- "I just don't know where to begin ..."
- — the opening line of Elvis Costello's 1979 LP "Armed Forces"
Before we get into Elvis Costello's third album "Armed Forces," released in the U.S. on Jan. 5, 1979 and recently re-released in one of those primo box-set editions for rich boomers with lots of extra tracks and goodies, please take a moment to reflect on exactly where we were then.
According to the Billboard charts, the top song of 1978 was "Shadow Dancing" by Andy Gibb, the 20-year-old younger brother of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, who had been performing together as the Bee Gees for as long as Andy had been alive. Gibb also had the No. 8 song on the charts, "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water."
The Bee Gees were in the midst of a commercial renaissance in 1978, after their career as an idiosyncratic singing-songwriting combine who produced quirky but unmistakably Beatles-esque music in the late 1960s had faltered in the early '70s (to the point that, in 1972, they released an album called "To Whom It May Concern," which was received with indifference by critics and the public alike).
Having subsequently shifted away from twee-pop balladry, moved from London to Miami (on the advice of Eric Clapton) and gave themselves over to funk and rhythm, the Bee Gees were the most popular band in the world in 1978, having placed three songs in the year-end Top 10: "Night Fever" at No. 2, "Stayin' Alive" at No. 4, and "How Deep is Your Love" at No. 6.
All these songs were from the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack, which still stands as a significant cultural marker.
Debby Boone, the daughter of actor-singer Pat Boone — who is often associated with denaturing cover versions of what were then called "race records" — had the No. 3 song on the chart, "You Light Up My Life." Boone's version was a cover of a song written for a popular 1977 movie of the same name, the soundtrack version of which had been a minor hit the year before. (Boone had a small part as a bridesmaid in the film.)
That version was originally performed by Kasey Cisyk, a Ukrainian-American classically trained coloratura soprano who worked primarily as a commercial sessions singer. She sang the slogans "Have you driven a Ford lately?" and "You deserve a break today" for, respectively, long-running Ford and McDonald's commercials. But because the soundtrack album credited the "original cast" and not Cisyk, most people presumed the original version of the song was sung by actress Didi Conn, who lip-synced the song in the film.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that Conn, probably best known for her role as Frenchie in the 1978 film version of the musical "Grease," is a capable vocalist.
Boone's version was so close to Cisyk's — the same tempo and in the same key and uses the same piano and orchestra track — that many people assumed it was the same recording. ("I had no freedom whatsoever," Boone later told Entertainment Weekly. "[Producer] Joe [Brooks] told me exactly how to sing it and imitate every inflection from the original recording."
The No. 5 song of 1978 was "Kiss You All Over," a somewhat risque disco-influenced ballad by Exile, which started out as a high school garage band in Kentucky 15 years before (and continues today as a touring and recording country band). "Kiss You All Over" was notably written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, who wrote a slew of hits songs in the '70s and '80s for acts as diverse as The Sweet (including "Fox on the Run," "Ballroom Blitz," "Little Willy" and "Wig-Wam Bam"), Suzi Quatro ("Devil Gate Drive," "Stumblin' In"), Racey ("Lay Your Love on Me," "Some Girls"), Smokie ("Lay Back in the Arms of Someone," "For a Few Dollars More") , Tina Turner ("Better Be Good to Me"), Huey Lewis and the News ("Heart and Soul") and Toni Basil ("Mickey"). Chapman also produced "Kiss You All Over."
The No. 7 song was "Baby Come Back" by Player, a band that — like Exile — is often thought of as a one-hit wonder though having other minor hits. At No. 9 was the indelible "Boogie Oogie Oogie," by A Taste of Honey, which would become Capitol Records' first single to obtain platinum record status by selling 2 million copies.
Holding down the 10th spot was "Three Times a Lady" by the Commodores, Lionel Richie's band before he went solo. Remarkably, "Three Times a Lady" was the only Motown song to reach the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart all year long.
Now, 1978 was not a particularly bad year in pop music.
Any list of most popular works of art — whether defined as "most purchased," or "most experienced" — is likely to be disappointing to people who consider themselves informed on the subject. "Popular" is often used as a diminishing modifier; if something is popular, it is probably in some fashion cheap. It is not a pearl purchased with discrimination. It is a Nathan's hot dog rather than a Michelin meal.
And we enjoy hot dogs, most of us.
Time also mediates things; from this distance, we can understand the "disco sucks" movement was at least partially borne along on a fearful wave of homophobia and resentment of Black music. Andy Gibb's story might be partially redeemed by the knowledge of his tragedy, that he'd die penniless 10 years later. In retrospect, the Bee Gees might seem even bigger than they did then, harbingers of the age of Michael Jackson and Prince.
You still hear the other songs from time to time, if you aren't trapped in some playlist of your own devising — pop is enjoyable, catchy. That's why it's pop.
Even the treacly "You Light Up My Life" has some kitschy appeal as a karaoke standard.
There's no sense in hating music, it's just tones. Just air being pushed about.
Pop is always rife for revolution; the music business is a kind of swindle waiting to be undermined by the cheerlessly authentic. If we think of 1978 we might think of punk rock, but punk rock wasn't on the radio and wasn't in the heads of suburban middle-class kids.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were just beginning to show — they were recording "Damn the Torpedoes" around the time Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces" hit the street.
In those days, you hit the record stores on the day the album came out. I was waiting for "Armed Forces."
Costello was the first punk I emphatically embraced, even though those first two records weren't so punk; not like the Sex Pistols or the Damned or the Buzzcocks. There was too much craft in those noisy projects; the words spun 'round on themselves, the meanings changing in the light. A lot of chord changes. He played a Jazzmaster, for goodness sake, and the nerdy Buddy Holly glasses (and the assumed name) suggested a certain cheeky relationship with rock 'n' roll history.
Costello didn't have hit singles, but he'd already produced indelible songs. "Watching the Detectives" was a murder mystery, chock full of clues. "Alison" was tender creepy — Costello wasn't a punk because he could get sentiment, just not "too sentimental."
The second record, "This Year's Model" had the remarkable "Less Than Zero," a song about British fascist Oswald Mosely, and "Radio, Radio," which remains the best encapsulation of the duality of the medium — the homogenizing voice that whispers in the individual ear.
And "This Year's Girl," a song with a lyric like a snide Philip Larkin aside, indicting the causal misogyny of rock while maybe participating in it a little as well: "You want her broken with her mouth wide open 'cause she's this year's girl."
This was some weeks before the incident where Bonnie Bramlett backhanded him in the Holiday Inn bar in Columbus, Ohio, after Costello allegedly made racist remarks about James Brown and Ray Charles to her and other members of Stephen Stills' touring retinue.
Costello would not apologize, but explained himself by saying he was "very drunk" and "it became necessary for me to outrage these people with the most offensive and obnoxious remarks I could muster to bring the argument to a swift conclusion and rid myself of their presence." That moment was not part of the January 1979 calculus.
So "Armed Forces" was a record to which I looked forward. And one I dove immediately into.
"I just don't know to begin," the singer begins. "Accidents Will Happen" is the song. For the first time, the Attractions, who'd played on "This Year's Model," were credited as collaborators. The third track, the jouncy, Abba-esque "Oliver's Army," a treatise on imperialism, is the best piece of bitter bright pop candy ever recorded. "Green Shirt" references something called the "Quisling Clinic," which exists in Madison, Wis. (it's been converted into apartments), and which has no apparent connection to Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling, though the paranoid reading of the song certainly implies one.
"Party Girl" is more standard, a semi-rewrite of "Alison," but a good one that telegraphs a little of Costello's affinity for American country music, a taste he'd indulge on his 1981 album of covers, "Almost Blue."
The album settles down a little bit after that amazing side one, with "Goon Squad" and "Two Little Hitlers" pushing the conceit of "emotional fascism" a little more baldly than some other numbers, but the American release climaxes brilliantly, with Costello's rave-up version of Nick Lowe's (who produced Costello's first four albums) miraculously earnest "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding."
The track, originally released as the B-side to Lowe's single "American Squirm," and credited to "Nick Lowe and His Sound," is a snapshot of a real performance — the band is playing live, Costello's vocal is live, and though it feels as that it might become unmoored and crash at any second, Pete Thomas' drumming somehow nails it down.
A pure blast of sonic power, "Peace, Love and Understanding" is formidable enough; as the coda to a smart, challenging but deeply pop-centric record like "Armed Forces," it is a stroke of genius. Why the track was omitted on the U.K. release (in favor of "Sunday's Best") is a real mystery. Couldn't they hear what they had? Was it too overt for dry British sensibilities?
Reliving the record reveals some weakness; four of the songs are pretty average by Costello's high standards. Though the production is immaculate and the aspiration for world chart domination is evident, everyone involved with the project likely knew there were no genuine hit singles to be had. ("Oliver's Army" did get to No. 2 in the U.K., No. 4 in Ireland; "Accidents Will Happen" stalled out at No. 101, just bubbling under the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.)
But what matters more than the re-assessment is the memory of how the album felt in January 1979, when our ears were stuffed with Gibbs and lesser stuff, and some of us had discovered the brick through a window that was British punk. There's nothing artful about a brick through a window; it's pure catharsis, an atrocity committed in response to some other perceived atrocity, slight or indifference. Punk is nihilism, a ceasing to care.
"Armed Forces" is caring — about craft, about art, about how that crafty art might be received — at an intense level, with enough self-awareness to include oneself in the critique. It is caring so hard that you hated yourself for it.
The new box set of Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces," issued in a super deluxe edition with colored vinyl for $259.98 or a super deluxe edition with black vinyl for $199.98, can be ordered at shop.udiscovermusic.com/collections/elvis-costello-the-attractions-armed-forces. The tracks are also available for digital download through iTunes, Amazon and other providers for about $30.
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