Track Listing

1. Weird Nightmare
2. Love Field
3. Shamed into Love
4. Gigi
5. Poor Napoleon
6. Baby Plays Around
7. Deep Dead Blue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171013 in Music
• Published on: 1995
• Released on: 1995-08-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Import, Limited Edition, Live

Album Details
This 1995 Recording Brings Together Two Artists (Elvis Costello and Bill Frisell) who Otherwise Might Not have Performed Or Recorded Together. Features "Poor Napoleon", "Love Field", a Rendition of Charles Mingus' "Weird Nightmare" and Four More Tracks. Recorded Live at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall During the Meltdown Festival on June 25, 1995.

Amazon.com
Elvis Costello has always had great taste in guitar players, from his early devotion to Wes Montgomery to his frequent use of Marc Ribot, while Bill Frisell has shown a special empathy for Costello's songwriting on The Sweetest Punch, his instrumental cover of Costello's collaboration with Burt Bacharach. This barebones duet meeting with Costello singing to just the accompaniment of Frisell's guitar comes from a 1995 London performance. Charles Mingus's "Weird Nightmare," with the composer's own lyric, is a moody, dissonant minor piece that establishes a common ground and sets one of the tones for the performance. While Costello's songs may sometimes be bleak, they're also driven by a reality principle with a sense of accomplishment in their own hard-won experience. Frisell is an excellent partner for him, creating a densely resonant atmosphere that stages and echoes the often haunted, memory-filled lyrics. The guitarist picks up on the singer's every vocal nuance, too, expanding on his complex moods and lifting every rising melodic line with his own sense of light. Songs like "Shamed Into Love" almost glitter with Frisell's serene and trebly arpeggios, and Lerner and Loewe's "Gigi" grows from an initial sense of loss to genuine wonder. The collaborative "Deep Dead Blue," with Frisell's compositional input, has an intriguing, almost fragmented structure. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Intimate
Close your eyes. On the left of the stage sits Elvis Costello, geeky glasses, geeky smile, a microphone in his hand. On the right, Bill Frisell sits on the edge of a little Fender amp, rocking gently, picking his guitar in only the way he can.

While the audience applause in between each of the tracks on this album leads me to believe the setting was not quite as small as I like to imagine it, my imagination still beats out my reason. And that's what makes listening to this record so exciting. Clocking in at under twenty-seven minutes, and costing over twenty dollars, I had to wonder if this was worth the money. After it sat on my "To Buy" list for a few months, I decided to just spring for it.

I waited until, given what I'd read about the album and what I've already heard from Costello and Frisell as artists on their own, I thought the timing was right. It was a late night in November, sort of chilly outside. I wrapped up in a favorite blanket and listened to the album.

The album begins with "Weird Nightmare," an obscure Charles Mingus composition. Costello's voice is haunting when paired with Frisell's sparse lines, and Mingus' creepy lyrics bring out the best in both musicians. The tone is similar through the next three (two written by Costello, one a Lerner & Loewe standard) before picking the mood up considerably on "Poor Napoleon." Though it was originally recorded for Costello's "Blood & Chocolate," it is rerecorded here to a very effective end. Costello's voice is dead on, and (once again) perfectly matched to Frisell's one of a kind style.

This is music that needs to be heard. The next time you're lonely, pour yourself a glass of red (or two), light up a Lucky Strike, and curl up with a blanket. These twenty-seven minutes might not make you feel entirely better, but they'll certainly make you feel comforted.

Exquisite MacManus/Frisell
I must say this is a delightful cd... only if you are an open-minded listener. I thought every Costello or Frisell fan was such kind of person. Should I say that through the years I realize I was mistaken? I guess both Costello and Frisell ask for the same musical curiosity (or, lets say it: heterodox musical erudition) from the listeners than the one that obsessed them all the way; that is: their opening to different styles in music is not the attitude of a snob --is the rejoice of a musician who let him be surprised by the "new values" as well as by the traditions of their roots. That is the only way you can enjoy this cd: let you be driven into the subtle complexity of Frisell's guitar on "Love Field" and "Poor Napoleon", two underrated masterpieces written by Costello, who sings them as if he had learned the best of Sinatra's or Bennett's style (but remaining himself); or dive for that rare jewel that is "Shamed into Love" just to merge full of charity and self-consciousness; or re-read the Lerner and Loewe classic "Gigi" and realize that every thirty/fourty-some guy is a nowadays Louis Jourdan character is this XXI century world. Of course, there is more: you have "the taste of beauty" (that already was on "Spike") with "Baby Plays Around"; the rare Mingus song facing a darkness that's always lighten; and the original "Deep Dead Blue" version with its real "deep-end" approach, that breathless feeling of ephimeral marvel, that sort-of-satori revelation that can only be captured when a sublime songwriter (and very personal singer --I must admit: the kind of singer I prefer: honest and imperfect like the glimpse of a truth) and a talented musician, both of them as open-minded as faithful to themselves, work together for an open-minded listener with a wide open and sensitive soul. (By the way, excuse me for my English --it is not my everyday language).

Beautiful performances
With regard to the other review on this page, it is an album with both Bill Frisell AND Elvis Costello...

I happen to like Frisell very much, and I think this duet is a unique chance to hear these two magnificent musicians in a situation that neither would normally find himself.

The performances are haunting, especially Love Field (an overlooked gem from Goodbye Cruel World). I think a fan of either musician would find this an enjoyable cd.