![]() ![]() ![]() Even when he appeared on video twisted into himself staring into the camera, eyes blazing and tongue lolling over gapped-teeth, he did so in a blazer and good shoes. If punk bands were vile and sick, Costello had a sense of comportment about him. Reading about Costello or seeing his ads in NME or Sounds, his persona seemed aimed toward the U.S.: his name, his bow tie, his Buddy Holly glasses. Article content If punk bands were vile and sick, Costello had a sense of comportment about him. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. To a kid, it made me feel like these bands (Gang of Four, The Ruts, Magazine, The Stranglers and The Slits) were my own, more so because they didn’t stand a chance being played on the same radio stations that Costello sang about in a language that only a few other kids in my high school could pronounce. If Sam the Record Man and A&A’s - both estimable stores in their own right - mostly stocked music that you knew, these other shops traded in stuff you didn’t know. For me, Saturday afternoons were about subwaying to either Records on Wheels on Yonge or the Record Peddlar on Queen, where albums and singles were racked out of boxes just-shipped from abroad. With the explosion of punk and New Wave in the late ’70s - still a micro-phenomenon here, but a tsunami in England - music fans were keyed to the release of imports, so the listening public (or at least that sect of it who watched SNL) would have been mostly aware of Costello, and his impact on music in the U.K. In December 1977, Costello’s album, My Aim Is True, was only available as import vinyl, yet he’d come to North America to tour. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
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