When you revisit Wise Up Ghost, I hope you pay particular attention to "Tripwire." Good lord, what a wonderful track.
I don't why "Meet Me in the Morning" and "Call Letter Blues" can happily co-exist in my universe and "Satellite" and "Tripwire" can't. But it seems to be so.
I think it was more like there was an abbreviated version of "Lost on the River" sold at Starbucks or somewhere like that. Most places you looked the 20 song version was the standard release.
Oh there's definitely a "relationship." But one thing I love about the album it's how it draws so broadly from the nether-regions of EC's previous work. That's obviously not going to work for everyone. But in the case of "Tripwire" I think there's a song there that exists apart from "Satellite" sample (a classic in it's own right). In the case of "Meet Me In The Morning" and "Call Letter Blues" I think it's just two lyrics set to the same music (and I much prefer the starkly personal "Call Letter Blues" text). My favorite touch on the album is how "Cinco Minutos Con Vos" incorporates the early live arrangement of "High Fidelity."
I feel like we may have had this conversation before in one form or another I really DON'T like that the album cannibalizes his previous work, and I guess if there were two sets of lyrics for one tune (in the case of "Tripwire") or two tunes for one set of lyrics (for whatever the "Pills and Soap" song is called) and they were contemporaneous or nearly so, I'd be happy to have both. But with decades long gaps between them, it just seems like a lack of creativity and picking old bones. In the case of "Tripwire", the fact that the backing is primarily lifted from "Satellite" is one negative, the fact that it sounds like "Satellite" recorded as it was coming out of an earbud is an even bigger negative. I agree that "Call Letter Blues" is better than "Meet Me in the Morning", but I never feel like one is lazily lifting from the other. They are contemporaneous creations, which colors my feelings about them.
I suspect this is just something we're going to disagree about. No harm there. But where you see a "lack of creativity" I see more of an inspired re-contextualization of relatively obscure corners of his catalog. By the way, I totally agree re: "Call Letter Blues" & "Meet Me In The Morning"-- and I wouldn't be surprised if other songs in Dylan's "Red Notebook" were imagined to the same tune. Even though I prefer one over the other, I love the fact we have both. But although it wouldn't be relevant to your opinions of the album track, have you heard any of the live versions of "Tripwire" that are detached from the "Satellite" sample? Pretty sure there is a substantial song there in it's own right.
I just find the songs from that album that recycle earlier lyrics feel inconsequential -- like they're collections of references rather than works in their own right. I think his intention was that you'd hear the words in a new way, but I found it had the opposite effect -- the words of a song like "Invasion Hit Parade" seemed to lose their meaning pulled out of their original context and semi-rapped. He could just be going "bla bla bla."
Good call. The tune is still "Satellite", but I like this far better than the album track with the sample.
Yeah, I'm more or less with you. The lyrics of "Pills and Soap" didn't NEED a new context. They already had a perfect one.
My challenge to you is to listen to again trying to image not having heard the previous version of the song, perhaps as a Roots fan who hadn't ever explored EC's catalog. You may not like it any more, but I suspect it'll come across differently.
Yes, of course it would, but having heard the earlier songs it's hard for me to listen that way no matter what. I had less of a problem getting into a song like "Grenade" as I haven't heard "She's Pulling Out the Pin" as many times as I've heard "Pills and Soap" or "Invasion Hit Parade."
Yeah, now THAT's good This version, not so much. So perhaps if they were BETTER recastings of old material I might like them more. I'd also be more open to them in concert than on a "new" studio album. Did he fail to give credit to Irving Berlin for "Puttin' on the Ritz" in "(She Might Be a) Grenade"? Or am I hearing things?
I think part of it is that Elvis's words and music are pretty specific and idiosyncratic. In a folkier tradition you can accept words set to new music and familiar music accompanied by new words without any difficulty. And I don't have an issue with musical samples on records either. But here it was a bit like watching a scene in a movie that used the dialogue from a different movie.
The best I can do to approach the album as a Roots fan who doesn't know Elvis Costello is to consider how I approach the remade Allen Toussaint songs on "The River in Reverse". For never having heard the originals (at least not up to the point when the album first came out), I thought they were terrific. A Toussaint fan might very well have been unimpressed. But I can't erase my memory of the source EC songs on "Ghost". Only time will do that, sooner than I'd like.
Yeah, it's sort of an impossible challenge. I can't pretend to be able to pull it off either. But as you say, it's easier to absorb new approaches to songs you don't know very well than those that are engrained deeply in your subconscious. I think it's still a fun game to try.
Aside from the amazing title track, The River in Reverse was an album I wanted to love far more than I ended up feeling. Maybe it's time for me to revisit it. My admiration for Allen Toussaint is almost limitless.
I really like that album, pretty much top to bottom. I'm nearly at the end of another crack at "Ghost". Of the "bonus tracks", "If I Could Believe" really stands out for me. "Can You Hear Me?" just makes me want to listen to "Radio Silence".
It's weird, because I like the words as heard on WUG, but find them sort of ponderous on the WIWC rendition.
There's no accounting for taste, or lack thereof. "Radio Silence" is one of my favorites on WIWC ... the WUG re-imagining just sounds cluttered to me. Could be worse, could have the "Une" sample on repeat laid over it.
Along with "River In Reverse", I think that "Ascension Day" is stunningly good. From Toussaint's minor-key inversion of Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" to EC's incredible lyric with its succinct meditation on Hurricane Katrina, it's among the greatest accomplishments in either of their catalogs.
Idiosyncratic taste rules! I'd never let anyone stop me from loving Dostoevsky AND The Three Stooges. Give "River" another shot.
