1986: Chernobyl. Elvis Costello and The Attractions bashing out Blood and Chocolate, a live-in-the-studio album, produced by Nick Lowe with Colin Fairley. Cáit O'Riordan, former bassist for The Pogues and Elvis' then-wife, sings along for the ride. Elvis assumes his Napoleon Dynamite role eighteen years before the movie of the same name.
No one writes more elaborate lyrics than Elvis Costello -- not even Bob Dylan. "Masters of War," anyone? North Korea, Iran, Iraq, USA? Here we go for a little sing-along:
Tokyo Storm Warning
The sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
And spilled into the mezzanine of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
And I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in Hell
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
But they're helpless here as babies 'cause they're only here on holiday
[Chorus:]
What do we care if the world is a joke?
Tokyo Storm Warning
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
Tokyo Storm Warning
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
Tokyo Storm Warning
We're only living this instant
The black sand stuck beneath her feet in a warm Sorrento sunrise
A barefoot girl from Naples or was it a Barcelona high rise
Whistles out the tuneless theme song on a hundred cheap suggestions
And a million false seductions and all those eternal questions
Chorus
So they flew the Super-Constellation all the way from Rimini
And feasted them on fish and chips from a newspaper facsimile
Now dead Italian tourists' bodies litter up the Broadway
Some people can't be told you know they have to learn the hard way
Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas
In the Hotel Argentina they can hardly tell between us
For Teresa is a waitress though she's now known as Juanita
In a tango bar in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
She's the sweetest and the sauciest
The loveliest and the naughtiest
She's Miss Buenos Aires in a world of lacy lingerie
Chorus
Japanese God Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians
They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners
They're so tired of shooting protest singers
That they hardly mention us
While fountains fill with second-hand perfume
And sodden trading stamps
They'll hang the bullies and the louts that dampen down the day
Chorus
We braved the cold November air and the undertaker's curses
Saying "Take me to the Folies Bergère and please don't spare the hearses"
For he always had a dream of that revolver in your purse
How you loved him 'til you hated him and made him cry for mercy
He said "Don't ever mention my name there or talk of all the nights you cried
We've always been like worlds apart now you're seeing two nightmares collide"
Chorus
Today's Rune: Fertility.
Sayonara!
6 comments:
I'm into this blog.
Lol, lyrics so elaborate that don't make any sense to anyone but Elvis himself.
I love it too.
Sara
hmm... blood and chocolate...not too sure those things go together. hehe
Sure are elaborate lyrics - not easily discerned upon first viewing though. After he wrote with McCartney I pushed him to the back of the 'must listen to' list (bias against Macca, and my Elvis loving sister(!), actually). Billy Bragg was nearing the front of the political pack instead- but I'll go and have a re-listen to his post Oliver's Army stuff now.
You don't run out of choice product, do you! Keep on, keeping on (whatever the hell that means!)
Thanks all, for the comments! The thing about Elvis is. . . I keep going back after intervals . . . his earliest albums still resonate best; haven't heard the New Orleans collaboration yet. . .
Cheers all,
'E
Tokyo Storm Warning is my favorite EC song, taken as a whole. (Fave lyrics: Beyond Belief; fave music: Strict Time). It reads like a Quentin Tarantino screenplay treatment. Imagine _Pulp Fiction's_ Vincent Vega or Jules Winnfield trying to interpret the entire planet's pop culture during a whirlwind tour of Marcellus Wallace's global business interests. EC wrote it from the POV of a gangster. The worldview also reminds me a lot of Neal Stephenson's novels (Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Baroque Cycle...).
Perhaps the song calls for an annotated version of the lyrics, similar to the famous American Pie (song, not movie) essay that's been online since the early 90s.
The veiled references to the Anglo-Argentine tug-o-war over the Falkland/Malvinas islands alone would fill up a Wikipedia article. (Hey! that's an idea!)
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