One such of the last is Elvis Costello and the Attractions' Tiny Steps.
Some time in late 1978 I wagged school with Les Peterson and we went record shopping. I went straight to the skid row bin at Palings on Flinders St as that's where I'd got things like The Ramones' Sheena. There was nothing I didn't have except something in with some intentionally ugly cover art which I wrested from the jammed 45s. Hmm! It was Elvis Costello's Radio Radio. I'd never heard of it and I was a big fan since This Year's Model. It was either in the style of that or the first one (which I didn't like as much). At AUD 0.25 I gave it a chance.
We put it on as Les and I enjoyed a brandy and milk (liked it at the time) and heard a This Year's Model style rant with the big Farfisa sound of Steve Naieve blasting out. Yeah, that's ok. And we might have gone on to an album or somehting. After he left I had a look at the other side of the picture sleeve and saw this:
The picture alone would've been enough but the second album sound of the A-side made me curious. I put it on.
It was so low when it started I cranked the volume and put it back to the start. It took me many listens to realise the first words "mersle baby" were actually "muscle baby". And that's it for almost the rest of the words. There are just enough to establish a kind of rainy day British social realist sadness to them. It seemed to be about a bad breakup and he was blaming the girl who was vain and maneating. But there was such a melancholy in Costello's barely decipherable groan. After the voice begins so timidly it soon takes over.
He lightly croons oddly disjointed images of active beauty and weekend or weakened baby etc, like a list of all the things that have gone wrong, over the bright and clean jangle of his Fender Jazzmaster. A high hat taps in here and there almost like at sound check before Elvis releases a sighing "Sooooooooooo....."
Suddenly the snare rolls in with a big Precision Bass revisiting the line from We Got To Get Out of This Place and a great chordy wash from the Farfisa and now the song is about ten times the size it began. And Elvis is more plaintive about wooden bones and pretty lashes, baby's gashes and little tombs for your baby's ashes (holy fuck! what was going on?) He leaves the roll of the melody to whine "something's gone wrong."
And then the chorus. Same thing but a fourth higher and so more dramatic still. "Tiny steps almost real tiny steps you can almost feel ..." Someone is almost human...
The middle eight flows without a mark from the chorus. "Who's that down at the bottom of the garden? Who's that hiding underneath the sofa? Who gets blamed whenever you're in trouble? She's your friend and she's your double!" An icy fingertip of phrase high on the organ keyboard glides above this and with the for once clearly ennunciated words we are in a horror movie. Before we can really take that in we're back under the tide of the chorus which begins to sound more sinister now: "tiny steps, almost real..." And then a thud to silence. For less than a breath.
"Pretty little fashion face," he whispers, "you can't warm her off the shelf..." over the full strength backing. "You can even shop around though you won't find any cheaper." And a big sneering yell: "sheeeee's you're baby now!" Thud to silence and then over stacato organ yelps, one per syllable: "you can keep her!" Then the chorus rises and rages and then the fade which I never deciphered unless it was: "you'll learn to need that human outpost." Into silence.
Like the best tracks on This Year's Model Tiny Steps was a mix of the kind of surly anger every teenager could feel on cue and something stark and severe and disturbing. He seemed to know the workings of nameless clinics and laboratories from first hand experience and took no trouble in equating them with what happens between boys and girls. The original title of his next album still made it on to the cover art: Emotional Fascism. He didn't wear a black shirt but he understood the ones who did, didn't support them but wasn't surprised by them.
Tiny Steps' mix of sweet accessible 60s pop, anger and mystery put the face of Deborah Green in the mix because although I felt no antipathy towards her I was annoyed by the fact that I hadn't driven myself to the stage where her acceptance or rejection of me could've taken place.
She was in my art class and with a near black brunette bob and dark feline eyes could have been an Italian movie queen from the 60s. She was fun and smart and beautiful. We got on well and for awhile I thought that this would just develop into the big thing. My naivete in this meant that when she left for another school for year 12 she left without a word of goodbye and I was shattered.
"Pretty little fashion face..." I hmphed. "You can't warm her off the shelf," I hmphed.
Although an even bigger year awaited me around the curve of December she was never far from my thoughts and even interrupted them when my adolescent salacity brought me to the edge of the abyss of drunken sleaze. If I went ahead and tried "so-o-o-o-o hard to be like the big boys" I would never deserve her.
Then on a night of multiple parties I coaxed Rick and Fiona with god knows what to get out to Sue Walker's place at Wulguru because if anyone had been close to Deborah it had been she. There was absolutely no chance that Deborah wouldn't be there. The drive took an insane time as we struggled with the road map. But when we made the great cul de sac that nestled the Spanish casa with the sun deck that was Sue Walker's place my heart was thumping like a bus engine.
It was dark, subdued but not laughably empty, classy (just like Sue). What would I do? What was I going to say? This was it and there would never be another time. There she was on the couch. I hunched into my leather jacket and made for the kitchen counter for a glass of punch. There was a big fishtank beside it. I looked at the swirling scarlet things in the gluey water and then at Deborah who was looking at them, too. She pointed at one.
"That one's gonna cark it," she said.
I smiled back. Easy. This was going to be easy.
"See this?" she said and raised her left hand on which was a golden ring with a small winking gem set into it. "I'm engaged."
I smiled. Whatever we talked about then might as well have been moonrocks or kelp as all I can remember immediately after it was saying something before Sue took my elbow and showed her new guests the sun deck. Upstairs we looked out at the lights of Wulguru. I rasped something to Rick about materialism until we went back downstairs got in the car and headed back to Peter Mac's party where someone had put "Sure Know Something" on for the fiftieth time. Rick squeezed my shoulder. Fiona kissed me on the forehead. I got drunk.
you'll learn to need that human outpost
you'll learn to need that human outpost
And so I did ... kinda. Here's proof. Sue later took a photo of me at school. Here it is:
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