Elvis Costello and me

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joelpatterson
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Elvis Costello and me

Post by joelpatterson » Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:53 pm

I did meet Elvis Costello once. I am absolutely ashamed to admit this. I have never told anyone until now. But I guess I trust you guys, I'll share.
I was going to San Francisco State in 1977-78, and I got a position interning at a radio station in the City. It was a lowly position. I think the one time the station manager looked into my hovel, where I was supposed to be answering the request line phone--which when it rang at all was obnoxious and ebbulient kids making crank calls--alot like I had been, come to think of it. Exactly like I had been--when he looked in, I was busy preparing my own radio show at the school that night--my forte was blending FDR speeches and music... soundbites from "The Wizard of Oz" .... James Taylor really seemed to fit with radio broadcasts from WWII, same air of melancholy and yearning hope--he was Close To Incensed, and pointed to the silent phone-- "You should be all about this here!" He was practically bellowing, totally disgusted--"Not your--whatever you're doing!" Stalked off.

I wasn't really taking advantage of the opportunity, but that would become a theme of mine--well, once I was returning a book of rock and roll history to the program director, a small little woman with a pretty grand and sexy air, it was in a hallway, early afternoon, next to her was this short little guy standing there, kind of a blank, tethered look and by his foreign expression I wasn't sure if he spoke English. But no, he was a Englishman, and he was here on tour, and the station is playing the song, didn't you hear it?

Nah, I was busy with Ed Murrow haranguing Neil Young--but glad to meet you, best of luck and he was trundled along.

An older dude who was also like me a hanger-on at the station, but much hipper and wiser, told me he'd met the guy, and he'd given him tickets to his show that night in town, let's go. He told a funny story where he'd had a bagel in his hand, and he'd run into the guy and somehow it was the most natural thing to hand the bagel over to Elvis Costello, kind of a cool spontaneous San Francisco gesture that was like ancient history even then. After my show we rode a cable car into town, after our ride didn't show up, and it was such an absurd odyssey--including facing down a cable car operator brother who we did not, no, actually did not have the money for the ride, but we did, really, yes, really intend to ride the cable car into town--got to the theater just as the crowds were pouring out. Not so much crowds, a few people.

I used to be sure that there was an impossibility of my ever crossing paths with any of the Beatles, because they didn't live on the Planet Earth, or something. It was 1964 and I was seven. They were removed from "real life" like my house and the outside trees along the sidewalks of the cul-de-sac. And the same kind of thing happened, I was a confused, obsessed, distractable kid, not even in the world of the hallways I was in. When the whole Ray Charles thing hit, I thought, what a crime, take it all out of context, why doncha. I've certainly said worse in jest, I hope.
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joel hamilton
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Post by joel hamilton » Mon Jan 16, 2006 9:49 am

Weird. On the hard drive i have setup right now, I have a folder that says "elvis costello and me."

Weird. It is the session files from a collaboration we did this year. Surreal syncronicity, joel!

Thank you for sending me a CD by the way!

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