Reason #2 Why Elvis Costello is Lots Cooler Than You'll Ever Be
Earlier on the same North American tour where he refitted the lyrics to "Less Than Zero", Elvis found himself, with his new touring band The Attractions, in New York City. The Sex Pistols were supposed to be playing Saturday Night Live that weekend, but some shady influences prevailed upon NBC to yank their performance. NBC instead booked Elvis Costello & The Attractions as a last minute replacement.
NBC told Elvis to perform "Less Than Zero". When their time came, the band played a few bars of the song, then abruptly switched to an unreleased song called "Radio, Radio", an angry tune protesting the commercialization of Big Radio (Elvis was quite ahead of his time in this respect. This was before Rush covered some of the same ground and eons before the (recent) Sony Payola scandal). Anyway, the video of his performance can be seen below.
Let's face it: even if you tripped over a guitar and accidentally wrote two awesome songs, you still wouldn't have done that to NBC. The performance resulted in Elvis getting banned from SNL for 12 years. Happily, though, Lorne Michaels eventually mellowed out, permitting Elvis and The Beastie Boys to recreate the incident (with Elvis interrupting The BBs' "Sabotage") for the 25th anniversary special in 2000.
And while I'm at it, I should mention that the Dallas version of "Less Than Zero" was actually performed at a show in Canada, not in Dallas. The worst thing about telling other people's stories is that it's incredibly easy to be called out for fudging the details...
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That clip gets more awesome every time I see it. I wish I could halt the progress of a song with equal aplomb.
ReplyDeleteRe: Speak, Memory. At times, Nabokov's prose emulates the voice of a brilliant, precocious (and very self-proud) child--much like the younger self he writes about. What say you to this? Also, do you ever want to read any more about his stupid thing with butterflies? Not me, brother. No, sir.
JC
Frankly, I didn't pay that much attention to his prose- the story was so gripping, I was just reading to find out how it ends!
ReplyDeleteUh, seriously, I didn't really notice the phenomenon you speak of, but then again, much like the butterflies of N's pre-lepidoptery youth, I wasn't looking for it.
One thing I noticed and kept appreciating more and more: no one alliterates quite like N.
FYI, at the very end of the YouTube video, when the crowd is cheering, you can hear someone laughing that sounds eerily like Nelson's "ha-ha" laugh from The Simpsons.
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