Your favorite EC album and why.

[when i was cruel]

I pick All This Useless Beauty, various reasons why, possibly his best lyrics, catchy, quotable, fun, mysterious, features "the great mosey delta blues man Paul McCartney" and it even has a meaningful title as to what he thought was the fate of the album.

[bronxapostle]

GET HAPPY!! always NUMBER ONE: cos' it makes me HAPPY!! twenty times!!!!!!!!

[wordnat]

IMPERIAL BEDROOM: It's a jungle in there -- an ornate, serpentine jungle....

[krm]

wrong question! This is a moving target. It changes on a daily/weekly basis. Today: El Mocambo gets my vote.

[jardine]

i find this question harder to answer when there is a new cd around. i'm still in puppy love w. n.r. and will have to wait a while. i even find it hard to do this "five classics, five songs ok, five songs not" thing w. n.r. too soon...? make sense?

[pophead2k]

Probably Spike or Brutal Youth for strictly sentimental time/place reasons.

[sulky lad]

BA says

GET HAPPY!! always NUMBER ONE: cos' it makes me HAPPY!! twenty times!!!!!!!!

Always right always spot-on, me too BA !!

[sulky lad]

Bugger , krm is right too, El Mocambo. As always depends partly on mood. GH will always be my number one but on certain occasions different favourites occur. B&C is great if I'm in a foul mood, Terror And Magnificence is a favourite when I'm working alone at night !! along with North in the wee hours !

[docinwestchester]

El Mocambo gets my vote.

Have you figured out a way to edit out the screaming drunk guy who pretty much ruins the album for me everytime I listen to it?

[jardine]

hey! that was me!! no, really, but i still remember listening live on FM radio that day in Toronto. don't recall if it was CHUM FM or CFNY FM. I should go check my cd and see if it says...

[krm]

El Mocambo gets my vote.

Have you figured out a way to edit out the screaming drunk guy who pretty much ruins the album for me everytime I listen to it?

The YeeeHaw-man is a part of my listening experience. He brings atmosphere to the show! Without him it would be like any other liverecording!

[sulky lad]

At the end of the vinyl LP there's prolonged cheers and someone shouts a phrase I can't decipher followed by "Elvis is King" just before an MC says "Ladies and Gentlemen, that's all for tonight". It just makes the whole show seem more unique, just like Yee-haw man !

[FAVEHOUR]

At the end of the vinyl LP there's prolonged cheers and someone shouts a phrase I can't decipher followed by "Elvis is King" just before an MC says "Ladies and Gentlemen, that's all for tonight". It just makes the whole show seem more unique, just like Yee-haw man !

Kind of like the end of the Warner Theatre show released with the Hip-O TYM, where a guy shouts, "you son of a bitch!! Come baaaaaack!"

That guy was right behind me at the show, by the way.

Dave

[Jack of All Parades]

It will always be "Get Happy" for me. The sheer musical energy and muscle coupled with a lively verbal dexterity always make this album a fun listen. I do not think they ever sounded better as a unit- singer/songwriter and the accompanying band. A close second will always be Trust/Imperial Bedroom where I think he hit peaks as a singer and songwriter.

[Jeremy Dylan]

THE DELIVERY MAN. Marinated in atmosphere, the Imposters grinding on a succession of smokey grooves and those tones - the dirty reckless crunch of EC's Super 400 on There's A Story In Your Voice, Faragher's deep, dark EB-3 rumbling around the bottom end of Needle Time, Steve Nieve's wild theremin winding its way around Bedlam (my favourite Costello track) and St. Pete's incredible, indelible, impeccable groove-laden fills through the bridge of Monkey to Man.

[Otis Westinghouse]

This Year's Model + Get Happy!! + King of America

[jardine]

listening to the performance of Beyond Belief on that Radio Two session posted in another thread, i think i nearly have an answer to this thread's question. I like what is happening now w. himself, the new c.d., the reawakening of old songs in a new light, the performances, the musicians he has surrounded himself with (sugars and 'posters) as much as any other time in his career. it is equal in revelation and joy, for me, to any other part of his career. i don't know if that means, out of this whole context, that n.r. is "as good" as any other album taken out of context. but this TIME is the best time i've had in a long long time w. his work. and it seems, very vaguely, to be so for him as well. seems centered and filled up with music and images, and energetic, and so on.

[Top balcony]

This is a toughie, I've really enjoyed this thread.

A real close call between my two favourites.I'll give my choices in context;

Best ever - King of America ; the audio equivalent of Everton winning the Prem.

Perfect from start to finish.Fantasticly sympathetic playing by the ensembles and the songs themselves are top notch.

Next best - Get Happy - by contrast this is Liverpool being relegated - ie massively enjoyable but just a tad behind my top pick on my personal pleasureometer

Similarly perfect in a very different way. This is the zenith of the Attractions studio work. In particular Steve's keyboards, with a terrific Stax/Motown vibe throughout. The cigarette paper between my two choices is the songs themselves. KoA has the edge, just, and only just.

Colin Top Balcony

[cwr]

In some senses, it's so hard to choose-- how can I NOT pick Get Happy!!?? Or Blood & Chocolate???

Or a half dozen other perfect Costello records? I probably listened to Brutal Youth more than I've ever listened to any other record in my entire life-- or ever will.

And yet, for me, it is easy: MLAR is my favorite Costello album. Hands down.

And it's not just the contrarian in me: it's genuinely the EC album I love the most, from start to finish. It's brilliantly sequenced, and I love every track on it, even "Playboy To A Man" and "Broken" (the two that draw the most scorn from some quarters), and I feel like it manages to do all the things that Costello does well.

Some have pointed to National Ransom as a summation of EC's entire career, but to me, MLAR shows off the balance of EC's gifts from angry rock to sensitive ballads, tender, noisy, clever, political, witty, dark...

Parts of it sound like he could have made it with The Attractions, while other parts sound like he could have saved some of these songs for The Brodsky Quartet.

I'm not writing this to convince anyone who doesn't like MLAR that they should give it another chance. (Though maybe you should!) I'm just explaining a little bit of the reasoning for why it always locks down the #1 slot in my heart. If all my Costello albums were on a sinking ship, MLAR would be the one I would save.

And if you've never heard "Just Another Mystery", it's easily one of the best outtakes from any Costello album EVER.

[pophead2k]

I also have a very large soft spot in my heart for MLAR. My brother had expressed some interest in Costello, and I gave him this album (as it was new at the time). He said he couldn't get past the first three songs. It made me understand that EC wasn't for everyone. Still, this album rewards repeated listening. And I must say that Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4 is one of my all time fave songs, and my second favorite EC song.

[Ypsilanti]

Enjoy the most: Get Happy
Close Second: King Of America
Love the most: North
Guilty Pleasure: When I Was Cruel
Obsession of my youth: Spike

[so lacklustre]

I love MLAR too, probably his most underrated album. GH will always contend with MLAR for top spot as the first EC album I bought upon release. Armed Forces rarely gets a mention in these threads but still stands out as a superb example of the 'new wave' sound of that era. Top five wd prob be completed by Trust and WIWC, or maybe TYM or Spike.

[John]

Get Happy would be my number one. It's always the first I reach for when I've not listened to Elvis for a while. It always warrants high volume and I think it's just the tunefulness and singalongability that does it for me. Pure pop magic.

Guilty pleasure: Punch The Clock.

[docinwestchester]

Easy question.

Recorded in 11 days (just like NR, as he's been pointing out during the recent promotional tour), This Year's Model blew me away when I first heard it and continues to do so. For me it's the perfect album - songs just flow together in one continuous stream of energy, anger, and youth.

No Action - best album opener EVER - Pete's drumming is sick
Little Triggers - best ballad EVER - He should play this more often
Lipstick Vogue - best rock song EVER - Pete once again is amazing

I could comment on each song, and come up with a superlative for each, but you get the idea.

Probably because of my age (I was 17 when it was released), early EC will always be my favorite, and TYM is #1 for me.

[Top balcony]

I pick All This Useless Beauty, .

With a name like that I would have thought you'd have picked "When I was Cruel"?

Best Wishes

Colin Top Balcony