{"id":2051,"date":"2009-03-11T10:19:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T14:19:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-03-11T10:19:16","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T10:19:16","slug":"does-not-translate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/does-not-translate\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Not Translate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zvboZrCu6t8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>Have you come across musical collaborations involving musicians with strong personalities that did not translate?<\/em> With full knowledge that active participants in the Halls of Rock typically are not fans of Elvis Costello&#8217;s <em>Spike<\/em>, I&#8217;m reluctant to use this album as an example of a topic I&#8217;d like to discuss, so please see if you can avoid the temptation to bash on <em>Spike<\/em> and, eventually, list your 25 Top 5 Costello records.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6VjKKFu83xw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nIn recent threads we&#8217;ve brushed on both <strong>Tom Waits<\/strong> drummer <strong>Michael Blair<\/strong> and the turning point (for the worse) in Costello&#8217;s career, including <em>Spike<\/em>, an album featuring Blair and <strong>Marc Ribot<\/strong> (and others?) from Waits&#8217; <em>Raindogs<\/em>-era band. I first found Waits interesting at the time of those &#8220;junkyard&#8221; albums. After being disappointed, at the time, with <em>King of America<\/em>, and still coming to terms with the dissolution of <strong>The Attractions<\/strong>, I was excited to hear the influx of the Waits musicians on Costello&#8217;s music. Then I brought home <em>Spike<\/em>, and boy was I disappointed! Over the course of that album and the follow-up with their input, <em>Mighty Like a Turd<\/em>, did Ribot and Blair contribute more than a measure or two of worthwhile support to Costello&#8217;s music? Sure, a lot of those were overwritten, at best, but I couldn&#8217;t believe two guys whose chops were so sympathetic to Waits&#8217; music could contribute so little to Costello&#8217;s music.<\/p>\n<p>I saw Blair and Ribot support Costello live on the <em>Turd<\/em> tour, and that was a worse match yet. On Costello&#8217;s back catalog, before Elvis decided he would re-create himself Tom Wilson-Toussaint, Ribot didn&#8217;t have a clue what to do. He&#8217;d fiddle around with his foot pedals, trying to create some useless &#8220;textures&#8221; while Elvis and his hybrid Waits-Wrecking Crew band lumbered through a song like &#8220;Oliver&#8217;s Army.&#8221; Really bad.<\/p>\n<p>I went back and listened to those Waits albums during this time, and each time Ribot and Blair sounded just right for that music. I&#8217;ve since heard Ribot in some faux Cuban band and with <strong>Fred Frith<\/strong>, and he&#8217;s just fine in those settings. With Costello, however, the music of these musicians <strong>did not translate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Surely you&#8217;ve been curious to hear a collaboration between musicians with strong personalities only to find that their work did not translate in the new setting. Please discuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you come across musical collaborations involving musicians with strong personalities that did not translate? With full knowledge that active participants in the Halls of Rock typically are not fans of Elvis Costello&#8217;s Spike, I&#8217;m reluctant to use this album as an example of a topic I&#8217;d like to discuss, so please see if you <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/does-not-translate\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}