Costello, Dylan, and the Sex Pistols: Some Back Pages from the February 2000 print edition of Live! Music Review

 

[Rev. Keith A. Gordon takes a look at some boot CDs in the February 2000 print edition of Live! Music Review. Available, now, for the first time on the Internet.]

Elvis Costello: Time To Play B-Sides! (Tendolar #TDR-142; 76:09 min)

SOURCE: Studio outtakes, non-album B-sides, CD singles and unreleased live performances. Tracks 24 and 25 were originally released as bonus tracks on the Imperial Bedroom album.

SOUND QUALITY: As is usual with any disc compiled from several different sources, it varies from track to track. Overall the material ranges from good to near excellent (7-9) and is quite an easy listen.

COVER: Typical Tendolar, which is to say a fair-to-middling’ package with a single-sided front cover insert with a dominant high-contrast photo of Costello surrounded by smaller screened doppelgangers of himself. Back cover has a B & W pic of Costello with the Attractions and a (lengthy) tracklist.

TRACKLIST: You’re No Good/ The Room Nobody Lives In/ Point Of No Return/ The Ugly Things/ Veronica (demo)/ Couldn’t Call It Unexpected (live)/ Hurry Down Doomsday (live)/ Idiophone/ A Drunken Man’s Praise Of Sobriety/ Puppet Girl/ Basement Kiss/ We Despise You/ Step Inside Love/ You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away/ Sticks And Stones/ Life Shrinks/ Brilliant Disguise/ Almost Ideal Eyes/ I Hope You’re Happy Now (demo)/ My Resistance Is Low/ Congratulations/ Do You Know What I’m Saying?/ London’s Brilliant Parade (alternate)/ Night Time/ Really Mystified 

COMMENTS: Whew…where does one start? To say that Elvis Costello is one of pop music’s most prolific artists would be an understatement. Time To Play B-Sides! showcases just a small portion of the talented singer/songwriter’s extensive recording history, collecting various non-album B-sides from vinyl 45s and CD singles, obscure songs from movie soundtracks, live tracks and other flotsam and jetsam from Costello’s nearly twenty-five year career. Suffice it to say that there are people who certainly know more about Costello’s output than this humble scribe, and even a couple of hours trying to track down the sources of the over two-dozen tracks included here only resulted in a raging headache. Fortunately, listening to the collection helps cure said cranial distress, Time To Play B-Sides! providing a wonderful sampling of Costello’s skills as both a songwriter and performer. From brilliant, passionate covers like the Beatles’ “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” or Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise” to lively originals like “Veronica” or “Puppet Girl,” Costello seldom disappoints. Whether venturing into the avant-garde (“The Room Nobody Lives In”), sixties-styled British pop (“Hurry Down Doomsday”), rocking rave-ups (“We Despise You”), exotica (“Life Shrinks”) or just bittersweet unrequited love (“I Hope You’re Happy Now”), Costello is a master at what he does. Costello fans may have some of this material on various discs, but it hasn’t been collected in one place like this that I can find. Until somebody else compiles a legitimate box set of Costello rarities (an overdue event considering the artist’s output), kudos are due Tendolar for their exhaustive work and excellent results.   (RK)

Bob Dylan Rock Solid (Junkyard Angel #Junk 004.A; 47:39 min)

SOURCE: Tracks 1 – 7, Massey Hall, Toronto Ontario, Canada; April 19, 1980. Track 8 claims to be from the next night’s soundcheck in Montreal Quebec, Canada. According to most references, however, Dylan didn’t play at Le Theatre Saint-Denis in Montreal until April 22nd, leaving one to believe that this cut might have been from one of the four nights (April 17 – 20) that Dylan played in Toronto.

SOUND QUALITY: Very good soundboard (7-8) with significant song separation providing disconcerting “empty spots” between songs. 

COVER: Front cover insert is double-sided with full-color shots of Mr. Zimmerman on both. Rear cover has pic of a perplexed Bobby looking at the tracklist and venue information and scratching his head. Tray insert offers another color shot of Dylan while the silver disc has a nice silk-screened two-tone label with the title and the old “Promotion Copy” ploy printed on it. A very nice package put together for Dylan collectors from the Junkyard Angel.

TRACKLIST: Gotta Serve Somebody/ Covenant Woman/ When You Gonna Wake Up?/ Precious Angel/ Slow Train/ Solid Rock/ In The Garden/ Coverdown/ Breakthrough

COMMENTS: The many facets of Bob Dylan’s career have been covered so often and in such detail that I won’t try to make an addition to the pile of information that exists concerning Mr. Zimmerman. Rock Solid captures part of an exciting 1980 performance that comes from the peak of Dylan’s “Christian” period. Dylan’s controversial conversion to Christianity was first expressed artistically with 1979’s Slow Train Coming album. His religious period stretched across three albums in as many years, running through 1980’s Saved and ending with Shot Of Love (with its K-Tel cover) in 1981. I’ve always thought this to be Dylan’s slightest creative period, but upon hearing songs like “Solid Rock” and “In The Garden” from Saved or “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Precious Angel” from Slow Train Coming performed in full band mode, I’ll have to reconsider.

The performance captured by Rock Solid is dynamic, Dylan singing passionately and with some force, with background vocalists like Helena Springs and Regina Havis hitting the choruses and creating an outright gospel feel to the material. The songs from Saved were perfectly while on tour, the live arrangements subsequently copied months later in the studio. Unfortunately, only seven songs from the performance are included here – another eight songs have been dropped from the set offered here (perhaps the reason why there are long pauses placed between songs in the editing). There’s enough material from this single performance to fill a two-disc set which I, for one, would have liked to hear. A different show from Dylan’s four-night stretch came out a few years ago as the two-disc set Solid Rock on Wanted Man Music, featuring twice the material including these songs here.

As for the eighth track included here, “Coverdown/Breakthrough,” I can find absolutely nothing about. It’s evidently not a Dylan composition, but because it fits in with these songs so well it may be a cover of a gospel song. It matches Dylan’s mindset at the time, however, finishing the album on a high point. A valuable document of a little-known period of Dylan’s career, Rock Solid captures a significant performance. If you can’t track down the full two-disc set mentioned above you could do worse than finding a copy of the single disc Rock Solid.    (RK)     

Sex Pistols Spunk (Original Copy Original CD-R #OCO-27; 63:50 min)

SOURCE: Tracks one through twelve are studio demos taken from the Pistols’ first and third Denmark Street sessions with producer Dave Goodman in July 1976 and January 1977, respectively. Tracks thirteen through nineteen, not on the original vinyl version of Spunk, seem to be outtakes from the February 1977 sessions with producer Chris Thomas.

SOUND QUALITY: The original twelve Spunk cuts are very good (6-7) rough soundboard recordings from early Pistols’ recording sessions. Tracks thirteen through nineteen are good to very good (5-6) studio outtakes with a fair bit of scratchiness and vibration. 

COVER: Single-sided front cover insert offers a kinda grainy four-color shot of the band flinching in the face of some unidentified flying substance; back cover has the track listing and an ultra-cool pic of a British “Zodiac Guide” circa 1977 that proclaims the Pistols to be “an astro disaster!”

TRACKLIST: Seventeen (a/k/a I’m A Lazy Sod)/ Satellite/ No Feelings/ I Wanna Be Me/ Submission/ Anarchy In The U.K./ God Save The Queen/ Problems/ Pretty Vacant/ Liar/ EMI/ New York/ EMI/ Submission/ Satellite/ No Feelings/ Seventeen/ New York/ Submission

COMMENTS: One of the best things about the CD-R revolution is that no worthwhile bootleg title never has to go out of print again. The “up from the basement” release of the Sex Pistols’ classic boot Spunk is a perfect case in point. Proving to have more lives than old lady Dooling’s eight cats, the collection of studio demos that make up Spunk pop up time and time again in varying forms. The original vinyl version offers up twelve aggressive punk tunes recorded by producer Dave Goodman for Pistols’ manager Malcom McLaren, who submitted them to EMI as the band’s first album. Shocked by cuts like “God Save The Queen,” “Anarchy In The U.K.” and “Pretty Vacant,” the label unceremoniously dumped the band. A & M Records subsequently signed the Pistols, proffering an advance that, like your uncle’s favorite fishing tale, has grown in legend as the years have passed by. A couple of weeks later A & M also dropped the band due to their “controversial nature.” They landed at Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, who placed them in the studio with producer Chris Thomas, the results released as the one legitimate album of the Sex Pistols’s brief career. 

  Before Virgin could release Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols, however, copies of Spunk appeared on the streets of London, Manchester and other British Sex Pistols hot spots. The resulting chaos has been documented by Clinton Heylin in his book Bootleg, the author calling Spunk the “seventies most legendary bootleg.” This CD-R release captures the original tracks offered by Spunk, adding a few additional variations on familiar songs like “Sub-Mission” and “EMI” at the end. The sound quality is pretty good, especially on the first dozen tracks (which are not “A & M Demos” as stated on the cover but rather demos commissioned by McLaren for EMI). However, this material, as I stated before, has been recycled so many times, both legitimately and otherwise, that there’s really no reason to pop up $25 - $30 for a CD-R copy of it. If you’re doing a flat disc-for-disc trade, I’d recommend it – after all, it is one of the most notorious boots that’s ever been released. Otherwise, I’d just track down one of the cheaper CD versions of it (the Goodman sessions most recently released by Cleopatra as Pretty Vacant). It’s a valuable part of the Sex Pistols’ legacy; a great rock & roll swindle, at that.   (RK)