Many of us have gone to concerts, shows, sporting events, plays, movies and various other events and later we may remember them, but maybe not the details of exactly when or even where. This is where artifacts come into play to help locate lost time. This Elvis Costello appearance in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is a case in point. Because of the ticket stub, we can pinpoint the date and place, and the cost of the ticket: January 25, 1981, Carmichael Auditorium, $6.00.
Squeeze, the opening act, was a very big deal in those days. The band's compilation Singles - 45's and Under would come out in 1982 and really, it's still nifty-fifty to hear. In Chapel Hill, they highlighted their most recent release, East Side Story (1981).
An ad leading up to the show: THE ENGLISH MUGS TOUR WITH THEIR OLD CHINAS.
Flyer for the show.
And finally, a review of the actual event by Geoffrey Mock for the Daily Tar Heel ("Costello pumps it up," January 27, 1981). A pretty decent overview. Cracks me up, though, its reference to "the old songs" -- given that My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello's first album, had only come out in 1977. Time is very strange in that now, nearly thirty years later, it still seems like yesterday; in the meantime, I saw Elvis (solo) frontline for Bob Dylan in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on October 12, 2007.
Today's Rune: Possessions.
4 comments:
Still love that old EC and Squeeze stuff.
Music note: the singer on "Tempted" was Paul Carrack, who was the singer on the Ace top 40 hit "How Long?" in the seventies, sang a couple of hits for Mike and the Mechanics and had his own hit with "Don't Shed a Tear." Apparently the guy's got a golden horseshoe up his ass.
Also, Elvis had a cameo on "Tempted."
Cool, man. Right on'
Maybe if you hadn't smoked so much pot at the shows you'd have a better memory of them Erik. ha ha ha ha
Personally I recommend the purple microdot for the music and the windowpane for the ordinary everyday.
But then I have no personal memory of any of this.
Walking Man, very funny. I didn't do pot or any of that stuff. The legal drinking age was 18 at the time, mostly we drank a little cheap beer and walked to the shows. The Eagles were in the Super Bowl the same day and were losing to the Raiders, so I went ahead to see Squeeze/Elvis, which was far better than moping over the Eagles.
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