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Elvis Costello reveals plans for a big reissue campaign

Six-LP package of Armed Forces to come first

Elvis Costello is working with Universal Music on a major reissue campaign which will start with a six-record set based on his 1979 album Armed Forces.

Speaking to Billboard to promote the forthcoming album Hey Clockface, Costello said that his “catalog has been in some disarray for a number of years” and that he recently “went to a meeting at a record company for the first time since the ’90s” to discuss reissue plans”.

He added: “who better than the person who wrote the songs to tell you what else is there [in the archive] – things that I never released, live recordings”.

He tells the interviewer that Armed Forces will be “the first” thing to come out and that “the package will include three live recordings ranging from the summer of ’78 to the summer of ’79, so it traces the development of the Attractions as a live act, from a club combo to a successful pop group – it’s quite interesting to hear. I had expert help in photographing my handwritten notebooks. So you’re getting something”

Curiously, Elvis also says: “We’ve done a new version of one of my albums from my catalog, and that’s going to come out next April. And we’re making a compilation based on [1998 album with Burt Bachararch] Painted From Memory in the hope that we’ll complete the picture with some other songs we’ve written that people still haven’t heard”.

When asked if he was going to do this with all his albums, the response was “If we can”.

Interesting stuff. Elvis Costello and Demon Records were early pioneers of the expanded CD reissue with a series of excellent releases in early-to-mid 1990s. The same albums were reissued about 10 years later with even more material – an extra CD’s worth. Despite these seemingly exhaustive reissues, Universal Music still managed to release new 2CD deluxe editions of My Aim Is True and This Year’s Model in 2008.

Elvis Costello’s new album, Hey Clockface, is released on 30 October 2020.

Read the full interview over at Billboard.

1.Revolution #49
2. No Flag
3. They’re Not Laughing At Me Now
4. Newspaper Pane
5. I Do (Zula’s Song)
6. We Are All Cowards Now
7. Hey Clockface How Can You Face Me
8. The Whirlwind
9. Hetty O’Hara Confidential
10. The Last Confession of Vivian Whip
11. What Is It That I Need That I Don’t Already Have
12. Radio Is Everything
13. I Can’t Say Her Name
14. Byline

 

 

 

 

 

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