One man’s leftovers is another man’s meal!

When I was in high school, digging the hell out of Elvis Costello & The Attractions, the release of Taking Liberties was a big deal. As if the guy hadn’t been cranking out enough action-packed releases, his record label, Columbia, graciously collected 20 additional songs that had been floating around on UK import versions of his albums and B-sides, or that had been stored away on a shelf, previously unreleased! Getting all these “odds & sods,” to use the title of The Who’s mid-70s collection of spare parts, in one package, for one affordable price was the way to go for a kid with limited pocket money in days long before the hope of file sharing and the rise of the mighty Apple Empire. Check out what my $5 or so bought in 1980:

Side one
“Clean Money” (previously unreleased)
“Girls Talk” (b-side of “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down,” 1980)
“Talking in the Dark” (a-side, 1978)
“Radio Sweetheart” (b-side of “Less Than Zero,” 1977)
“Black and White World” (Demo version) (previously unreleased)
“Big Tears” (b-side of “Pump It Up,” 1978)
“Just a Memory” (b-side of “New Amsterdam”, 1980)
“Night Rally” (from UK version of This Year’s Model, 1978)
“Stranger in the House” (a-side, 1978)
“Clowntime Is Over” (Version 2) (b-side of “High Fidelity,” 1980)

Side two
“Getting Might Crowded” (b-side of “High Fidelity,” 1980)
“Hoover Factory” (previously unreleased)
“Tiny Steps” (b-side of “Radio, Radio,” 1978)
“(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” (a-side, 1978)
“Dr Luther’s Assistant” (b-side of “New Amsterdam,” 1980)
“Sunday’s Best” (from UK version of Armed Forces, 1979)
“Crawling to the U.S.A.” (from soundtrack to Americathon, 1979)
“Wednesday Week” (b-side of “Talking in the Dark,” 1978)
“My Funny Valentine” (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) (b-side of “Oliver’s Army,” 1979)
“Ghost Train” (b-side of “New Amsterdam,” 1980)

That’s a better album than a lot of artists ever release as one of their primary works. It’s a better album than Costello himself has released in ages. It was also a lot of fun to read the liner notes and spot guest musicians (Quick: Who recalls the track on which The Clash’s Mick Jones plays – and how cool was it the first time to see his name listed in the credits?) or instances of Costello playing his own bass parts. Back then, that side of Elvis was still fun.

Today, on our eighth digital reissue cycle of the Costello catalog, these tracks are scattered as bonus tracks, with German import-only B-side and, in most cases, rightfully previously unreleased tracks added. Although I appreciate being able to taste more of Elvis’ table scraps from his glory days, I miss the simplicity of Taking Liberties, which is not, I believe, in print as a stand-alone CD.

Taking Liberties, Odds & Sods, Dead Letter Office… Whose fridge have you most taken pleasure in raiding through one of these collections?

I’m not sure I have an adequate example yet–U2 was the first band that came to mind for me, although they’d gradually went from “pretty cool” to “completely annoying” by the time of that Rattle and Hum movie. I also recall a lot of people thinking Duran Duran were hip when they came out, but after a brief spell of them getting an appropriate critical wedgie, they seem to have regained their slightly hip standing. Go figure.

What I’m looking for are artists who came out of the gate hipper than hip who then had a steep, sudden dropoff in hipster quotient. Painfully slow declines, such as the decades-long dropoff in hipness experienced by the Jefferson Airplane to Starship, are NOT what I’m looking about. (I know, Dylan’s line, “You ain’t got nothing when you’ve got nothing to lose” may spring to mind among Airplane hatas.) And this isn’t about “quality” or the jumping of sharks, necessarily. I might argue, for instance, that The Boss‘ quality shot up for a stretch while he went from hipster underground artists to mainstream rock icon.

Oh man, I just thought of a perfect example: that band from upstate New York that featured Natalie Merchant! Thankfully I’ve blanked out their name, but how many of you thought they were hip when they were opening for REM, and how quickly did they fall from hipster grace?

Yes, I’ve long been curious to hear this Roy Harper guy. Although I only learned to love Led Zeppelin in my early 20s and although I’ve yet to be anything more than fascinated by the emotional sludge of Classic Pink Floyd, those bands were huge during my formative rock years, and I couldn’t help but feel like I’d missed out on the rock nugget that was Roy Harper. It seems like a lot of you have yet to hear this guy as well, so take your hat off, have a cigar, and check him out as I check him out for the first time.

I found this rare 1966 recording, his first single, on a compilation called The Best of Strike Records. It’s pretty cool, as is the entire compilation.

Roy Harper, “Take Me Into Your Eyes”
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Here’s a question for musicians in the Halls of Rock, a question that begs your honesty: Can you share a personal example of what I call an “exit strategy,” or way out, of having to play a song that a bandmate has brought to you for the first time or that your band has been playing for some time? Candid, weasily examples will be appreciated.

I ask this question as both a bandmate and a songwriter, who’s been involved in conducting exit strategies as well as, I am pretty sure, had them conducted on my own compositions. The exit strategies I’ve been involved in have been as straightforward as telling the songwriter “It’s just not right for our style” to stalling to something squirrely, like telling my friend, in private, “You don’t want [our singer] to butcher your song. That demo’s perfect the way it is!” As a songwriter of a song that most of our band liked playing live, I had one bandmate who would claim that he’d forgotten the chords to that one song. I later used his technique on another guy in that band, to get out of having to perform a song I never liked playing.

Short of having George Martin do their dirty work, I wonder what strategies Lennon and McCartney used on Harrison over the years.