Ten (more) reasons to see Elvis Costello in St. Pete this week

By the time the Grammy Awards finally got around to nominating Elvis Costello as Best New Artist in 1979, the British singer/songwriter has already issued three of the era’s most pivotal rock ‘n’ roll albums.

The award went to the disco duo A Taste of Honey, whose unctuous “Boogie Oogie Oogie” had been a recent hit. The Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel and Donna Summer were the evening’s big winners.

With logic like that, Costello never had a chance in the American market. When he came charging out of the gate in 1977 with My Aim is True, his literate but hard-rocking music was mis-labeled as punk. Americans, shocked by what they were hearing about the Sex Pistols from across the pond, never really grasped the punk ethos, and since many of Costello’s songs were cynical, snarling and angry-sounding, he must, therefore, be a punk.

The label-crazy American media then pronounced him at the vanguard of “new wave,” whatever that meant. Punk’s more agreeable little brother?

Costello is in St. Petersburg Wednesday, to perform at the Mahaffey Theater (find tickets at this link).

He’s branded this tour “Radio Soul: The Early Songs of Elvis Costello,” limiting the setlist to material from that first decade, when he was re-writing the singer/songwriter rulebook with one clever lyric and hairpin pop melody after another.

The restless and prolific Liverpudlian, born Declan McManus, would go on to experiment with many different kinds of music, collaborate with Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Allen Toussaint and the Brodsky Quartet, among others, write a memoir and get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

His name and his reputation, however, were made in those early years. With 1978’s This Year’s Model, he began a lengthy collaboration with the Attractions, a hard-charging three-man group who could match, beat by brutal beat and turn by delicate turn, the dynamics of his unique songcraft. The foursome’s creative peak, arguably, was Armed Forces in 1979 (which actually reached No. 10 on the American album chart; this was when the Grammys finally, begrudgingly, “recognized” him. Host John Denver rhymed his last name with “an angry young fellow”).

Two of the Attractions – pianist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas – are in the Imposters, the band playing with Costello on this show.

It’s a given that his best-known songs (none of which were really “hits” in the sold-a-million sense of the term) will get re-visited. Expect workouts of “Watching the Detectives,” “Alison,” “Pump it Up,” “Accidents Will Happen,” “Radio Radio,” “Everyday I Write the Book” and Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.”

Here’s a purely subjective wish list of 10 deep tracks that any immersion into first-decade Costello ought to include. Maybe he’ll play these, too.

(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea. The spiritual heir to “Watching the Detectives,” it’s like a particularly spiky and paranoid film noir, with criminals lurking around every corner. But what does it mean?: “Men come screaming, dressed in white coats/Shake you very gently by the throat/One’s named Gus/One’s named Alfie/I don’t want to go to Chelsea.” Bristling guitar and thunder-crash drums throughout.

New Amsterdam. Costello’s acoustic songs first began to appear on EPs and B-sides. A solo recording, this melancholy waltz-time greeting to New York City (“a song about a bewildered new arrival in the New World,” the author described it later) was contrary to the other (deliriously punchy) numbers on 1980’s Get Happy!!!, all of which were arranged and performed to sound and feel like 1960s R&B. Still, it somehow fit.

Lipstick Vogue. Fierce and unyielding, it takes down a former lover through vitriolic lyrics, punny wordplay and waves of crashing dynamic interplay between Thomas’ drums and Nieve’s eerie Vox Continental.

This Year’s Girl. Maybe the angriest song on This Year’s Model, it’s a brutally cynical assessment of the objectification of women; i.e., who is that girl in the centerfold? Is the illusion preferable to the reality? Costello’s famous sneer is present from start to finish; the song makes you feel dirty just listening to it.

Oliver’s Army. A deceptively cheery melody accompanies this Armed Forces track, with dour lyrics inspired by the long-running British occupation of Northern Ireland. Like many on that album, it’s dominated by keyboards – in this case, a poppy piano that Nieve confessed had been nicked from ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” A No. 2 hit in the U.K.; stiff city in the U.S.A.

Strict Time. Costello’s 1981 set Trust doesn’t have the reputational heft of its predecessors, but it’s nevertheless another punching bag full of visceral winners like “From a Whisper to a Scream,” “Clubland” and this jittery puree of jangly rhythms and abstract words about the romance of shadows (“You talk in hushed tones, I talk in lush tones/Try to look Italian through the musical Valium/Thinking about grand larceny/Smoking the everlasting cigarette of chastity”).

Man Out of Time. A highlight of 1982’s Imperial Bedroom, this gently-rolling tune couches careful introspection, Costello later offered, in a cover story about a then-current British political scandal (“Will you still love a man out of time?”). Time itself played a key role in its construction – first recorded at a typical breakneck pace, Costello opted to slow things down, and the Attractions nailed it on the first take. “I came to terms with the fact that I was sacrificing the power of certain songs to this mad pursuit of tempo,” he would say.

You Little Fool. With production by Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick, Imperial Bedroom was lushly arranged and performed, with strings, horns, harpsichords, bells and whistles. Costello’s harmony-vocal overdubs were multiplied, and on some songs – like this one – he practically sang as two characters, overlapping and swapping lines. It’s pure pop goodness, albeit with lyrics about a young girl who’s throwing her life away for “romance” with an older man. And it came with a ridiculous, only in the ’80s video:

Dr. Luther’s Assistant. Another track from the solo sessions that produced “New Amsterdam,” this neo-psychedelic carnal romp involves a “broken-down cinema” (thought to be an old-school peep show, although Costello has never actually explained the lyrics) and film-obsessed Dr. Luther watching his wife with his “best boy making her grin.” Abstract but somehow intoxicating, in a way that Costello particularly excels.

High Fidelity. One of the many highlights of Get Happy!!!, this hyper-kinetic, soul-infused “love” song is performed from the vantage point of a spurned lover who just can’t quite make the leap and get over it. Costello uses the metaphor of a radio signal to make the man’s point (“Even though the signal’s indistinct, and you worry what silly people think … can you hear me?”)

And a few more for luck: “Big Tears,” “Red Shoes,” “Beyond Belief,” “The Imposter,” “Hoover Factory,” “Crawling to the U.S.A.,” “Shipbuilding,” “Goon Squad,” “Girls Talk,” “Peace in Our Time.”