Notes

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Live At El Mocambo is as loud, fast, and vicious as any punk rock live record, albeit with a great deal more musicality. Recorded immediately before the release of This Year's Model in Canada, 1978, copies of the initial promo recording have become some of the most revered bootlegs of the modern era. Thankfully, Rykodisc finally put the thing out commercially several years back. Technically it's only available as a bonus CD in the boxed set 2 1/2 Years, but you should own every album in that set anyway. Failing that, you can find it used every now and then in your finer indie rock record stores.

Live at the El Mocambo was recorded on March 6, 1978, during a club show in Toronto, Canada, as Elvis Costello and the Attractions were storming North America in support of My Aim Is True; the set was broadcast live by a local FM radio outlet, and this album is a clean but compressed, slightly flat recording drawn from the station's feed. Released as a promotional album by the Canadian branch of Columbia Records, the album soon became a eagerly sought-after collector's item, and before long it became perhaps the most widespread Costello bootleg on the gray market before Rykodisc gave the album a belated commercial release as a bonus disc in 1993's 2 1/2 Years box set. (The Ryko version, however, does clip out some of the between-song patter, including Costello's announcement that he's come to Toronto on behalf of Great Britain to ask for Canada back!) Replete with adequate but hardly spectacular audio and occasional flubs from the band, Live at the El Mocambo is a warts-and-all portrait of this band in their earlier days, but the seething energy of the performances is unmistakable, the stripped-down interpretations of the My Aim Is True material rock harder than their studio incarnations, and the version of "Less Than Zero" features the "American" lyrics Costello penned to make the song more relevant to stateside listeners. And it does sound a good bit better than any of the bootlegs available of Costello onstage during his formative period; if you want to hear what Elvis Costello sounded like on stage when he was still pop music's angriest man, this is the best place to go.


Mocambo presents The Attractions -- who, as it should be taught to everyone at the first-grade level, comprised bassist Bruce Thomas, keyboardist Steve Nieve, and drummer Pete Thomas -- at an intensity level never really captured in the studio. Just check out the Mocambo version of "Welcome To The Working Week," which was recorded with session musicians on Costello's debut My Aim Is True. The Attractions. The Thomases (who weren't actually related, and Steve Nason briefly flirted with the idea of assuming "Thomas" as a stage name before settling on Nieve) kick the song up to a one minute, nineteen-second blur. Costello strains to cram all of his literary lyrics in there, and the band doesn't let up for a second.

Mocambo is the best live document of Elvis back when he really was an angry young man, and as raring to piss off as many people as possible as Johnny Rotten at his nastiest. The difference is Costello picks his fights intelligently, and disarms his audience with fantastic songs. The legendary "Dallas Version" of "Less Than Zero" is included here, where Costello revises the song's lyrics to viciously skewer an American holy cow. OK, it's the Kennedy assassination, which maybe isn't the most tasteful choice (note how EC brilliantly converts the original's "home movies" line to refer to the Zapruder tape), but it sure shows balls, doesn't it?

From "Radio, Radio" to the slinky Attractions arrangement of "Watching The Detectives," which personifies the menace the studio original only suggested, Live At El Mocambo is a document of a band at the height of their powers. There's something a little unsettling about an audience cheering ecstatically along as Costello spits out "Sometimes I feel / just like a human being," but isn't that the point?


B06 Live At The El Mocambo - EC
Side 1:
Mystery Dance (live; El Mocambo) (2:04)
Waiting For The End Of The World (live; El Mocambo) (3:46)
Welcome To The Working Week (live; El Mocambo) (1:15)
Less Than Zero (live; El Mocambo) (3:55)
The Beat (live; El Mocambo) (3:24)
Lip Service (live; El Mocambo) (2:22)
(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea (live; El Mocambo) (3:43)
Little Triggers (live; El Mocambo) (2:41)
Side 2:
Radio Radio (live; El Mocambo) (2:29)
Lipstick Vogue (live; El Mocambo) (4:39)
Watching The Detectives (live; El Mocambo) (5:38)
Miracle Man (live; El Mocambo) (3:59)
You Belong To Me (live; El Mocambo) (2:26)
Pump It Up (live; El Mocambo) (4:00)
[1978-03-06; LP; Canadian Columbia CDN-10C (Canadian promo)]
Recording of a stereo CHUM-FM live broadcast on 6-Mar-78 in Toronto.
(Recorded by Comfort Sound).
The times listed here are the approximate times of the music excluding
crowd noise and intros.
This version of "Less Than Zero" has different lyrics to the studio
version, and is commonly known as the 'Dallas Version'.
Only 300 (possibly 500) copies pressed. This album was heavily bootlegged
and here's what Beyond Belief has to say about the differences between an
original and a counterfeit copy:
"Starting with the album cover, an original will have a thick
cardboard jacket with a grey (not white) inside. The spine of the
jacket will be squared off (not tapered or rounded) with the title
information printed squarely on the spine. Also the front cover
black & white photos will be sharply reproduced (not blured or
smudged). The disc itself is of thick vinyl with bands between
songs. The label on the disc will be clearly centred on the disc
with sharp printing of the song titles. Finally the hand written
(not machine) engraving in the dead wax will be as follows:
CDN-10-A-1A-2HDKZ (side 1)
CDN-10-B-1A-2HDKZ (side 2)"
(Also, the reviews of the show on the back cover are harder to read on the
bootleg version).
The support act that evening was Nick Lowe. CBS Records Canada
released a very limited 33 1/3 rpm 7" promo called _Nick Lowe Live At
The El Mocambo_ [7CDN-1] with the following tracks: "I Love The Sound
Of Breaking Glass" b/w "Shake & Pop/Heart Of The City".