... but some mornings I wake up with a burning desire to pick up the Red Pen of Death and put an indelibly obliterating line through everything Elvis Costello has done since "Blood and Chocolate". Today is one of those days. It's not that nothing of value can be found in the Warners albums ("Brutal Youth", at least, still gets a fair hearing in these parts) but as a whole they are so hit and miss, and often completely misguided, that it takes a more positive disposition than I currently possess to be bothered separating the wheat from the chaff. Be gone the damned lot of you!
(Although, I wouldn't go so far as to adopt the radical approach Jonathan Lethem describes in his recent harrowing personal-history piece in the New Yorker in relation to his obsession with Talking Heads, and how he was compelled, upon witnessing the awful spectacle of their later records, to disown everything they had ever done (I mean, can you imagine life without "Remain In Light"?). Obviously, the majesty of the first few Costello albums, up to and including "Imperial Bedroom", cannot be tainted by anything that may have happened subsequently.)
(By the way, I'm willing to wager that Lethem's piece contains the only reference ever to appear in the New Yorker to Fripp and Eno's "No Pussyfooting"; at the very least it must surely be the only time Brian Eno has appeared in the opening paragraph of a feature article in the magazine. Now all we need is for Sasha Frere-Jones to slip into the magazine a reference to David Bowie's ""Heroes"", so that we can see how the magazine's ruthless and unbending style keepers deal with a song title which itself contains inverted commas.)
