet's lines here can be enlightening. It should be noted that she had no idea that this poem would ever be published, and it is among the many poems about Simon that are most intimate. Probably the one poem that is considered to be Bradstreet's masterpiece about Simon is a twelve-liner simply title To my dear and loving husband. This poem can be said to give as much beautiful and powerful imagery of her love for Simon as her three previous letters combined.

Here Bradstreet elevates her love for Simon by relating to huge, glorious human want. The poem supposedly represented her peak in stylish love poetry to Simon.

Bradstreet's poems about her father are more about respect and honor than love. In To My Most Honored Father she treats her father with admiration and surprisingly makes herself sound as though she is not as strong-willed as he is.

Perhaps Bradstreet was not aware of the fact that she had tremendous talent. Later in the same poem, she brings across such images as "My lowly pen" and "these ragged lines"--which are quite depressing words. In her poem To the memory of my dear and honoured Father, Thomas Dudley, Esq., Bradstreet suggested that without a doubt, her father would go to heaven. She goes on to wish that God would treat her the same way that the treated her father during his life.

Bradstreet later composed he father's epitaph, and her talent truly shone through in remarkable final words to him. She ends the epitaph saying:

Bradstreet's poems about her son, Samuel, are limited and interesting. Upon my son Samuel, his going for England Nov. 6, 1647 told how she had been with her son for many years, and was now letting him go on his own. She writes the poem to God:

Another similar poem was called Before the Birth Of One of My Children; however, it was about death rather than life. In this twenty-eight line poem, Bradstreet seems to be unafraid of death; she realizes that it is inevitable. She does not contemplate wanting to die--instead she suggests that she would die eventually no matter how she felt about it.

Upon A Fit Of Sickness was written by Bradstreet in 1632, when she was twenty years old. Even in this poem, she writes as though she is not frightened to die.

Bradstreet probably never realized that such simple words as these could have made people appreciate their lives more. It was most likely her religious beliefs that made her look at death so modestly.

In a few of her poems, Bradstreet writes of her own poetic skill and of art. During In Honour of Du Bartes, 1641 she says:

In another poem about art, she wrote of a state of mind that many writers experience at one time or another.

The poem is realistic because the yearning to create is found in all humans. It is unfortunate that there are times when we cannot think, even though there is so much going on around us. The poem also shows us that Bradstreet was no different in that sense, and that she realized that the creation of art is not a quick impulse in all people, even writers.

In conclusion, art is a conception of life, and Bradstreet's personal poems generally depicted her vision of life as being glorious, spiritual, and meaningful. In one of her poems titled The Author To Her Book she writes:

Still, many fine critics of her time and of ours have realized that Anne Bradstreet possessed a unique talent and a lust for life in an age of extreme hope and change.

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The Symbolism In Edward Albee's The American Dream


In The American Dream, Edward Albee uses symbolism to express his feelings toward social roles and motives. The title of this work suggests illusion while at the same time exploiting America--the land of the free and the home of the brave, where there are many myths concerning what a person is supposed to do with himself. Albee chooses to relate to the rules and regulations of the American people by writing in an abstract, and yet stereotypical form.

The two main characters of the play are simply named "Mommy" and "Daddy," which hardly seems memorable in this world that strives for individualism. But Albee does not wish to single out his characterizations in the play. Instead, he wants to attack everybody he sees as a whole, and not at a complicated level. "Mommy" and "Daddy" are really robots of a kind, and in careful examination of the play, a person can nearly predict what each will say next--once a logically flowing conversation is set up. Both of these characters seem to symbolize people that think they are intelligent and unique, although in reality they are not.

The subjects that "Mommy" and "Daddy" talk about are seemingly normal. Their first confrontation has them discussing a hat that seems to be a slightly different color to each person who sees it. This is Albee's way of symbolizing that all people gave their own opinions about everything that they observe. It seems that the character of "Daddy" has few opinions; he daydreams a lot and allows "Mommy" to do most of the talking.

As soon as the character of "Grandma" is introduced, the reader of the play can realize that she is to be insulted throughout most of the play. She symbolizes old age and its wise-senile analogies. "Grandma is getting feeble-minded," states "Daddy." However, the truth is that the people who come in contact with "Grandma" make her old in their minds. It turns out that no matter what "Grandma" says, she is still the most vulnerable character in the play--in the minds of her enemies. "Grandma" just physically appears weak and decaying, but mentally she seems as strong as ever. She is a stubborn caricature of impractical human wiseness that is unable to reason with people because the people look younger than she is, and therefore assume that they are less feeble-minded.

There is also the prospect of what "Mommy" and ""Daddy"" are supposed to do with "Grandma" now that she is "old." The logical act would be to send her to a nursing home, and both "Mommy" and ""Daddy"" would like her to go to one, although they are hesitant to tell her. For the nursing home represents the natural American place where old people can live when they are no longer needed. This is a stereotype that just cannot be overlooked in a story of this type.

An example of Albee's symbolism in the language of the play is found as soon as Mrs. Barker comes to the house. Immediately, "Mommy" and "Daddy" rejoice and exclaim "Here they are!"; yet only one person stands in the doorway. At first this is confusing, but just think about it a moment. Whenever Americans hear of something distasteful (such as the gas shortage) everyone cries "They should do something about this!" The fact is that no one knows exactly who "they" are. "They" could be the government, or a division or agency of the government, or a division of an agency (confusing) or people in general--anything. No wonder the opening of that scene is confusing; we ourselves are confusing when we speak the "they" dialect. Still, we overlook it, or seem to. There seems to be nothing better to say at the time, anyway.

"All his life," says "Mommy," "Daddy has wanted to be a United States senator; but now.....he's changes his mind, and for the rest of his life he's going to want to be governor.....it would be nearer the apartment, you know." Here Albee mocks simple human ambition and competition. All humans have to "be something"--according to "society"--and we admire those that are "better" than others at what they do. In a way, Albee must expect us to pity his characters as well as each other, because the chances are that "Daddy" will never be a senator, or a governor, or even a boss. People shouldn't live their lives worrying about something they'll never be, Albee might be saying. And even then, many times actions speak louder than words.

The final character who is introduced in the play is the "young man," who, in fact, is looking for something to be. He's hardly modest; he knows he's the image of the "perfect human being." That is, at least in a physical sense. This can be taken to be nearly the same as what Stanley Kowalski told Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire: "I never met a woman that didn't know if she was good looking or not without being told." Only in this case, a man is in question.

Albee uses the young man to symbolize everything that the people of America like to see: youth, sex appeal, manners, and more--thus, The American Dream. Our dream is not really a nightmare, but it might never come true; total goodness just doesn't seem to exist, and if it did exist, we would probably still invent problems of our own. We need problems to overcome in order to live--this is a general rule for today's hectic young men and women. Without problems, life would be boring. We would have no heroism--that mystery that life feeds on (as well as art.) So Albee quickly shows the reader that the young man is just as imperfect as the Dream. He just turns out to be a slave--shaping himself into whatever people would like him to be. That is the truth of Albee's story--a person can symbolize something that he is not. It is hard to see all sides of a person at a given time. We can mean so many things in the eyes of others.

Ernest Becker put it so beautifully in his book The Denial Of Death: "Man is not just a blind glob of idling protoplasm, but a creature with a name who lives in a world of symbols and dreams and not merely matter. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of sound, words, and images, on the air, in the mind, on paper."

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Edgar Allan Poe's Hidden Feelings


Due to his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe was primarily known to be a creator of horror. In a sense, he established a world of his own in which death ruled with love and beauty, and almost everything else was background. So little of his feelings seemed to be stated in his work that readers continually wondered what inspired Poe, why he would turn out such depressing pieces of literature when people always yearned to look on the good side of things. The answers are found in his feelings, and his most obvious feelings are found in his poetry.

Poe was actually more concerned with the poetic form of writing than with subject matter, and the style of his stories and poems are really devoted to what he believed was a basis of poetry. For in nearly all of his poems, themes are restricted to feelings about beauty, death, and perhaps dreaming. A writer who composes so much about such a small number of emotions must have extremely great faith in that which brings him to write.

So what exactly is the force that brought Poe to write in a way that differed so much from others? The truth is that Poe discovered that all the wonders of the goodness in the world and death go hand in hand. In his poetry, this goodness is symbolized by female goddesses, and they are killed off in order to be realistic in a world that is also dominated by death. Ironically, Poe saw poetry in contrasting the two.

The above is from Poe's Philosophy Of Composition, which he wrote in 1846. His statement here is only an opinion, but it is an opinion that many find hard to speak against, and besides, it is proof that Poe could have been obsessed with death--even with just the thought of it--to no end. One reason for this belief is that Poe kept to his theory of poetics like it was some sort of religion. He introduced beautiful, horrifying images into poetry, and his women characters that must inevitably die are done away with in a generally non-violent way. But still, they must die, regardless.

Poe's Annabel Lee died of a strong wind that chilled her body--

And the young Lenore died of feeble health--

So Poe wanted melancholy themes, and in order to create them, he first had to introduce beauty. The reader will find that in many of Poe's poems about women, he describes the loveliness of the girl, and the aftereffects of her death in one way or another. In a sense, death is Poe's Dr. Jeckel and beauty is his Mr. Hyde--for he rarely wrote totally about beauty. Perhaps the bad events of his mysterious life kept him down. Although the reader cannot overlook Poe's passion for women, some still fail to see that a tell-tale clue to his true inner feelings is found within one aspect that all of his lady characters and many of his story characters seem to possess--bright eyes! This is where Poe's emotions can get tied together--for in many of his poems and in most of his short stories, there is a mentioning and description of eyes: large eyes, brilliant eyes, lustrous eyes. There must be a reason for this, and Poe may have given himself away in his poem entitled To Helen:

So Helen's eyes gave Poe hope and represented endless love. In a sense, she had "seen it all." Actually, her eyes are not much different than the rest of Poe's ladies. It is here that Poe changes from being a demented lover of death, to become instead a man searching for some sort of truth, a truth that shined through in expressive eyes, as well as in the written word. If this is true, then Poe had found his truth without realizing it. It is, simply, that people die, that even though we are a miracle of being, we are imperfect in that we must sometime perish. Poe just could not get this out of his mind--it plagued him, and scared him.

What an oddity--endless death turns out to be Poe's cover-up for his feelings of endless life and love. But if Poe was terribly afraid to die, he could have been just as afraid to live. His contributions to literature were, therefore, his life, and in addition, a way to distribute his own "truth."

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Something Happened In The Tropic Of Capricorn


We always tend to think that our major writers stand out in a crowd as though they were seven feet tall. We feel that these people are individuals who simply cannot allow themselves to participate in small, everyday events, that they need something more from life--perhaps some sort of excitement that most of us usually don't see. Face it, we say, writers are "different." Of all the types of novels, it is generally the novel that is most closely patterned after the autobiography that proves to us for once and for all that writers are similar in thought and action to everyone else.

After reading books like Henry Miller's Tropic Of Capricorn and Joseph Heller's Something Happened, any reader can find that enough of the authors' personalities come through to show that they do almost everything that anybody else would do at one point or another in their lives. It is just that Miller and Heller are men whose imaginations are more explicit than others, and that they contain a deep, even obsessed, love of life which many other people possess but do not allow to surface. Often writers who write about themselves are trying to tell us that potentially, people are the same all over. Miller goes so far as to say that anyone can write the greatest book in the world!

I think that the major point here is that as soon as the reader establishes the fact that Miller and Heller are not gods, but observant men, it is then that their words can be more truly appreciated, as they can be related to more easily. The reader has to see that both authors want nothing more than to have a talk, so to speak, about life in general to anyone who cares to listen. The purpose of their books is not so much to tell us about themselves, but to express their concern for "you," and for human beings as a whole.

As Miller states in his introduction to Tropic Of Capricorn:

In a sense, both Tropic Of Capricorn and Something Happened are trips; they are adventures through the minds of two men who are each the main characters of most of their own books. In the process of writing the books, the authors have come to admit that they know themselves better. Now it is hard to say exactly how to judge a personality, but when a writer gives us a piece of his life, we might figure out possibilities on our own. For instance, I find that Tropic Of Capricorn and especially Something Happened are excellent studies of human character--once again, the best picture we get being that of the author. I can see Miller as an exceptionally bitter man who is mostly unhappy when he sees people getting upset over little things that don't really matter. His deep feelings toward life make him sound like some sort of preacher, as does Heller at times. However, Miller can still scare us because he knows how to use each word as though it were a sewing needle--he just keeps prodding us unmercifully.

With Heller, the writing can be just as devastating, but is usually more light-hearted:

In Tropic Of Capricorn, Henry Miller's main character is called Henry Miller, and in Something Happened, Joseph Heller's personality shines through Bob Slocum, who comes across as being a conniving man who plays along with people and life. Slocum has a knack for acting exactly like the person he happens to be talking to. If he is speaking to a domineering man, such as his boss, then he also acts as though he is in charge and "under control." When he speaks to his little boy, he acts childlike, and so on. By showing us these games which he himself plays, Heller also exposes the fact that everyone really does the same thing. Above all, Slocum is lost between his family and his life, so it is no wonder that the book is considered to be confusing. As with Tropic Of Capricorn, characters come and go in Something Happened, here one page and gone the next--sometimes rarely to be mentioned again.

I like the way Miller and Heller can write pages and pages of material that have absolutely no reason to be in the books with regard to the plot. It is as though they love to generalize--they love to include fabulous thoughts and essays about life wherever they can. In a sense, they really don't form stories; they form themes. A couple of words, a few sentences of feeling, and we can never forget these two writers. If we could take one word to describe the tone of the two, then perhaps Miller would be desperate:

and Heller very nearly absurd:

There always seems to be a tendency to feel as though a writer has a certain reason for writing a book. In the end, we always want to know what the meaning of the story is, what the point was that the author was trying to make. I suppose Tropic Of Capricorn and Something Happened would cause any reader to think the same way, although I find that with works of art that comment on such a wide range of topics, meanings seem to arise more from the readers than from the authors. For me, both books were good portrayals of life--whether it be from Miller, who showed me how brutal and lonely our world is, or from Heller, who showed me that sometimes life can be as crazy as a Looney Tunes cartoon. I think perhaps their greatest contribution to literature is their art of astounding us with everything we take for granted.

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Watching Elvis: A Look At The Albums Of Elvis Costello

Elvis Costello is one of the most unusual singer-songwriters with us today. His music and lyrics prove it, and he proves it. Since he first came into vision in the rock world in 1977 at the age of twenty-two, he has been one of the mot puzzling figures around. Apparently, he's going to stay that way. Costello has had a reputation for being arrogantant, stubborn, and sarcastic, but in recent years he has become capable of changing his attitudes so quickly, that it's hard to say exactly what he wants, and what he stands for. One thing is for sure: he has a fierce desire to change the way rock music has been structured. Generally, it is the words that he writes that has accomplished this.

He continually strives for "truths" in the form of a modern puppet who is capable of great love and great hate at any moment. The problem is that his emotions get mixed up in complex word patterns that form inside the framework of already unpredictable melodies. The result is a songwriter who manages to be mysterious without being detached. Costello has a tendency to tear his mind apart in trying to uncover what love and relationships are there for. His voice most often sounds hurt or demanding, and while he has the potential to sound unbearably romantic, it is not unusual for him to sound as though he's going to drop dead in the middle of a song. Somehow he manages to make it through--to our minds.


MY AIM IS TRUE

Costello's first album is a good representation of what he means. That is to say, already he was making it clear that he is somewhat incomprehensible. He came on bitching and twitching, looking like a nerd in the traditional fashion. However, within the lyrics of the songs, something was going on. A person just doesn't say things like "welcome to the working week, I know it don't thrill you, I hope it don't kill you," without realizing that he might be looking for trouble. But further lines went on to suggest that we weren't dealing with as much of a troublemaker as we might have thought.

What Costello was on his first album turned out to be what he would remain to be for at least his next four: a streetwise nerd who was never afraid to bite into what was closest to him. On My Aim Is True, Costello set up a design in which he made numerous comments about the world and people, and then denied his anger. The album ends with a song called "Waiting For The End Of The World," and the whole thing becomes something not to entirely laugh at. It isn't so much that Costello is a liar on this record; it's just that you come out of listening to it unable to trust him. A song called "Pay It Back" sounds happy enough, but it's actually about revenge. And someone who says "sneaky feelings, you can't let those kind of feelings show," and not long after says "everything means less than zero" is going to be found suspicious.


THIS YEAR'S MODEL

Elvis Costello got three musicians together, called them the Attractions and came up with another innovative album. This Year's Model still stands as a great, partly nasty work. "I don't want to kiss you, I don't want to touch," is the opening line, and it sets up much of the mood. Actually, the music sounded better, partially because of Steve Nieve's childlike, playful organ use that was just right for most of the material written.

With Costello whining "sometimes I almost feel just like a human being," things came down to size, and concentration was placed more on boy-girl relationships. A good number of the songs were revengeful in tone, and some were about jealousy.On the whole, This Years Model sounds like what Costello looked like at the time, and it set sounds that then seemed undiscovered. Like all of Costello's albums, this one has plenty of passion, which is something Costello can't seem to write about without making a remark. The song "Pump It Up" became some kind of masturbation anthem, and it stood as probably the catchiest song that Costello had penned. Denial was weaker here, but the brutal straightforwardness was still powerful. "No Action" and "Radio Radio" hit with desperation, and it seemed even more clear that Costello was crying to be heard. He must have wanted at least some attention, even though he probably wouldn't admit it.


ARMED FORCES

It would be hard to argue that Elvis Costello hit some kind of peak with this album. Like his first two albums, it is remarkably playful and energetic. What makes it so interesting is how well the emotions flow together, Even when you can't make out all of what Costello is saying, he still manages to strike inner feelings. Armed Forces somehow turns out to be Costello's most political album, and his most powerful, although some of the songs sound so nice that you hardly know that they concern war--the fighting field as a great, big bed. "Accidents Will Happen," which leads off side one, can be called Costello's theme song. "We only hit and run," he says, and he's been basically saying that over and over from the start.

Armed Forces is an album that tries to do what so few records have ever tried to do: it attempts to pick the listener apart. Costello sings its first line ("I just don't know where to begin") out of confusion, and he continually turns thoughts around, so that it isn't long before you realize that he intends to use his obsessions and anger as a mean of exposing contradictions in life. Songs are called "Goon Squad," "Busy Bodies" and "Two Little Hitlers," each revealing a strong concern with meaning. Costello describes people as "busy getting nowhere," and watching as "one does the other one's will." Most of the fascination in listening to Costello revolves around piecing him together, which can also result in piecing yourself together.


GET HAPPY!!

One thing Get Happy!! certainly has is energy. Its twenty songs rampage into each other, sounding like what will be the closest that Elvis Costello will ever come to recording AM popular music. A good number of the songs actually top many of the AM songs of the early eighties. The melodies are riddled with catch phrases that very few contemporary songwriters can come close to matching. Probably the major complaint about the album is that some of the material could be a little longer and still better developed. ("Secondary Modern," "The Impostor," and "B Movie," would be even better.)

Within only three years and four albums, Costello had developed a rock personality image-- and even if it was one of deep inner confusion, it should be mentioned that very few current singers and bands followed any recurring themes whatsoever. A new music figure had still more firmly placed himself in the feelings of the time with this album. Costello had become not so much the guy you couldn't trust, but rather the guy you weren't sure you could trust.

Get Happy!! sounds like it was written by a truly happy man, but again many of the lyrics mock that concept. A few of the songs have a jittery quality to them that make them seem meant to be heard in a roller skating rink. The song "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" seemed to become one of Costello's more popular pieces, but he didn't write it. In fact, whenever he performs a song written by anyone else, the words are easily mistaken to be changed to suit his style. Irony helped make Get Happy!! tick, and just about each of its songs are as calculating as their inventor.


TAKING LIBERTIES

Taking Liberties is a collection of twenty songs that were not originally released in America. The album consists of B-sides, cuts off import albums, and some previously unreleased material. It is a good symbol of Costello's work-- full of variety and tough to understand. Together with Get Happy!! Costello had forty songs on two albums in 1980. To fans, this must have seemed incredible, because to write so oddly and yet so prolifically at the same time seems very rare in rock music today.One reviewer said that Taking Liberties was like a rummage sale, and that's accurate enough. There are some forgettable songs on the record, but there are also gems that make up for them.

It is Taking Liberties that suggests which styles influence Costello. There are hints of soul, country, and punk rock, as well as ballads. Basically, Costello seems capable of using every style imaginable. What is truly interesting is when he invents sounds of his own. He's used nervous, percolator-like sounds before, and he might even become more involved with electronic music. On Taking Liberties there is "Hoover Factory," which has been described as sounding like "an accordion crawling off to die." "Sunday's Best," originally off the import of Armed Forces, sounds like it came off a merry-go round, Taking Liberties is perhaps the best album with which to introduce to others the work of Elvis Costello.

TRUST

It is only appropriate that; Elvis Costello's sixth album should be called Trust. He's a guy who makes you wonder if such a thing really exists. Basing the album's name on one of Costello's obsessions was a good idea, and only Costello's face appears on the cover. Trust doesn't really have a theme: it's really a collection of more "mature" songs. The album is interesting because Costello began to attempt to change his image on it. Being his least angry work, he actually tries to give advice rather than complaining--which is the opposite of what fans were getting used to. Some of the titles of the songs tended to reflect the album's meanings--"You'll Never Be A Man," "Strict Time," "Watch Your Step."

Overall, Trust is probably Costello's most trustworthy album, although it is still somewhat deceiving. Each song sounds quite different from the one before it, so each cut can catch you off guard. Perhaps it is this type of personalized music that makes Costello appear to be unpredictable. Costello had become involved with the group Squeeze, and on Trust he sings "From A Whisper To A Scream" with Glenn Tilbrook, the lead singer from that group. He also went on to help produce the Squeeze album East Side Story and can be heard on their hit single "Tempted."


ALMOST BLUE

Elvis Costello has a genuine liking of country music. There were two country songs on Taking Liberties, and one on Trust. Almost Blue is Costello's own country album, and although he didn't write any of the songs on it, there's still enough confusion on it to understand why he did it. Generally, the lyrics of the songs either contradict one another, or can be interpreted as being lies. (Ex.--"success has made a failure of our home.") You just can't tell just how much of what Costello says is true, how much he means what he's saying. No wonder the last song is "How Much I Lied."

Almost Blue doesn't really sound sad, but again, it's the words that lay the rules. There are lines like "I should hate you girl, the whole night through'" in a pretty song called "Sweet Dreams." Almost Blue Is Costello's least desirable album, but it isn't bad. As a matter of fact, Costello's groaning voice added to the warped quality of the musicians' guitars help occasionally make it sound like some kind of sick-joke oddity.

There are dozens of messages in Elvis Costello's songs; often as many as four or five to a single one. Costello's art is one of making songs mean something, but without our knowing how much he means. There is a fear that Costello might become too deceptive; that too much of his work will depend on how much of it we don't understand. It will be interesting to see what will happen to this accident.

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Images Of Woody Allen

Woody Allen entered the public view in the mid-sixties as a stand-up comedian. Although he usually seemed somewhat confused, he clearly possessed a colorful imagination that would help him to emerge as one of the most inventive people in show business. He was close to thirty when he started achieving popularity, appeared older, and looked like anything but a humorist. However, it was the same way with Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel. Generally, Allen's personal image has not really changed. The concern that he expressed in recent years can be detected in even his craziest works. He as an art of giving serious ideas a funny treatment, and sometimes you laugh and feel that his target is much more serious than it seems. This was often the case with his stand-up work. Allen spoke of deprived childhoods, muggings, his wife--("The Museum Of Natural History found her shoe. Based on its measurements, they reconstructed a dinosaur.")

In later years, he went on to suggest how a person's ideas could be extremely funny and downright horrifying at the same time. Allen is the person who seems not to want to take other people too seriously, but is in a position to have to take himself very seriously. He is, like many of the best comedians, an exceedingly self-conscious contradiction. However, it was not his contradictions that made him famous. It was the fact that he could make many people laugh, and laugh at things they never had before. He did this through one-liners, stories, and images. Of course, all three of these aspects often went hand in hand.

Allen has so many of these crazy thoughts and pictures in his head that to this day, many people ask "How does he think of these things?" (By thinking, he probably would say.)

Allen probably seemed destined to keep telling his stories, because one could never imagine how images such as his could ever make sense on a movie screen. How would you show something like his story about a Jewish couple driving through the Holland Tunnel with a moose on their fender signaling for a turn?

Actually, critics have always admired Allen for his quick wit, unpredictability, and courage to put some of the most moronic material ever conceived onto the screen. His entrance into movies must have been greeted with some doubt, but there must have been the expectancy for some humorous Allen dialogue.

His first film, Take The Money And Run, was filled with much speaking. It combined documentation, stories, interviews, and flashbacks of its main character's life. He played a petty thief who always managed to get into trouble. Everything was there, though, including his concern and problems with women, his abused childhood, his feelings for "the big questions of life and death." The big surprise was how well Allen had translated many of his unusual ideas into visuals that could be understood. Much of Take The Money And Run had things--humans and objects-- expressed in ways that seemed new. One would have to witness Allen volunteering to get an experimental vaccination to cut his prison sentence short, and then turning into a rabbi because of it. In another scene, he is shown sentenced to "six months in solitary confinement with an insurance salesman." Toward the end, he tries to be romantic with his wife while six men who are ball and chained to him look on.

Although Allen's second feature as writer-director, Bananas, was loaded with plenty of funny images, it is his third film, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, that contains his most unusual images. Actually, the film is a series of short films, with Allen appearing in four episodes. One segment features Gene Wilder having a love affair with a sheep; another has Allen and his girlfriend being pursued by a forty foot long female breast. "Are you sure you're OK?" asks a police officer. "Yeah," says Allen. "They usually travel in pairs," warns the officer.

Woody Allen does not seem like the type of person who would really laugh at his own jokes. In his early comedies, little of his self-consciousness is seen in the gags; they are all wacky and appear to be unplanned. When Sleeper came out, fans and critics knew what they were up against. That is to say, no one knew what to expect. In the past, in Bananas, Allen had managed to show an assassination being covered by Wide World Of Sports, and now he was taking on the future. Kept in suspended animation for two hundred years in tin foil, he created a world in which sex is done through a machine (the orgasmatron) and the government is run by a leader who is just a nose.

Certainly, after four films written and directed by Allen, everyone was more than aware of his rare talent. As time went on, less and less of the crazed images would appear in his films. With his Annie Hall, Manhattan, and particularly Interiors, he expressed himself much more seriously, and with more romantic intentions. Rather than create silly images in Annie Hall, he chose to place still more emphasis on the dialogue; the audience was no longer to be bombarded with one sight gag after another. Allen used cross-cutting of scenes, split screens, subtitles, and even animation to tell his story of "a nervous romance." Allen claimed that he could make a picture like Sleeper anytime. Now he felt a need to express himself with more words and fewer jokes.

Interiors showed Allen's admiration for the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, whose films deal with faith and love. This time Allen did not appear in the film, and he wrote few jokes in the screenplay. He was becoming more structured, more polished as a film artist. He now worked with some of the finest editors and photographers in the field. Manhattan, released in 1979, showed not so much a cross of Annie Hall and Interiors as it did still another side of the director. Through the use of black and white shooting, Allen created a lush, even more honest work than he ever had before. One of the points of Manhattan was perhaps his greatest: "People are always creating these little problems for themselves that take their minds off the really big problems of life and death."

Woody Allen has grown to become involved with many different art forms. Although he is yet to write a novel (but plans to) he has written numerous plays and short stories in-between making his movies. There is little doubt that his three collections of short stories and skits will be considered as being among the funniest material written in recent decades. Each of his books displays Allen as being something of a contemporary wacky inventor of all sorts. There has always been much of him in every character that he creates. Indeed, there are aspects of his books that would never work on film. Getting Even, his first book, was published in 1971. The title is deceiving in that Allen himself never appeared to be the type who wanted to get back at people. It is probably life itself that the title refers to; it expresses his desires to get back at his deep anxieties by creating humorous, energetic ideas. Woody Allen's targets are often just as mixed-up as he is, and he doesn't seem to be ashamed of that. He has found humor and absurdity in practically everything In general, Allen's stories are loaded with personal philosophies, historical figures, and funny titles of books, movies, and plays. Again, of particular interest are his images--his personal stamp in all of contemporary writing.

Often Allen tries to tackle controversial ideas like the existence of UFOs or psychic phenomenon. When it comes to subjects like these, he manages to make everything look stupid.

Although Allen peppers many of his short works with his personal philosophies, he often devotes full short stories to nothing but his own feelings and opinions. In his second book, Without Feathers, he gives us diary selections from his daily life:

In "My Speech To The Graduates" from his third book, Side Effects, Allen gives his advice to students:

When Woody Allen is at his best, his thoughts and visual ideas are carefully plotted out, but yet they do not seem forced. There are few filmmakers and writers who are capable of bringing a meaningful, or at least personal vision of life into their art, and Allen is one of them. He stands before us as the nice, slightly neurotic fellow who doesn't quite know what to do. He appeals to us because he is capable of exposing our sense of being lost, and yet in a funny way. Essentially, he is the curious, sane man who says that it is all right to be a little crazy.

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Elvis Costello (1977-1984)

A Look At The Records Of The Man Who Writes The Book

Declan MacManus graduated from high school in Liverpool in 1973. He had an ambition to be a professional musician; he had played guitar in school and was writing his own songs. Declan's father had played trumpet for Joe Loss, sometimes called the English Glenn Miller, from about 1953 to 1968. This had some influence on the young man, who admired his father. Often his father would bring home records, but Declan would sell many of them for records that he would rather have. Declan had a love for radio singles, songs by the Kinks, the Who, and the Temptations. Eventually, Declan was good enough to play in clubs, singing his songs, and trying to put something of a band together. By 1977, he had gone through a number of jobs that included clerk, chart corrector, and computer operator, all to make some money and see bands that he liked.

Meanwhile, strange things were going on in the music around him. New sounds were being created; lyrics were reflecting more and more bitterness and doubt. It was the beginning of the second major "British Invasion" in rock history. Bands set out to toy with minds like they never had before. Among the new groups were the Sex Pistols, the most radical of these "New Wave" groups, who sang about the lack of feelings and desires. They were known to attack and disturb their audiences in any way that they could. The Clash, a group of four musically talented young men, became known as the most political band of the New Wave on the basis of their first few albums. In America, influential groups such as the Cars were speaking about the ups and downs of young love, and the Talking Heads sang a wide variety of songs that seemed to lean toward the "bubble-gum" rock of the sixties. Overall, the list of major bands was long and respectable, and each had a true desire to change popular music, to make listeners react in different ways. An explosion was clearly brewing.

Declan was taking all of the start of it in, and was getting desperate both on and off work hours. He had made a cassette tape of some of his songs and was getting them to local record companies, but there was no reaction. One day he saw an advertisement in a newspaper that said a new record company, Stiff Records, was accepting demo tapes. Declan's was the first one that they received. As run by Jake Riviera, a fiesty man who loved unusual slogans ("If they're dead, we'll sign 'em") Stiff Records was to become one of the finest New Wave labels, producing many of the influences of the new pop. They liked Declan's material. When they compared it to some of the other music they first received, they loved his material.

At twenty-two years of age, Declan was signed on, probably on the basis of ten to fifteen songs. Still, changes had to be made. With bands coming out with names like Squeeze, Blondie and the Boomtown Rats, a name like Declan MacManus just wasn't colorful enough. In a bar in London, Jake Riviera christened the new wonder Elvis Costello, with Elvis being taken from the first rock 'n roll king, and Costello taken fro, Declan's mother's maiden name. It was an unusual choice, and besides, Presley was still alive. Giving the newcomer a name like that would cause much publicity and high expectations.

The early Costello singles did not cause any sensation, but Costello himself was getting a feel of what it was like to have records released to a mysterious public. It must have been exhilarating to him because he soon pumped out single after single, hoping to make hit records. Together with songs from his original demo tape and some new compositions, he had written more than enough interesting songs to record an album. In the simple Pathway eight track studio in England, just that was done with a back-up group called Clover, who usually did country-type music.

In July of 1977, Costello's first album, My Aim Is True, was released. It was to be treated as any other record would be; it would be given a fair chance. For the most part, the public and particularly the critics loved it. The general feeling was that a new artist who had an erratic, though biting concern to make records was released. In the United States, as well as in England, Costello became the most highly acclaimed songwriter of the New Wave. There were clearly aspects of My Aim Is True that gave way to more than just another New Wave singer. Mainly Costello had written all of the songs on the album, and there were things going on with his words that never seemed to have been done before. It was a combination of what he was saying, as well as his phrasing and melodies that led to the fascination with Costello himself.

In many ways, Costello's entrance into the music world was an angry one. Of course, one could never tell that from much of his music; it generally sounded assured and happy. But the words--the words gave him away, even on the first song on My Aim Is True, "Welcome To The Working Week":

There had been bitterness before in the New Wave, but little of it dissected people and their relationships like Costello's lyrics did. There were continual references and ideas about losers, anger, unhappiness, revenge and the deceit of love. A number of the songs seemed to border on being incomprehensible, but at close examination, a concerned, frisky logic could be seen. I got you in my dreams You should hear the things you say It's not that it's so much fun but it's safer that way One song from My Aim Is True, called "Watching The Detectives" accurately portrayed a Costello puzzle. The song is about a girl who is watching TV with her boyfriend. They are watching a detective show. In real life, detectives are searching for the girl, who has left home. The detectives on TV are getting hurt. The real detectives find and break into the lovers' hideaway. The girl has been murdered by her boyfriend.

Irony was certainly a factor of My Aim Is True, and it continued to follow Costello. When a song was not confusing, then it would probably be contradictable. Sometimes, not only would a song alone be contradictable, but two or three songs when heard one after the other. This became a Costello trademark. Good guy, bad guy, good guy, and so on. On the second side of My Aim Is True, Costello sings a happy sounding song called "Pay It Back" (which is actually about revenge,) then sings "I'm Not Angry" and finally ends with "Waiting For The End Of The World."

Sales for My Aim Is True were respectable. Whether Costello knew it or not, he had stumbled onto a formula that never seemed to have been used before. It was simply that a new performer had come about who looked like something out of the fifties, sang and played like something out of the sixties, and possessed a talent for expressing the attitudes of the seventies. Critics took a closer look at this Elvis. He hardly looked like a packaged anthology of rock 'n roll. Bespectacled, jittery, hard to talk to--one critic described him as looking like Buddy Holly after drinking a can of STP oil treatment.

Early on, Costello used the press, the radio, and fellow performers as target. In interviews, he was known to pass numerous remarks that seemed to be outtakes from the lyrics of his first album. "The only human emotions I know are revenge and guilt," he told one reviewer. "I'm here to corrupt America's youth," he told another. "But my Visa will probably run out before I have a chance to do it." Logically, Costello was called an angry young man. "He's really only a kid," some fans said of him. Many critics agreed, but they also felt that it this young man's bitterness remained honest to how people felt, if his burning passion to make records remained, and if his melodies and witty lyrics were arranged more sensitively, he would still be one of the leaders of popular music coming into the eighties.

Jake Riviera, now Costello's manager, was as ready for action as ever. Since My Aim Is True was released, Riviera had produced a number of other popular singers and bands--among them, Nick Lowe and Graham Parker and The Rumour. Rejection letters were sent from Stiff records to singers with demo tapes--"thanks for sending it in anyway and don't give up, even though the best record company has in fact turned you down....." In order to get more attention, Costello staged a street corner serenade in front of Columbia Records in New York. He was soon signed, on the basis of My Aim Is True's quality and potential.

In the meantime, Costello had put a band together for himself, which featured Steve Nieve on keyboards, Bruce Thomas on bass guitar, and Pete Thomas on drums. Then, in a move that was right in line with the confusion around himself and his first album, he dubbed them the Attractions. The first record that Costello made with his new partners, This Year's Model, was clearly more elaborately made than My Aim Is True, produced by Nick Lowe, each of the Attractions was used to good advantages. Steve Nieve's playful keyboards were one of the highlights. This Year's Model had more distinctive, menacing lyrics than the first album, and sounds more like the work of a group playing together rather than a singer and a backup band. Costello focused more and more on the frustrations of love. The first line of the album--"l don't want to kiss you, I don't want to touch," sets up much of the mood.

Costello started to put nearly all of his attention on boy-girl relationships, and in a still more straightforward manner. In between his saying "sometimes I almost feel like a human being," are comments on girls in general: those disco synthesizers those daily tranquilizers those body building prizes those bedroom alibis all this, but no surprises for this year's girl If Costello was looking for more attention, this was the record most likely to get it for him. "Pump It Up" was one of the catchiest songs on the record, and it was something of a masturbation anthem besides. Every song on This Year's Model contained the sharp lyrics and unpredictable melodies that had come to be expected. It was clearly a record made in order to explore and annoy. Anger and sarcasm aside, it was the last song on the album, "Radio, Radio," that set a new standard of desperation for its creator.

The song showed that Costello had the potential to write truly powerful works. It turned out that Armed Forces expressed much of that power. His third album came at a time when popular music was almost completely lacking profound sounds and messages. Originally entitled "Emotional Fascism," Armed Forces was clearly Costello's most ambitious record. Released in January of 1979, it pre-presented a song writer who was not "outgrowing" his shock therapy in lyrics as much as he was growing more musically complex. It would be hard to argue that Costello hit some sort of peak on this album. Once again, much of the music sounded playful and energetic--and often piercing. Even when you can't make out all of what Costello is saying, he still manages to strike feelings.

It is on Armed Forces that his lyrics more clearly betrayed an obsession with deceit, desire, and domination. Armed Forces became Costello's most political album: some of the songs sound so nice that you hardly notice that they really concerned war--the fighting field as a great, big bed. "Accidents Will Happen," which leads off side one, can he called Costello theme song;. "We only hit and run," he says, and he has basically been saying that over and over from the start. Armed Forces is an album that attempts to do what so few records have ever tried to do: it attempts to pick the listener apart. Costello sings its first line ("I just don't know where to begin") out of confusion, and he continually manages to turn thoughts around, so that it isn't long before you realize that he intends to use his obsessions and anger as a mean of exposing contradictions in life. Songs are called "Goon Squad," "Busy Bodies," and "Two Little Hitlers,"--each revealing a strict, cutting concern about what relationships really mean. Most of the fascination in listening to Costello revolves around piecing him together, which can also result in piecing yourself together. and it's the damage that we do and never know
it's the words that we don't say that scare me so

Costello's early live concerts were just as uneasy and interesting as his first three albums were. He would trot on-stage with the Attractions and croon and spit out one song after another, often without pausing to take in any of the applause. His anger clearly characterized the early concerts. It was hard to separate what was real from what was fake in his movements. He was known to lean over into the mike, stop playing the guitar, and grasp the mike stand between his two hands, and in moments of excessive bitterness, between his two knees. He would walk in a twisted sort of way, with his feet pointed inward--almost making his legs look crippled. Funniest and most frightening of all was when Costello would seem carried into a song--when he would twist and step and attempt to "dance." His body would simply twitch out-of-rhythm, and clearly his anger would give way to what one reviewer called "the fear of the impostor who's sure he'll be shot before he gets through his next number." Costello looked like a nervous bitter, twitching puppet.

Throughout the concerts, the Attractions were gaining popularity. Pete Thomas was one of the best and most powerful drummers around, and easily adapted to any style Costello chose. Steve Nieve used his keyboards with increasing success and managed to italicize certain Costello words and movements with it. Often the concerts would last only forty-five minutes, at which point Costello and the band would march enraged off the stage. Many of the fans were thrilled at the nerve of it all, but even more felt alienated from this songwriter who seemed to have much to say.

In February of 1980, with a bewildering, though clearly potent image following them, Costello and the Attractions set free Get Happy!! It seemed oddly appropriate, coming from the young man who not long ago was saying "you can please yourself, but somebody's gonna get it." The cover of the album was bright orange with numerous geometrical designs covering it. It advertised the fact that it contained twenty songs on it. Perhaps the main complaint about the record was that many of the songs were too short, but Get Happy!! still represented an energetic, hopeful turning point for Costello.

While many of the new young bands were still exploring with synthesizers and electronic music, Costello here chose to cut deeper into musical history--particularly into the Phil Spector-ish songs of the mid-sixties. For the most part, he succeeded in creating an album that is hardly boring and full of astounding melodic ideas. In fact, the record can be said to he too produced--with too many sounds bombarding the listener. Costello's producer at the time was Nick Lowe, who was known for his catchy music that coupled with quirks about life in general. Here he offered a style that was perhaps too happy, and with Costello practically groaning his way through many of the songs, the result was a genuinely confusing record about the inconsistencies of romance. The real beauty of the record lies underneath, In its melodies. For the most part fast and furious, few of the songs on Get Happy!! would seem appropriate on any of the previous records, which meant that Costello had successfully changed the appearance of his moods and music again. If one tried to make out all the words to the songs of Get Happy!!, one would find Costello's gift of phrasing; at a new intentionally erratic peak. As usual, the messages come through:

Costello has always had a talent for coupling intricate verse phrases with childishly simple chorus lines. The song that sets off much of the style of Get Happy!! is "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down." Remarkably catchy, this song, like many of Costello's best, seems to comment as much on the performer himself as it does on everyone else. Get Happy!! doesn't quite have the memorable lyric power of the earlier records, but it still shows Costello being as energetic and ambitious as ever. Even his voice is used in a variety of different tones, which would become still more perfected soon enough. Perhaps best of all, Costello had seemed to loosen up a little, There is a noticeable increase in speaking outright about love, and the sound of "Secondary Modern" suggests a continual awareness of romantic attitudes for the bespectacled wonder. Still, the sweeter or more harmless sounding songs are often opposed by furious bursts of chord play:

Lyrics put aside, the sound of Get Happy!! suggests a sort of lop-sided Motown record.

Costello's songs are probably not played on the radio as much as he would like, but he had received such critical attention that Columbia decided to release a bunch of his songs that were previously available only as imports. The collection is called Taking Liberties, and its twenty songs consist of b-sides, English album cuts, and unreleased material. One reviewer spoke of it as being a kind of musical "rummage sale." It plays like a near--new Costello album in itself. Revealed is more of Costello's lyric magic, as well as a few surprises. For one thing, he kept showing that he could use his voice to dissolve and strengthen into new directions. He proved that he was capable of using virtually any style--from hard, clumsy rock to cute throwaway ballads. Even a few of his songs that were on previous records are served up completely differently, and without barely changing a word--("Black And White World", "Clowntime Is Over.") An interest in country music was more pronounced. Songs written by others are made to sound as though Costello had written them himself. Perhaps more than anything, Taking Liberties showed that Costello is a most versatile, unusual songwriter. His melodies provided a blueprint for his band to consistently and on and exploit but hie words ars his own business. With the forty songs between Get Happy!! and Taking Liberties, Costello had proved that he held a virtual factory of musical capabilities within himself. Even his least appealing songs betrayed his personal stamp. His voice has always been another of his sure giveaways.

In January of 1981, a powerful advertising spree suggested that the next album, Trust, would be top-notch. Only Costello's face was on the cover, peering out questioningly from behind his dark glasses, as though to say "would I say something I shouldn't? Coming from the young man who had written many of the angriest songs of the late seventies, Trust was actually cooled off considerably. Only "White Knuckles" appears nasty at first listen--

Adding Martin Belmont of Graham Parker's Rumour for this album was a good choice; he helps give the record more sheer strength. Trust does not sound as unsure as Get Happy!! did. Many of the sounds of the songs on Trust are completely different from one another. This is especially true on side two, where a country song ("Different Finger") meshes with a song that sounds like it belongs in a circus ("Fish 'n Chip Paper") and another that defies any classification ("Big Sister's Clothes.) The record is thrown into life particularly with "From A Whisper To A Scream," recorded with Glenn Tillbrook of Squeeze. It sounds almost like a live recording, and is genuinely exciting musically and lyrically:

As one reviewer said, "Trust never sleeps." Costello simply refuses to give in to what one would expect to hear on the radio. No matter how short his songs are, they are most often loaded down with series after series of notes and words, commenting and cutting back on themselves. On Trust, Costello takes the stance of something like a frightened and stubborn teacher. "You'd better watch your step," he warns, and "Be on caution where lovers walk." Almost each track contains a main straightforward point to the listener. Perhaps best of all, Costello seemed completely in charge of his voice; his moaning on much of Get Happy!! gave way to a more instructive tone. Trust has plenty of good material--words that demand attention, and a band that, as always, sounds quick to learn new tricks. You say the teacher never told you anything but white lies but you never see the lies that you believe With Trust, Costello the insecure angry young man became, at least for a while, the broad shouldered premature master with the voice of confident un-protection.

Costello's next move was to record a collection of country songs. Almost Blue appeared only nine months or so after Trust, and none of its songs were composed by Costello. Taken in as a whole, Almost Blue consists of songs that border on being contradictions. "Success has made a failure of our home," sings Elvis, and it becomes clearer as to why the record was made. It fit Costello's personality. It also broadened his musical scope and left his future wide open. Almost Blue was both a good and a bad move. The album is really something of a sick joke. Costello's broken-sounding voice is added to those all too-simple lyrics and warped guitars, and the result Is a sometimes silly, sometimes brilliant piece of work. It is Costello's least desirable record because it lacks the intricate playfulness of his own words. One of Costello's earlier country songs "Stranger In The House" was weird beyond recognition. Only a few of the songs on Almost Blue capture that type of strangeness. Too many critics seemed overly concerned with why Costello had made the record. In the process, the pretty simplicity of the music and the off-beat singing was somewhat overlooked. Many got Costello's message right away, through: the days of the rather noisy and cluttered production values of Armed Forces and much of Get Happy!! and Trust were nearly officially over.

After Almost Blue, which was an uncommercial, though "safe" album (as far as recording goes) few could have predicted the tone of 1982's Imperial Bedroom. For the first time, Costello had created a fractured, gem-like atmosphere of individuals trying to get themselves and love together. On the whole, it is an entirely pleasing album, full of musical ideas and sly insinuations. In many ways, it stands as Costello's masterpiece. The first side is particularly daring, and has more than its share of Costello's best songs on it. Side Two returns to a more playful stance, but the sound of the music and choice of words is a feat that places the record among the finest works of the eighties. Costello had already used his talent for expressing frustration and anger to the point that his personal image had grown a bit restricted. The music always changed, but Costello himself rarely did. Imperial Bedroom was therefore his most surprising work to date. Perhaps the best two words to describe the record would be "sadness" and "charm. "It is neither a particularly bitter or humorous piece of work. It is, however, an album which many fans knew Costello could make, regardless of his previous reputations. The songs such as Get Happy's!! "Secondary Modern," and Taking Liberties' "Clowntime Is Over" were actually pointing to Imperial Bedroom's direction early on.

Costello chose to use his voice as an instrument in itself this time around. The songs on Imperial Bedroom are among his most carefully planned, and contain a lyric intelligence that remains unequaled by most other contemporary songwriters. The song "Shabby Doll" represents the tone of the album very well, with Its sparkling piano fills and distressed, lonely sound. The waltz-like "Long Honeymoon" presents Costello as ironic storyteller:

Never before had Costello so intimately created a poetry that was all his own. songs like "Almost Blue," "Human Hands and "Town Cryer" suggested an attitude which welcomed questions about the artist's personal life and personality . Sure enough, after not speaking with the press for several years, Costello "opened up" to the public. "Elvis Costello Repents," claimed the September 2, 1982 issue of Rolling Stone, which offered a most sincere picture of Costello on the cover. Over the course of the next year, fans learned more about Costello himself than ever before. Articles at the time are called "Elvis Costello Explains Himself," "Elvis Costello Lets Down His Guard" wonderful profiles appear in Life magazine and Current Biography. On an Entertainment Tonight interview, he denies that there made a "New Elvis Costello." "It's the other one just carrying on another year," he says. Excellent appearances are made on the David Letterman Show, Solid Gold, and later, the Johnny Carson Show. David Letterman seemed to know next to nothing about Costello's career, but that didn't stop Costello from coming across as being less angry and more open-hearted. He even shows a good sense of humor--especially when he admits that he and the Attractions "practiced being obnoxious."

Humor is clearly a predominant aspect of Costello's rock videos, most of which are rarely seen on television. On the whole, his videos come across as being too "small-scale" for commercial appeal. Still, at close examination, many are downright special. Costello has always been a master at getting his numerous emotions across; the fact that so many of the videos revolve around he and the Attractions simply playing is not a crime. The very best moments of this band on film come when Costello looks Into the camera and gets the meaning of the song across. Ironically, his best videos are rather "amateurish" and at the same time are far more gripping than most of what is shown on MTV.

In the summer of 1983, Punch The Clock was released, A pensive and somber Costello appeared on the cover, looking much like he did on his recent TV interviews: introspective. The album inside, however, sounded far more rambunctious than the cover suggested. Needless to say, the record had many surprises meshed into it. For one thing, a four man horn section, The TKO Horns, had been added. Also featured were two female background singers, and on "Shipbuilding," a luscious trumpet solo by Chet Baker. For a while, it seemed that Costello would break into the American singles chart with "Every Day I Write The Book," one of the stand out cuts. The song has a clear, unashamed Motown influence and could just as well have been sung by Gladys Knight and the Pips. As usual, the music and lyrics of the songs are oddly playful. The two cuts that stand out the most are certainly "Shipbuilding" and "Pills And Soap." Both are political statements that create a musical atmosphere that is all their own. Try to imagine a group of Nazis snapping their fingers and calmly singing in a back alley, and you might understand "Pills And Soap"--one of the most notorious songs ever made.

"Shipbuilding" is one of the few songs that is inspired by the Falkland Islands battles. Punch The Clock has it all--a few catchy tunes, a few angry ones, a few charming ones, a few romantic ones. All in all, it is a perfect symbol of the classic Costello formula for record-making. Generally, it is something of a perfected Get Happy!! with horns thrown in here and there for good measure. And, again, another record to show that Costello has never really lost his verbal edge.

June of 1984 saw the release of Goodbye Cruel World, Costello's tenth album. The initial response to the first listen is that it is a meticulously polished record. The production is assured and well-thought out: more than ever before, one can hear Costello saying "Listen to this." One has only to listen to the first three cuts to get the message: the striving here is for atmosphere. And indeed, a good number of the songs take you into a musically pre-determined world. Most often the arrangements contain a delicate quality to them; like the songs on Imperial Bedroom, much of Goodbye Cruel World sounds inviting. "The Only Flame In Town" and "I Wanna Be Loved" are great examples of the kinds of moods that Costello and the Attractions set up. One wants to be a part of these songs in the same way that one likes to fantasize about being in a particular type of movie. These are among the group's slickest, most emotional efforts. The listener Is drawn to the passion which Costello uses here, One becomes so engulfed in the romance that you hardly notice the taunting, especially in "The Only Flame In Town":

The detachment in one song just as soon becomes a powerful yearning in another. A cut called "Room With No Number" tells of an awkward encounter between lovers at a hotel. This becomes most interesting because of the carnival-like feeling that is used to punctuate Costello's story. "Love Field" envelopes the listener like some kind of sighing, amorous fog; it's actually about having tense, outdoor sex with a "functional stranger"--but it's hypnotic to the point of achieving a sort of weird bliss. There are startling things all over this record; yet certain songs (particularly on the second side) sound updated but familiar. "The Comedians" made a nod to the somewhat failed tinkling charm of Trust's first side, sprinkled with a pinch of Imperial Bedroom. "Sour Milk Cow Blues" has a taste of the nerdity of This Year's Model, whereas "The Deportees Club" can somehow remind one of "From A Whisper To A Scream." "Joe Porterhouse" is oddly sad and strong; it is to this record what "Shabby Doll" was to Imperial Bedroom. It also points to Punch The Clock's "Shipbuilding" as does "The Great Unknown" and especially the real shocker here, "Peace In Our Time."

Elvis Costello again proves that loneliness can be expressed through any means, whether it be from a bitter, romantic, or political angle, Goodbye Cruel World, like Imperial Bedroom, is music to be listened to with your eyes closed and your mind open. With each new record, Costello makes it clearer and clearer that he is a musical chameleon. Angry young man, punker, political commentator, Motown lover, country singer, satirist, loser, romantic--Costello has played all of these parts with amazing grace. From the look of it, he is still to play many more.

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Elvis and Juliet

After listening to more than a dozen of his albums and two collections of b-sides (so far), there is still something that tempts a fan to find or re-discover "the quintessential Elvis Costello album." After all these years, it is still hard to be sure if there is such a thing.

I thought that I had heard it in 1982, when he and the Attractions came out with Imperial Bedroom. But then time goes on and one gets to thinking about This Year's Model, which is a classic New Wave record. It has a clever sound, and it captures a certain nasty playfulness. Is it the best representation of what Elvis Costello is all about? Then again, what about Armed Forces? I had thought that it was rather over-produced, but it contains many of his most popular songs. Trust? Wide variety of songs, like Taking Liberties, but that's just the problem--not enough musical focus to make one think of it in terms of a whole work from start to finish. Like his slightly overrated Get Happy!! and slightly underrated Goodbye Cruel World, it works best in bits.

You keep thinking and thinking, and in the meantime Costello will come out with yet another record. 1986--King Of America--now that has to be it. But no, it's too countryish, and besides, the Attractions aren't on it as a group. And Elvis had changed his name on top of it. He's supposedly Declan Patrick Aloyisous MacManus.

Go back. Go back to his first album, My Aim Is True. Great lyrics, no Attractions, but it does contain a certain framework of everything that Elvis has been singing about ever since. There's anger, guilt, domination by one sex over the other, breaking-up in general. The whole punk-New Wave stance is in there. But it came too early to contain one of his great anti-Thatcher political songs, and it's not as musically adventurous as, say, Spike. That was the one that came out in 1989, after a long break. I almost forgot about it because I was too busy listening to his interesting but uneven Mighty Like A Rose.

By now, you get the idea. That's what trying to figure out Elvis Costello is like. He's fascinating and frustrating, outstanding and angering--sometimes all at the same time during the same song. This is a man who gets drunk, calls Ray Charles horrible names and then comes out with a lop-sided tribute to Motown-type records. He writes some of the most biting lines in songwriting history and chooses to sing "All You Need Is Love" at Live-Aid. He breaks up his great back-up group, the Attractions, puts out a record without them as a group, does interviews that suggest he will never record with them again, and then puts out a record with them six months later. Then he's virtually silent for over two and a half years. Then we find out that he's been collaborating with Paul McCartney! He likes to go by different names, among them The Impostor and Napoleon Dynamite. He likes his new groups to go by different names, among them the Confederates and the Rude 5.

Costello loves to keep us guessing; it seems he wants us all to keep asking "what next?" Now, in a little more than a year and a half since his last record, he has released a new album with a string quartet. The Juliet Letters is an Elvis Costello concept album. The idea is that each of the songs is some type of letter, whether it be a piece of graffiti or junk mail, or a begging-for-money letter, suicide note, or love letter.

After a brief instrumental introduction, one begins to hear lines like "We don't know each other anymore/and when we touch, our lips feel sore" and you know that you're definitely in Costello-land. You know that this isn't going to be a pleasant sidetrack like his Almost Blue, in which all the songs were written by others. Costello's aim is still very much true, as he has made his most beautiful and dramatic sounding record at the same time. It almost demands to be heard from start to finish each time; there is no stand-out cut or single. On an emotional level, the songs seem to follow one another just right.

As usual, what might take some getting used to is Costello's voice. A good case can be made that he sometimes chooses to sing songs that could be done better by other vocalists. Still, on several of the songs, his voice soars out above all instrumentation--at times like this, he's trying to be Roy Orbison, or Enrico Caruso, or remembering that it's Elvis Costello we're talking about, both.

No Attractions are to be found on the record, although two members of the excellent Brodsky Quartet also share the last name of Thomas. There are the inevitable comparisons with Costello's previous work, of which Imperial Bedroom would probably be the closest relative. Many of Costello's best songs are the ones in which you can simply make out practically everything that he says. In his quieter songs, his gift of conveying some message or melody that is curiously profound comes across more powerfully. The Juliet Letters has a good share of quiet songs.

In the end, the same burning question needs to be asked: is this the quintessential Elvis Costello album? The answer, for the time being, is yes.

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