All The Bests @thebestsarehere - Tumblr Blog

ITAF 2013 In ORF TELETEXT Page 471

Participating artists: LIA, Manuel Knapp, UBERMORGEN, Daniel Egg, Marc Lee, Raquel Meyers, Kathrin Günter, Max Capacity, Dragan Espenschied, Jarkko Räsänen, Seppo Renvall, Juha van Ingen, Cordula Ditz, John Lawrence and Goto80.

d--r--a

kitsunetsuki-deactivated2026051

Guy Bourdin - Helen Hogberg Wearing Kenzo for Jap (Vogue Paris 1972)

palexdepressed

Carmen Yazalde in "A Virgin Among the Living Dead" (1973)

doomandgloomfromthetomb

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Imperial Bedroom LIVE! + The ALTERNATE Imperial Bedroom

Elvis Costello & The Attractions' 1982 masterpiece (?) Imperial Bedroom is getting a 40th anniversary celebration from the Repercussion blog with two very cool comps.

The first pieces together a live version of the album stretching from 1982 to 2016, offering some interesting reworks, unusual arrangements and just-plain great performances. I especially dig the haunting orchestral rendition of "Almost Blue" from 1999, which feels like it could be lifted off of Billie Holiday's Lady In Satin. Then, there's a collection of outtakes, rehearsals, demos, etc. from the Imperial Bedroom era — "the 'trainspotter' version of the album for EC geeks." All officially unreleased, which is no mean feat considering there's a lengthy bonus disc that accompanied a Rhino reissue from back in the early 2000s.

Listening to this stuff (along with the original album itself) I'm struck by how unequivocally grim Imperial Bedroom's lyrics are — even by Costello's standards at the time. It's a pretty relentless cavalcade of paranoia, misanthropy and nastiness, all wrapped up in a candy-coated baroque pop package. In other words, a masterpiece!?

Elvis Says: It was being an "adult" that was most of the problem, that and the fact that there seemed to be little time for "sober reflection." The public and private upheavals of the previous four or five years had heightened my already melancholic disposition. I intend that most of the "private" matters should remain that way, but when the opening track is called "Beyond Belief," and a key song of a record is entitled "Man Out Of Time," you don't have to be a detective or a psychiatrist to work out what is going on.