Countdown to Elvis LIVE!!!!

[strangerinthehouse]

Monday, Feb 28

I guess I should have started the countdown yesterday, make it a full seven days before i get to see my first elvis costello concert. I spent sunday grudginly working, serving overpriced mexican food to folks after church. All i could think about was how next sunday i will be coming down from an EC concert high. I had already cleared my work schedule for a weekend off and the excitment and anticipation towards saturday night was sweeping me already. I decided to declare Elvis Costello week in my CD player, ALL Elvis ALL the time. (with some exceptions of course, i won't listen to elvis on the way to the concert, that might be overkill) My wife had looked up hotels in tampa while i was at work but didn't find anything yet. Came home at night, relaxed with a glass of wine, watched the oscars constantly reminding myself of EC's performance last year with "The Scarlet Tide." After watching Scorcese lose again i went to sleep with busy thoughts of the week to come and the amazing weekend that will top it all off.
I was rudely awaken by a braying alarm and like all monday mornings the weekend held me and my wife back through several snoozes. Finally i got up to the tune of "Why Can't a Man Stand Alone?" in my head and subsequently in my stereo. My rhyming rhino reissue of All this Useless Beauty continued to play until i left to drop off my wife at work where she teaches Fourth graders about the world. In the car i still had my Crooked Rain Pavement CD and left it on until the last track played today at 11:30 A.M. Once i was back home and got dressed to "Little Atoms" and drove to my parent's house for a haircut from my mother. The excitement has taken hold of me and has me addicted to the thought of a magnificent experience, how close will i be? how closer can i get? what if I meet him? what conversation can you have with your idol? All these questions travel through my brain just like all the cars and trucks travel around me. I get home and get my hair did. my father who speaks very little english wants me to help him get his taxes done at the local library around noon. I have a speech class at 11:00 and tell him that i will meet him there. I leave my parent around 9:40 and to pass time drive to Barnes and Noble for breafast and a belated morning coffee.
I stop at the bank before class and notice how fake everything is, the plants, the teller's obligatory good morning, everything looks so ready-made and this is where we all keep our money. I drive to my comunity college which is struggling to become just a college, get to class on time only to find out that the speech nazi's mother in law is dead and that she will be traveling to North Carolina. two classes are off but with an abundance of assignments. I leave the school and head to a record store on the eve of its big move, they are moving from their small yet cozy location to a biggerand more annoying one, they're changing their name and who knows what else.
This was where i found a bevy of cheap, used EC, from the original Brutal Youth, which i sold back to the store when i found the reissue, to rhino reissues of This Year Model and My Aim is True, The latest find was an expensive Deep Dead Blue with Bill Frisell and just the other day i found a the Girls+ (pounds symbol)/ Girls=$&Girls compilation. I had bought a crappy EP of The Libertines, (another over rated band) and decided to exchange it for the used compilation; I was trying to justify buying my third elvis costello comp, after 1999's The Very Best of, and Ryko's 1994 compilation of the same title. (the latter i gave to my wife when we first started going out in an effort to introduce her to EC and unknowingly to my lips) Then I realized I'm an elvis costello freak and spent the relatively little tip money for my collection. After pavement, The compilation took over my car and will continue to do so until a change is needed. Elvis writes in the liner notes "Rather than being placed in chronological order I have arranged the songs in four parts so as to try and tell a number of different stories. I will leave it to the listener to make what they will of each section...." The sequencing is what turns this collection of already known and many times heard songs specially unique and great to hear again.
At the little library located a few steps from my parent’s house I was translating my dad’s tax predicaments to the AARP volunteer when my phone abruptly interrupted us. It was my honey calling to tell me that we have hotel reservations and our Short Honeymoon was practically set and then with a smile in my face I continued to translate deductions and tax payments. I finish my drive home when “(I Don’t Want to Go To) Chelsea” begins. Thus here I am listening to the Elvis and Bill Frisell version of “Baby Plays Around” painting a picture of obsession and anticipation with computerized images of words. I still have a five to eight Humanities class to go to, that would most likely be bore. We will be discussing Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” I don’t know what would happen after that, all I know is that I can’t wait for whatever it is to end (except if it is “relations” with my wife, that can last forever) so that one more day would be over and there would only be five days until a very astonishing concert that would last in my mind forever on.

[spooky girlfriend]

I remember feeling very excited just about this same week last year, when I went to my first Elvis concert. Now I'm practically a groupie! Losing my Elvis virginity at the Ryman last year was so fantastic. I just know you're going to love the show.

I understand he's still occasionally sporting the boots from Memphis last year, so you might look for these:

[verbal gymnastics]

So it's fair to say you're looking forward to it then SITH?

[strangerinthehouse]

Tuesday, March 1. Five days left

Pretty much VG. I can't wait to see those boots, thanks for the pics Spooky.

Now to continue with the countdown.

Tuesdays are pretty generic, they are only brought alive by the prospect of a new music or film release. (And no i'm not talking about the dvd release of Bambi and the first season of the brady bunch)As all of us EC addicts know, today is the release The Delivery Man The Deluxe Edition another kind but costly fix to our condition. After a couple of hours and a couple of bucks at work i drove to the closest record store to get it. Throughout most of the day i 've been trying to decipher the concept behind the Girls+ */Girls=$&Girls and came up with nothing except that the way that the songs are indeed arranged into groups and that one of the stories Elvis wrote about in the liner notes must be about unatainable girls and impossible love (Disc Two starts in these sequence: Alison, Man Called Uncle, Party Girl, Shabby Doll, Motel Matches, Tiny Steps And Almost Blue.) EC wrote tiny blurbs on all the songs which, as usual, only help to muddle more the mystery. Just as the concept behind The Delivery Man I intend to just listen and enjoy it. Since the compilation only carries the Columbia years I've been trying compensate whenever i'm at home by listening to the other half of EC's albums, right now it is When I was Cruel. Radio Silence and Spooky Girlfriend were prominetly featured songs in the Paul Rudd and Rachel Weiz film The Shape of Things written and directed by Neil LaBute, the film's music solely made up of Elvis Costello songs I strongly recomend it to every member of this site. Later tonight i 'll be taken my little sister to see Constantine, i'm not too sure i will like it but it'll be fun. I like the Clarsdale Session's disc it is more slow blues than the Album.
Today is almost over and so are today's remarks, if you expected the same cheer and excitement from the last entry, work kind of brought me down but tomorrow there will be only four days left. tuesdays just are not very fun.