Make sure you get to the 37-second mark...and keep a barf bag or bucket within arm's reach.

So rock's other big loss this week, the death of writer/DJ/indie label founder Charlie Gillett, has had me thinking about the title, if nothing else, of his classic early rock history book, The Sound of the City. The reason I stress the title is because I have a terrible memory and what I want to discuss may actually have little to do with Gillett's book.

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The guitar playing of Martin Belmont has graced recordings and concerts by Graham Parker & The Rumour, Ducks Deluxe, Nick Lowe, Carlene Carter, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, and many more. He continues to keep a busy schedule, playing the music he loves with a reunited Ducks as well as three other Americana-oriented British artists. In 2009 Belmont released The Guest List, a collection of covers sung by most of the singers he's backed for a significant time over the years. For someone like myself, who grew up listening to Belmont's work in the 1970s and 1980s, it's an intimate, low-key way of catching up with the old gang and getting introduced to some Belmont collaborators who are not as well known in the States.

The first sign that Belmont might get into the spirit of a Rock Town Hall interview is when, as we settle into our trans-Atlantic, webcam chat via Skype, he wants to describe his “top-shelf” CD collection lining the walls behind him. There's a Beatles box set, a Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, a couple of Elvis Presley box sets. Then he wants to know how we operate in the Halls of Rock. After I basically run him through our mission statement, in which Rock Town Hall serves as a sort of methadone clinic for rock 'n roll addicts with increasingly busy lives, he says, “I know exactly what you mean.”

I describe my experiences finding out about Graham Parker & The Rumour as a teenager, trying not to come off too much like Chris Farley's mouth-breathing Paul McCartney fan from Saturday Night Live. Belmont asks if I’ve seen Parker perform solo in recent years - I have. He raves about his old friend's abilities as a performer and songwriter, and then we get down to talking.

And talk we did. There are a topics we didn't have time to cover, but as we chatted, rock lover to rock lover, I hope you get a sense of Belmont's ultimate sideman's dedication, warmth, and regard toward his collaborators. At one point he talks about the importance of the guitarist serving the song and being able to weave into whatever situation the song and its musicians requires. It was clear to me that these abilities to weave extend well beyond Belmont's fretboard.

The patented Rock Town Hall Dugout Chatter segment that concludes this interview is presented in audio form. Through my space-age, retro technology for recording this interview, I hope the audio Chatter gives you an added sense of Martin's enthusiasm and passion for rock 'n roll. Take it away, Martin!

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Elvis Costello & Bruce Springsteen together with just about the best band I could ever put together (Nils Lofgren, Steve Nieve, Roy Bittan, Davey Faragher, and Pete Thomas).

Seriously, this would be my dream band right here. (Or at least my dream back-up band.)

99% of the time this kind of thing is a train wreck, but EC and Bruce have bands that actually know their place as back-up musicians.

Having the balls to play a Sam & Dave song at The Apollo to boot!

Decades after Beatles fanatics spent their hard-earned cash buying bootleg albums in search of the Great Lost Beatles Track, the band finally allowed for the release of that three-volume Anthology series. The series confirmed that, with the exception of a few well-known alternate takes, The Beatles had nothing more to give. There was not a treasure-trove of cool, unreleased original tracks.

Fans of The Kinks and The Who have been treated to some cool rarities and demos over the years. Some believe Bruce Springsteen's unreleased tracks are as good as his released ones.

The Rolling Stones never faced this question. Each new album since Black and Blue contains tracks that were revived from some aborted recording session in Jamaica or the Bahamas, circa 1974. A hundred years from now they will still be able to release a new album of material culled from one of those late-night jam sessions. And don't think they won't.

With each new reissue of the back catalogs of Elvis Costello and David Bowie, new previously unreleased tracks emerge, most of which are of better-than-current-day-release quality of either artist. The other night, however, I was thinking about one major band with excellent studio chops that seems to have nothing more to give:

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Recently Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely has begun his summertime Rock Town Hall duties, which include monitoring the films of Al Pacino; giving grief to the likes of Hrrundivbakshi, BigSteve, and yours truly; and pooh-poohing the collected works of Elvis Costello, Lou Reed (Mistrial excepted), and other high school favorites post-1983. Some of what my man Gergs will say in the coming weeks will hurt. In some cases it will be the pain of a cowardly stab in the back; in other cases, the pain you feel will be the result of his occasionally piercing insight. Wherever the pain registers for you, I encourage you to take it like a Townsperson and give it back to the man as you see fit.

To help EPG re-establish his footing in the Halls of Rock, I feel compelled to SUMMON him to comment on the following tracks from Elvis Costello's new album, the one with some overblown title and produced by T-Bone Burnett. I have not yet heard these songs myself. Maybe these will be initial spins for you as well. Don't put all the burden on E. Pluribus to comment, and please be candid when you share.

Elvis Costello, "Down Among the Wine and Spirits"

Elvis Costello, "Complicated Shadows"

Elvis Costello, "I Dreamed of My Old Lover"

I look forward to your comments!

Exhausted?

It just occurred to me that I did not load a single track from Elvis Costello & The Attractions' Armed Forces onto my iPod. I love EC & The Attractions - everybody loves 'em - and Armed Forces is a strong record featuring some killer songs, but I rarely if ever feel the need to spin it. I've felt this way for most of the years that have followed the release of Get Happy!!, my all-time favorite album (period, not just among EC albums). I feel like I've got nothing to learn from Armed Forces. The arrangements lack mystery and unexplored nooks and crannies for me to stumble upon. The lyrics seem to have nothing more to reveal to me. I never found it to be a very emotional album, and what emotions I once felt for the album have long since passed from my daily routine (eg, "Party Girl"). It's a closed book. A very good book, but closed for me.

Do you have an album or albums like I've described, albums you know you like by artists you definitely like yet that you have zero interest in playing?

In the spirit of this morning's All-Star Jam, here's yet another rock 'n roll tv ad. Mad props to Townsman Diskojoe for pointing out this old ad, which I don't recall seeing in its time!

Do you have a favorite tv ad for a rock record, whether a single- or multi-artist collection?

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of Elvis Costello & The Attractions. As much as I love the guy's music (mostly that done with The Attractions but some other stuff as well), he's not an artist whose lyrics often mean a lot to me. I usually think they're cool and find a couple of key couplets to latch onto for meaning, guidance, and inspiration, but he's not the sort that I'd quote in my high school yearbook, if I could go back in time, as I might any number of lyrics by Paul Weller or Graham Parker, to cite two contemporaries whose music I like a lot but otherwise find not as rich as Costello's.

One Costello lyric that might be the exception, that might be the one I would have used in my high school yearbook had I been able to make my selection when I was about 30 years old, when I had a better idea of what life was meaning to me, is from Imperial Bedroom's "Kid About It":

So what if this is a man's world
I want to be a kid again about it
Give me back my sadness
I couldn't hide it even if I tried girl

I had some rough emotional patches over the weekend - nothing horrible, nothing earth shattering, but the kind of stuff that puts me in touch with the kid in me. I don't know about you, but as I've aged and matured, some feelings that used to be on the surface and readily available with associated artists/albums that spoke to those emotions have become less prevalent over time. As a result, I spin those records less often than I once did, despite still loving the music as much as I ever did. The first two dB's album mean less to me on a day-to-day basis these days, but this morning, hearing "Ask for Jill" pop up on my iPod, I was able to tap into what the band meant to me every day of my life in my early 20s. I've been listening to those first two albums since and enjoying revisiting those vague, hopeful, fragile feelings that the older, wiser, sometimes too-fucking-real me of today doesn't feel as strongly as he once did.

Do you ever have experiences along these lines with your maturing emotions and aging record collection?

Hey, I finally got to watch the first two episodes of Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., the new Sundance channel talk show, in which Elvis plays James Lipton to a legendary guest musician. I know some of you have been following this nascent show.

The first episode, with Elton John, was fantastic. The two immediately got down to musician-on-musician rock nerd talk, with Elton talking about being a young rock snob in England who thought it was cooler to buy American releases of records while his American counterparts were seeking the UK releases. There was little to no typical rock mythologizing about drug abuse, sexual escapades, and a career's worth of landmark hair architecture. This was a music talk show for the few of us who got into this for reasons other than "meeting chicks."

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