Having parted ways with Columbia in the US, Elvis took an extended break from recording. His only release in this period was a sequel of sorts to Taking Liberties—or more accurately, to Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers, as it was only released in the UK. Out Of Our Idiot collected several singles, strays, and sundry (with another four on the CD) from the eighties, and winkingly credited the collection to “Various Artists”, given the different band permutations and pseudonyms that had performed on the tracks. Collectors already had most of these songs, but to the new initiate, the album provided a well-needed Costello fix in the drought that followed the stellar one-two punch of 1986. The music runs the gamut from straight rock ‘n soul with the Attractions to the subdued country of the Confederates, with odd covers from the disparate pens of Burt Bacharach, Smokey Robinson, Richard Thompson, and Yoko Ono in between. Yet as wide-ranging as the music is, the sequencing makes it very cohesive.
The ride begins with “Seven Day Weekend”, a collaboration with Jimmy Cliff for the soundtrack of a film he was in, followed by the terrific B-sides “Turning The Town Red” and “Heathen Town”. “The People’s Limousine” was the wordy first collaboration with T-Bone Burnett, credited to and released by The Coward Brothers, while “American Without Tears No. 2 (Twilight Version)” is a sequel to the earlier song, written on tour and supposedly inspired by the adventures of Oliver North, though the song predated the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair. These bookend two previously unreleased tracks with the Attractions: the soul-reggae cover of “So Young”, from just before Get Happy!!, and the chaotic but driving “Little Goody Two Shoes”. “Get Yourself Another Fool” is a soulful Sam Cooke cover, while “Walking On Thin Ice” was recorded specifically for a collection of other people performing Yoko Ono songs, and marks his first collaboration with Allen Toussaint. As different as that one is from the original, the Imposter recording of Richard Thompson’s “Withered And Died” is taken straight. The single version of “Blue Chair” was unique in that it took the track originally recorded for King Of America, and given a new vocal two years later.
“Baby It’s You” was recorded with Nick Lowe for a one-off single, likely learned from the Beatles version, and “From Head To Toe” was a fun Smokey Robinson cover for another Attractions single. They also appear on “Baby’s Got A Brand New Hairdo” but not “Shoes Without Heels”; both were from the King Of America sessions. “The Flirting Kind” and “Black Sails In The Sunset” were two more B-sides that shouldn’t have been so buried. The most curious track was certainly “A Town Called Big Nothing”, credited to the MacManus Gang and written for the soundtrack of the truly odd film Straight To Hell, a Quentin Tarantino prototype mostly notable for unleashing Courtney Love onto celluloid. “Big Sister” was something of an early ska version of the song destined to close Trust, whereas “Imperial Bedroom”, the first appearance of the Napoleon Dynamite nom de plume, provided an after-the-fact title track for that album. Its one-man-band quality leads well into “The Stamping Ground”, a similar production for some reason credited to The Emotional Toothpaste.
Outside of a few remixes—an ‘80s trend to which even Elvis Costello was not immune—Out Of Our Idiot nicely mopped up most of the important deep cuts from the period. All but two of the songs were eventually spread across various Rykodisc and/or Rhino expansions, and then disappeared again once Hip-O took over, save the occasional compilation. Of the missing, “A Town Called Big Nothing” was included in the Ryko rollout but not the Rhino, and “Little Goody Two Shoes” has never appeared anywhere else. Luckily, the album was eventually released as a digital download in 2008, bringing those rare tracks back within legal reach.
Various Artists Out Of Our Idiot (1987)—4
Current CD availability: none; download only
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