{"id":23979,"date":"2022-10-31T05:30:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T09:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23979"},"modified":"2022-10-31T08:27:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T12:27:28","slug":"sf-music-history-elvis-costello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/31\/sf-music-history-elvis-costello\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Music History: Elvis Costello"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s quaint to think about it now, but when Elvis Costello surfaced in the summer of 1977 with My Aim is True<\/i>, he was heralded as a punk artist. Coming on the scene alongside Sex Pistols<\/a>, The Damned<\/a> and The Clash, Costello\u2019s status as a punk act might have made a kind of sense; he certainly didn\u2019t fit into a musical world dominated by the likes of soft rockers Fleetwood Mac (Rumours<\/i>) or the softer-still Barry Manilow. But with just a few years of hindsight, it became clear that the man born Declan MacManus would be better thought of as a member of that era\u2019s new breed of thoughtful British songwriters, a group that would also include Graham Parker<\/a>, Nick Lowe<\/a> and perhaps even Bob Geldof.<\/p>\n

And now, some 45 years after Costello\u2019s debut, the two-time Grammy Award winner (and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee) can be seen as part of an even more revered class of songwriters, alongside Lennon\/McCartney, Difford\/Tilbrook, Bruce Springsteen, and Bacharach\/David. And stylistic classification ill-serves Costello, who in the years since his start has collaborated with artists across the musical landscape: Paul McCartney (rock\/pop), The Brodsky Quartet (modern classical), Marian McPartland (jazz), The Roots (funk\/r&b), T Bone Burnett (Americana) and many others.<\/p>\n

Against that backdrop, the one-time so-called punk\u2019s affinity for the music of The Grateful Dead should come as less than a shock. Costello has always found inspiration and fulfillment from the work of quality artists in eclectic places. In 1991, readers of Musician<\/i> Magazine might have been surprised to find Costello sharing the cover photo with his pal Jerry Garcia.<\/p>\n

As Costello revealed in that issue\u2019s cover story, the music of the Dead was a long-time passion for him: \u201cThe real esoteric people were into West Coast bands\u2026 And I made almost this willful decision […], \u2018Right, I\u2019ll go further out now. Nobody will follow me to this one: the Grateful Dead\u2019. [laughter<\/em>] You know, this music almost nobody can dig.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he<\/i> dug it, and would contribute his heartfelt medley of \u201cShip of Fools \/ It Must Have Been the Roses\u201d to an all-star tribute, 2000\u2019s Stolen Roses: Songs of the Grateful Dead<\/i>. And his passion for Garcia and his band continues to this day: Costello recently assembled an evening\u2019s worth of music to be presented as \u201cElvis Costello Sings Hunter Garcia,\u201d a September 30 concert at the Great American Music Hall.<\/p>\n

And while many think of Elvis Costello as the man who wrote concise, spiky rockers like \u201cPump it Up,\u201d \u201cRadio Radio\u201d and \u201cOliver\u2019s Army,\u201d he \u2013 like Jerry Garcia \u2013 has roots in American acoustic forms like folk, country and bluegrass. That fact provides context for his appearance the day after the Hunter Garcia tribute, when he appeared (for something like the sixth time) at this year\u2019s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n

Yet as we approach these two very different Bay Area performances by Costello, maybe it\u2019s worth reconsidering if he isn\u2019t truly a punk after all. Because when you think about it, what\u2019s truer to the punk aesthetic than charting a musical path that defiantly confounds those who would pigeonhole him as one thing or another? Costello\u2019s passionate embrace of whatever far-flung musical traditions that speak to and resonate with him: those might be the punkiest qualities of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s quaint to think about it now, but when Elvis Costello surfaced in the summer of 1977 with My Aim is True, he was heralded as a punk artist. Coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[776],"class_list":["post-23979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-elvis-costello","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23979"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24163,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23979\/revisions\/24163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}