RVOW: Elvis Costello’s 1982 Record; Imperial Bedroom

Random Vinyl of the Week is a new installment on the NewbLog. The first record re-visited was Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, from 1978. This week I am spinning Elvis Costello’s 1982 release, “Imperial Bedroom,” which peaked at #30 in the U.S. charts and hit #6 in the U.K....

In 1982 Elvis Colstello teamed up with Geoff Emerick, engineer from Abbey Road studios and thus veteran of nearly every Beatles session post 1965, to record an album that was marketed with a single word: “Masterpiece?” Many didn’t feel that Imperial Bedroom was a masterpiece right away, but it did receive some great press including great reviews from Rolling Stone, The New Musical Express, and the Village Voice. Costello was starting to act more and more like the Elvis we know today, polite, witty, access-able, and less like the angry stand-offish “punk” who tore through the states with his entourage beating back reporters and photographers (literally) just a few years prior. The album’s peak track is generally considered to be “Man out of Time,” which I admit is the one I cued the needle up to for about two weeks after first buying this LP. “....And In Every Home,” might be my current favorite, however, with the full orchestral scoring of Steve Nieve; complete with brilliant fanfares and string flourishes. This album is a beauty and is also claimed to be the first album where Costello branched into too many genres on one record to capture the full “popular” audience and thus pleased the die-hards and buffs more than the masses. The b-side ballads including “Boy with a Problem,” and “Town Cryer,” certainly contribute to said sentiment and also help round out this effort. The album’s most memorable refrain, however, might belong to the song “Pidgin English,” on which Costello explains that: “There are Ten Commandments of Love.”
Imperial Bedroom definitely represents the era it was made in and certainly sounds more like a “Beatles-esque,” record than any of his previous releases, but it is still distinctly Elvis and possibly a Masterpiece. Most artists would easily boast it as their proudest effort, but Elvis has a few wall-to-wall ear-magic endeavors. It has certainly withstood the test of time- which cannot be said of many records from 1982- listed as number 166 in 2003’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” by Rolling Stone.

RVOW: 1978's Excitable Boy, by Warren Zevon

Random Vinyl of the Week is a new installment to the NewbLog that will look back at miscellaneous titles as they spin around my $99 dollar Newmark belt-drive turntable. The first album up for discussion has been stuck on said record player since I picked it up for $1.99 at Soundsations in Westchester a few weeks back...

Warren Zevon is probably most widely known for a track on the first side of this LP entitled “Werewolves of London,” with its catchy piano riff and some of the best lines in Rock-and-Roll history. These lines include, but are certainly not limited to: “Little old lady got mutilated late last night...” and “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s... and his hair was perfect.” Other gems on Excitable Boy are the title track, “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner,” and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” The album also has some great rock ballads including the brilliant “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” where the songwriter laments that “The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder...” Zevon writes touching ballads and slots them next to tales of the darkest characters in both serious and humorous fashion in his records, not unlike contemporary Tom Waits, but without purposefully destroying his voice for the sake of his characters. Instead Zevon often juxtaposes the seedy tales next to bouncy music and always retains the warm baritone colors of his vocal timbre. He is known as a brilliant song writer among music critics and buffs, but is still mainly a cult figure in popular music history. Whether this is due to his personal character or the sordid themes he consistently returns to is debatable, but it is probably a mixture of the two. I am but a young buck who has loved Zevon since studying “Carmelita,” in a songwriting class taught by Dr. Clark at Santa Barbara City College just before Zevon was diagnosed with cancer and had a resurgence at the beginning of this decade before sadly passing in 2003. So... for more on Zevon pick up “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” by Crystal Zevon or for a more in depth look at Excitable Boy and Zevon’s self titled release of two years prior see Eric’s Music Ramblings and Indie Musings...