Trunkworthy's series on undiscovered gems in Elvis Costello's vast catalog pulled me like a sled dog. I grabbed ahold early and held on for the lo-o-o-o-o-o-ng haul: 229 weeks in all!
Recently Jorge Farah, one of the authors of the re-boot series, found this blog and dropped a nice comment. The exchange caused me to realize that I still owe the Universe one final post. You see, I had published recaps of the songs in groups of twenty. After song #80, I was geared up, anticipating the Fifth Twenty...
But after two years on the beat, Jorge and his co-author Kevin Davis announced that they had achieved what they set out to do. They closed out the column after Song #86, "Suspect My Tears" from EC's latest album at the time, 2018's Look Now.
So here is the chart of the last 6 songs of the series to complete the set:
Here are links to the
The Song of the Week grand finale includes this Author's note (emphasis added):
"After two years of (sometimes very) intermittently writing the Elvis Costello Song of the Week column, we feel that we’ve reached a point where we’ve managed to cover a pretty thorough cross-section of Costello’s work, having now written (we think!) about at least one song from each album which, by extension, has given us the opportunity to talk about each of the albums themselves."
How well did Trunkworthy do at covering the oeuvre? I combined Shows 1 to 53 and 54 to 86 into one big group, and here are the stats:
At the time the Trunkworthy series ended, Elvis had produced 32 studio albums from MAIT through Look Now. The EP, Purse and Hey Clockface (due out in October 2020) were produced after Jorge and Kevin tossed in the towel. The authors of Parts 1 and 2 covered an impressive 28 of 32 albums, all but these four:
There were a total of 86 "weekly" episodes stretched out over a period of 229 weeks.
- Part 1 by Gary and David covered 54 songs in 52 weeks
- Part 2 by Jorge and Kevin added 35 more songs over 115 weeks
- The gap between parts 1 & 2 was 62 weeks and we are so grateful to Jorge and Kevin for picking up the reigns and running the reboot!
There were actually 89 songs in the series. Two versions of "Blue Chair" were compared in Show 31. Three versions of "Favourite Hour" were presented in Show 56. Additionally, two songs in Part 1 were repeated in Part 2.
- "How Much I’ve Lied" from Almost Blue (1981) was played in shows 22 & 58
- "Stella Hurt" from Momofuku (2008) was played in shows 39 & 83
So, 89 songs, less 2 repeats and 3 additional versions yields 84 unique titles. All of them are hidden gems among the 600-song (and growing) catalog.
The authors set out to highlight some of Elvis' best, least-known songs from his 600-song discography. They did not announce an explicit goal to distribute the highlighted songs across the decades. I took a glance at that and invite you to have a look at the results below. Over the 44-year span, there were slightly more songs from 1986 (6) than from any other year. The real story is the wide distribution. You'll see some songs from five decades: 70s, 80s, 90s, aughts, and teens.
I am grateful to Trunkworthy co-founders Gary Stewart and David Gorman, who started this project. Beginning on Elvis' 60th birthday (Aug 25, 2014) and continuing weekly for a year, these two set out to shine a little light on some of the underplayed gems in Costello's repertoire. Sustained by passion and fan support, they took the project as far as they could. But the crowd wanted more! Thankfully, fellow Costellophiles Jorge Farah and Kevin Davis picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.
Perhaps there will yet be more stories in this book. Elvis is still creating compelling music, so who knows? Maybe we'll soon need a third pair of writers to continue the Trunkworthy quest with a mix of songs including material from the 20s and beyond. One can only hope. And if they do, PhilosFX will be right there with them, providing a hub from which summaries of all of the separate posts can be easily viewed.
I am also grateful that Jorge took the time to write a nice comment on PhilosFX. You can read that and my reply
under this post. By way of thanks, I thought of linking to Jorge's blog, "Every -ist and Every -ism." The blog is on a temporary hiatus. Please check back later...
Instead of that link, I offer a link to
Jorge's two and a half hour EC birthday show. This program is full of great music and interesting conversation from fantastic guests, such as Trunkworthy collaborator Kevin Davis, and Graeme Thomson, author of
Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello.
Enjoy! Support the creative!
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