Thursday, 12 June 2008
Times have certainly changed.
Forty-one years ago (more or less) I was rifling through the racks at an out of the way and long defunct music store in Townsville when I encountered a mysterious unlabelled double album that turned out to be Blonde on Blonde.
Not long after that I started buying overseas music magazines which may have been two months out of date by the time they arrived at my friendly (and also long defunct) newsagent but gave me enough time to go asking about the new Jethro Tull single before it was released in Australia.
Around the same time we started getting Australian music magazines that were much more up-to-date but you still needed overseas sources if your tastes steered away from the mainstream.
Now, of course, I access music news from that inexhaustible fount of almost all wisdom, the internet, where you can learn about all sorts of events almost before they’ve happened.
Like album releases.
These days you hear about the forthcoming release from your favourite through the rumour mill almost before they’ve finished the actual recording.
And the fan reactions often make intriguing reading.
What, Neil Young’s recording an anti-Bush album with a choir and a trumpet filling out the voice, guitar, bass and drums? You’re kidding. He’d never do anything like that....
That was Living With War.
What, Springsteen’s ditched the E Street Band and he’s cutting an album of traditional folkie stuff with something called the Seeger Sessions Band? Get outta here....
And he debuted the album and the band at Jazzfest in New Orleans. (Actually, a pedant might argue that it was at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, but that was credited as a rehearsal, rather than a public debut).
What, you say Elvis Costello’s recording a new album? Coming out on vinyl? Maybe not even on CD at all? Called Momofuku? What kinda name is that?
He has. It did. Publicity hype. Yep. Named after the guy who invented instant cup noodles.
Fittingly, it leads off with No Hiding Place a slice of invective aimed directly at today’s less-than-wonderful (in Elvis’ eyes) wired world from the increasingly jaundiced viewpoint of someone who at least remembers the days when he was an angry young man and still harbours shards of the resentment that powered much of his early work.
We are, after all, dealing with the guy who claimed, thirty years ago, that his major motivations were revenge and guilt. If the angry young man bit has been overdone over the years increasingly pissed-off middle-aged misanthrope might be a fair summary of the persona Costello has tended to display in interviews over the past few years.