Elvis Costello has a new boxed set out and he doesn’t want you to buy it:
Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.
All our attempts to have this number revised have been fruitless but rather than detain you with tedious arguments about morality, panache and book-keeping – when there are really bigger fish to filet these days – we are taking the following unusual step.
If you should really want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we can whole-heartedly recommend, “Ambassador Of Jazz” – a cute little imitation suitcase, covered in travel stickers and embossed with the name “Satchmo” but more importantly containing TEN re-mastered albums by one of the most beautiful and loving revolutionaries who ever lived – Louis Armstrong.
The box should be available for under one hundred and fifty American dollars and includes a number of other tricks and treats. Frankly, the music is vastly superior.
Amazon has it priced at $202.66 so I assume it must be at least $225 retail for one CD, one DVD, a 10″ vinyl record and a 40 page hardcover book.
deep cap
Never cared much for Elvis Costello.
WereBear
Is this connected to why Amazon has American Taliban for $179.17?
JasonF
List price is $339.00, so … yeah.
sal
Saw him this summer at Interlochen on this tour. One of the top three concerts I’ve ever been to. Tickets were 1/4 what this box set is going for, though (at $200). I’ll keep the memories.
Elizabelle
Not much of a touring schedule yet, some Florida dates and Durham NC in April. About ten days between NC and his European tour.
Maude
A boxed set for the 1%.
Joseph Nobles
The Satchmo suitcase is already sold out at Amazon.
John X.
I love that he flat out says to go online and grab it for free.
Mudge
Those who priced the Costello box set are also the ones who want to destroy the internet to preserve their copyrights. The wonderful entertainment industry.
Suffern ACE
You scoff now, but when your great great children take it on Antiques Road Show in 100 years and find out that it’s worth $40,000* who’ll be laughing then?
(Those are $40,000 new dollars, or the price of an egg).
geg6
@deep cap:
Then you and I have nothing to discuss. Ever.
*Just kidding. Sort of. Can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t love Elvis (the only Elvis that matters, anyway; not that fat mama’s boy who never wrote a song in his life).
JasonF
Also, how was this post not entitled “I Want to Bite the Hand that Feeds Me”?
Tom
Plus, it’s a live album. The only live albums worth listening to are by The Who.
BTW, Elivs’ last album is pretty good. That Dr. Watson song is great.
Tom
@JasonF
Excellent point!
mistermix
@JasonF: It is now, thanks to you.
Exurban Mom
Elvis’s team posted this message to Facebook about a week ago. I love how the media is spreading the word now. Elvis is my all-time favorite artist, and this is one reason why. He is an amazing live performer and songwriter, and you are missing out if you have never seen him live. I would love the DVD of a Singing Songbook concert (he puts a wheel with different song titles on it on stage and spins it all night to determine set list, a technique he last used on a tour in the late 1980s, I believe), as that tour didn’t make it to my neck of the woods, but I’ll wait until they put it out on its own.
WereBear
I’m no Elvis fan, but I’ll give the fellow props for popularizing “race music” to an extent that such artists, moving forward, were less likely to starve in the gutter as so many blues musicians did.
Elvis loved that music and that carried forward into the great society.
Tone in DC
Everyday he sells the book (not).
Gotta love the man’s bluntness. Whatever else one might say about him, you know where he stands.
jibeaux
I never got into Elvis Costello much either, but what a great thing to say, and great attitude to have.
JD Rhoades
It’s a “limited edition” of 1500 copies, one of those attempts to create an instant collectible. No thanks. And thanks to Elvis for being cool about it.
geg6
@WereBear:
Perhaps, but he wasn’t the only one out there doing that. Not to mention how he stole their deserved thunder (and probably royalties, too, though the Colonel probably ran that particular scam).
I have always detested the mama’s boy from Memphis. Can’t seem to help it.
WereBear
@geg6: Oh, I hear you; I was never a fan.
But compared with other artists of the time (Pat Boone, I’m looking at you!) he was open about where this music came from and how much he loved it.
I gained a more sympathetic perspective on Elvis from the insightful work of the biographer Peter Guralnick. I’d had a hunch Elvis was kept immature by early fame and rapacious handlers and parasitic family members. I’d always thought he’d turned to drugs to handle all the crap he didn’t have the wherewithal to walk away from.
And I was right.
Michael E Sullivan
I’m not a big EC fan, but I have to admit I love that blog post. “Dude, if you can’t price that shit under $100, I’m going to tell my fans to steal it instead of buy it.”
RP
I was all set to praise mm for the genius post title…good thing I read the thread first. So kudos to JasonF.
Paul in KY
Never really liked the Elvis, but I like him alot better after reading the quote from his web site.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: Back in the day (about once a month), I’d read about Elvis P. buying a fan of his a new caddilac. I thought he was good about not forgetting the fans (poor ones) who bought & loved his music.
Geeno
I’ve always liked Elvis Costello’s music, and I’ve always loved his attitude. That post is pure EC.
Villago Delenda Est
The pricing of this item has nothing to do with the cost of producing it, either the creation of the music, the performance of it, or the cost of the materials for the media to present it on.
It has everything to do with the boundless greed of record companies that have oligopoly power.
Mnemosyne
Never piss off an Irishman (1) who can write. It will not end well for you.
I have loved Elvis Costello ever since I discovered Spike when I was in high school and worked my way backwards, but to me his most subtle “fuck you” was when he was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right before the Iraq War started and the two songs he chose to play were “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” followed by “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Gee, think there was a message to the United States hidden in there?
(1) Okay, technically Anglo-Irish, but still
Ben Cisco
@geg6: Mr. D. would like a word.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s getting awfully close to a thieves’ manifesto.
If you think the price is excessive (and FWIW, I’d say it’s about 5x what it should be), don’t buy it. I don’t believe anyone is holding a gun to your head and requiring you to buy it. Is this really worth a post and 30 comments?
P.S. I’d want a look at Mr. McManus’ contract before concluding that he is entirely blameless in this fiasco. Artists, particularly established artists, tend to have some degree of control over what gets released with their name on it/
ed drone
Why am I reminded of “Druthers?” Druthers were a food (a vegetable product, as I recall) developed by a farmer in “Li’l Abner.” They were so delicious that everyone “‘druther have them than anything else.”
The farmer who developed them wanted no profit from them — just the cost of growing them — but he sold the rights to package them to a greedy gus who priced them at $.01 for the Druthers and $5.00 for the box (or some such). The farmer was tied into the contract and couldn’t not grow them, so he blew up the field and all the seed. The greedy gus ended up blown up as well, as he threw himself on top of all the sacks of seed.
It was one of the few Al Capp morality tales with a left-wing cant — he went pretty far into right-whinge territory in his latter days.
Ed
piratedan
@burnspbesq: and yet… here you are…. commenting on it… someone hold your fingertips to the keyboard? :-)
RaggedyAndy
EC’s comment is great, but the thing he’s complaining about is a little more specific than most here seem to realized.
These albums are autographed, so the price itself is (theoretically) justified. The real problem is that the non-autographed version (which will have a normal price) is not being released for some time, so the label is holding the music hostage at the high price point.
That’s the real problem.
scott (the other one)
@geg6:
We can talk about the huge regard great artists like Little Richard, John Lennon and Bob Dylan have/had for Elvis Presley. Or we can just dismiss someone like yourself who so proudly trumpets his own musical ignorance. Yeah, let’s go with that.
scott (the other one)
@Ben Cisco:
“Elvis was a brilliant artist. As a musicologist — and I consider myself one — there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that. (In fact), Eminem is the new Elvis because, number one, he had the respect for black music that Elvis had”.
—Chuck D
geg6
@scott (the other one):
That’s their problem (though Elvis really wasn’t Lennon’s hero, based on my many readings of his views, biographies, and on his actual recordings). I hate the guy, always did, always will. He sucked, especially in comparison to the wonderful black artists who he (and many others) ripped off or who couldn’t get played or booked because the white boys could pull bigger crowds. FWIW, I don’t know any AA people who are Elvis fans the way they were Stones fans in my day or are Eminem fans today.
As for Chuck D., I’m not a fan of his, either. So I really don’t give a shit what he has to say.
xian
@scott (the other one): isn’t that a walkback of this lyric?
gbear
Huge Presley fan here. Didn’t appreciate him at all in the 70’s but I’ve come to realize how good and important an artist he was.
& I can’t resist posting this link to EC getting decked by Bonnie Bramlett at a bar in Ohio:
NobodySpecial
Small correction: Elvis has actual (not contractual) co-writing credit on two songs, “You’ll Be Gone” and “That’s Someone You Never Forget.”