Season 347 - Elvis and Nick

For Season 347, we’re playing songs by Elvis Costello or Nick Lowe. Here’s EC’s “Watching the Detectives", which is clearly a favorite of my special guest, Steve Phillips. Steve recorded this for an earlier season and I hijacked it for some multitracking hijinx. Steve is playing a concert uke and singing, the headless accompanists are playing Ubass, tenor “stun” uke, and telephone vocal.

I have this single too, Steve!

 
All four members of Rockpile wrote this, and Nick still plays it. Love the theme, Andy!!!

 
On a footbridge over a road that runs alongside the River Tees in Stockton on Tees is a quote from Ecclesiastes. "All the rivers run down to the sea, yet the sea is not full" and I long felt I could use it in a song. Then three years ago, I wrote this song which traces the Tees from source to mouth. It's written in rhyming couplets with the quote used as a refrain after each line, ballad style. Recently I thought I would like to resurrect this song and this weeks theme gave me a reason to give it another go, so here is "Song of the Tees". The pictures are all of the River Tees but I didn't have pictures to match every verse exactly but the first few are of the upper river and the later ones are of the river just above and as it passes Stockton and Middlesbrough.


Here are the lyrics. The last verse is the full quote from Ecclesiastes.

Song of the Tees
Geoff Walker

The [D]Tees rises [A]up on cross [D]fell
All the rivers run [A]into the [D]sea
Among [G]hills where lead miners [A]dwelt
Yet the [D]sea it [A]is not [D]full

She [D]flows 'cross [A]fair northern [D]hills
All the rivers run [A]into the [D]sea
Over [G]falls and rapids she [A]spills
Yet the [D]sea it [A]is not [D]full

She skirts round a grey castle wall
And held poet and author in thrall

Now through green fields and meadows
Past churches and abbey she goes

Past towns where history unfurled
Where a railway changed the world

Under Bridges all of great fame
Transporter, Newport and Yarm

Past banks that once rang with steel
Now a home to salmon and seal

So into the salt sea she glides
Where the ships wait for the tide

[D]All the rivers run [A]into the [D]sea;
yet the sea, [A]it is not [D]full;
To the [G]place from whence they [A]came,
The [D]rivers will [A]return a[D]gain.
(Ecclesiastes 1.7)
 
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thank you for hosting the week Andy.
this, from Nick Lowe's Dig My Mood LP (1998)
and featuring Kev on electric tenor ukulele.
 
Been looking forward to bringing some good songs this week and then a throat infection hit... Just managed this one before it became too bad. Puuh.
'In the Darkest Place' is from the 1998 collaboration between Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach - Painted from Memory. An album I must have heard a thousand times back in the day and now have revisited. It was a difficult one to do, but I really wanted to do it so hope you like my version.



Doesn't sound very good on small phone and ipad devices, so put on those earphones ;-)
 
I never listened much to Nick Lowe. But I remember a friend of mine had the LP of Pure Pop for Now People (the U.S. title for Jesus of Cool), so I listened to some iTunes sound clips and a couple of songs sounded familiar from 40 years ago. I figured this was a better choice than "Marie Provost".

 
Not much time available this week, but here's one from Nick

 
Great theme Andy, thanks for hosting~ So Nick Lowe performed this song by The Band with Wilco and Mavis Staples. Jon Duncan is doing most of the heavy lifting on this one. Other than having the idea and recording a single uke/vocal track, Jon did all the rest including mixing and making the clip :)

 
Thanks everyone for your entries and enthusiasm for the season. The playlist should be current up to here. If I have left you off I swear, it was an accident. Let me know and I will add your song ASAP.
 
Elvis Costello recorded the song "She" in 1999. Originally it's a French song "Tous les visages de l'amour" (1974) by Herbert Kretzmer and Charles Aznavour, who passed away on 1st October at the age of 94. Here is an instrumental version, tabs by R. J. Putter (again!):
 
Greetings,

While watching "The Deuce" last night on Netflix, I realized the theme song was an Elvis Costello song! So this is my Elvis submission, considering my second to be Nick Lowe since he wrote it. So.....here it is. By the way, the show is NOT PG. I did this version like it's played in the show with the female vocal taking the lead.

Ciao

 
Here's a country classic that a plethora or artists have recorded, including Elvis Costello. I never have tried this one before, did a very quick work up and take.

 
i'm hoping to either write something or at least learn another Lowe or Costello song
over these next days, but in the meantime, this is a baritone cover of Nick Lowe's
'House For Sale' that i did a little over three years ago. sorry it's not a new recording
Andy, but i thought you might like to hear it brother nonetheless.

 
Surprised to be the first with this Elvis Costello classic. I agonised a bit with the lyrics - in the original Elvis drops the 'N' bomb - though not in a racist way and entirely in context with his message. Nonetheless it's a word I can't bring myself to say/sing and I substituted it, as others have done, with the conveniently rhyming word 'figure'.
I added a percussion beat again to this one simply to stop myself speeding up the tempo - something I constantly fight against.

 
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I’m going to be a bit cheeky here and put this one up as an Elvis Costello song. I know his version best and for many many years I thought Elvis had written it. I know different now of course. It’s a Nick song originally from his time with Brinsley Schwartz. I hope to be back tomorrow with another Nick song, but in the meantime, what a song this is! :D
 
i'm hoping to either write something or at least learn another Lowe or Costello song
over these next days, but in the meantime, this is a baritone cover of Nick Lowe's
'House For Sale' that i did a little over three years ago. sorry it's not a new recording
Andy, but i thought you might like to hear it brother nonetheless.

Thanks for reposting this Jon, I’ve added it to the playlist even though it’s not new. #1, I have a soft spot for this song. And #2, I remember when you first posted it. Right after I bought my 1st ukulele a few years ago and was looking around YT to see what you could do with it, this was one of the videos I found that inspired me to stick with it through the early frustrating stretches. Here’s another one (from a series with some really good covers... the Seasons remind me of it in some ways).



Alas, A.V. Club has privatized their back-catalog of these. There were some real gems.
 
Greetings,

I found myself on google search under This Year’s Girl covers in the first picture. I NEVER come up. It must not be a cover that’s done often. OMG. I know it means nothing but somehow it makes me happy. That probably sounds a bit narcissistic but really I am blown away.

Ciao

Ciao
 
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