Poll --The Weakest Link, Elvis Costello MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE, Round 5

No more Disco Tex and the Sex-o-lettes (doo dot doo dot doo dot dot get dancin')

Time to vote off one more today.

Discussion: Today is about the Mighty Like A Rose Rhino bonus disc.......likes, dislikes, better alternate versions, other opinions etc.
Since there's a lot of alernates, you can also mention/compare "Refuse To Be Saved" with "Invasion Hit Parade."

7 - Invasion Hit Parade
T8 - Harpies Bizarre
T8 - Georgie and Her Rival
T10 - Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)
T10 - Sweet Pear
T12 - Broken
T12 - Playboy to A Man

 

Summer goes. It's a beloved mid-period Costello single and it's a fun song, but it's a touch clumsy. I like the other songs so much more.

 

DQ: Never heard it. I'm not enough of a fan of this album to buy another one.

JcS

 

Hey, I missed a few rounds and suddenly all my favourite tracks are gone! I love the album, but what's left sounds like a pretty dreary EP to me. I opted for All Grown Up, which was always seemed like one of the more anonymous tracks on the album.

 

How to be dumb

DQ: Don't have the Rhino edition

 

While all these songs are special to me, the least special and least immediate is "After the Fall." It seems like an art exercise (a great one!) and the rest have more feeling and heart within, IMO.

I will have an awful time deciding among the remainders if my faves are left.

 

All Grown Up. I don't know why so many people are down on "After The Fall", the sparse arrangement really captures the emotion of the song.

 

I guess no one has the bonus disc. I think it's very good and complements the album well. I love the 2 Irish-based songs - "Mischievous Ghost" and "St. Stephen's Day Murders." I love the live "CCIU4." The unplugged stuff is good too.........though after watching it on YouTube, I wish he would've included "So Like Candy" with the "I Want You" lyrics at the end.

 

It's one of my favorites on the album.

 

I went with "Dumb" because, while it's lyrically fabulous, it's not as melodically engaging to me. That said, I'm kind of blindly throwing my dart at the board at this point because I love all these songs too much.

The Bonus tracks are great, as usual, on the Rhino reissues (one of the best reissue campaigns of all time, imo), but I wish there were more only guitar/vocal or piano/vocal demos of these songs. Or at least more stripped down like the PTC demos. In many cases I prefer his demos to the final versions. I first heard all (or most) of the ATUB songs live solo acoustic and I liked them much better than the occasionally odd, slightly uncomfortable arrangements they ended up with on the album (Little Atoms, Distorted Angel and It's Time, in particular).

His demos of the MLAR album tracks follow the final arrangements pretty closely (I mean the other way around), which shows how on purpose this album was. I wonder if he made these demos AFTER he knew the Attractions were not on board. Maybe these demos are what caused the problem with the Attractions because I don't think he ever really just "told" them what to play before.

I always loved this acoustic demo of "Mistress & Maid" and it's funny to see "Forgive Her Anything" continue to rear its head. He must have demoed this damn song for every single album since 1982.

 

"So Like Candy" is going to be the last song standing.