Song of the Day 6/3/10
Working feverishly to add yet more updates to the June-July live music calendar – what looked at first to be a pretty lame summer has turned out to be pretty good! More news, more reviews coming soon: in the meantime, the best 666 songs of alltime countdown continues every day, all the way to #1. Thursday’s song is #56:
Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army
Arguably the smartest, and most indelibly catchy, anti-imperialism song ever written: “And I would rather be anywhere else than here today.” Rumor has it that Steve Nieve wrote the melody. Best song on Armed Forces, 1979.
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that album is so underrated. what about Big Boys or Goon Squad? equally challenging, irreverent material. the first 3 EC records are like a fluke, nobody could ever top such a strong run, Declan himself.
ha, Accidents Will Happen is #180; Party Girl #177; Goon Squad #103 – could have put practically everything on that album on this list and it wouldn’t be overstating the case – although there would be less room on the list for bands like, say, the Brooklyn What.
I’d say Costello’s first five set a standard that has never been equalled…
I prefer Accidents will happen, but perhaps that’s because Olivers Army was such an airplay hit – it just got played to death in the UK, probably because of the Oliver Cromwell subject matter , but the melody is undeniably an absolute killer.
I see you’re in the Gonads. That’s cool, I had no idea the band was still together. Do you still do Harry May’s Revenge?
I think the last time we did that must’ve been the US ’98 tour… Two of live in Spain and Cyprus respectively now, the last album I worked on was “Old boots, no panties.” But Gal wants us to do something again at some point. For the moment he takes a touring version of The Gonads around using other musicians. Ironically Clyde, (who lives in Cyprus now and played guitar for the Gonads and produced three of the albums) sang backing vocals on Accidents will happen!