Bert Bailey ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Costello also sings well enough for a core of fans not quite as lukewarm
>as you admit to being.  Jagger once replied to Dylan's slight about his
>not being able to write 'Mr Tambourine Man': "I'd like to hear him sing
>'Satisfaction.'"

Well he'd probably have made a good, if different, job.  IMHO Dylan was
a great singer - not technically, but the emotion he packed into it was
astonishing.  I can still clearly recall listening to the acoustic CD of
the 1966 "Royal Albert Hall" concert when SOny finally released it a few
years ago.  Ths hair on the back of my neck stood on end in place,s,
particularly, IIRC, in Visions of Johanna.

>Touche from ole flappy lips, afaic.  Costello can do both:
>wail like either of them, and often composes a heap better than both.
>("Time's a jet plane, it moves so fast"? Oh, puh-leeze, Zimmie!)

Oh easy to pick up on a single poor line, but how about

   The motorcyclef, black madonna
   Two-wheeled gypsy queen

or

  Praise be to Nero's Neptune
  The Titanic sails at dawn

>'Fact is, few have the emotional luggage to deliver on songs like "Hoover
>Factory," "Pills and Soap," Boy with a Problem," The Long Honeymoon," and
>"I want you": the often ironic yearning and self-pity and rage -- and
>malizia, to use Wm Walton's epithet -- which his music requires.

Not even the man who wrote/sang
        You've got a lotta nerve
        To say you are my friend
        When I was down
        You just stood theire grinning

Not that I have any problem with Costello (and I was, after all, born quite
literally across the rado from the Hooever Factory) but the influence of
Dylan on his work is undeniable.

Deryk Barker
[log in to unmask]