![]() This version reinstates much of the stage banter that was cut from the '93 version, including Costello's boast that he and the Attractions have come to reclaim Canada for the Crown. ![]() It's now a standalone reissue as the first installment in his new series of live reissues. Recorded in Toronto on Costello's 1978 tour for My Aim Is True, the album was originally released as a promotional item, survived the 1980s as a bootleg, and finally got a commercial release as part of the 1993 box set 2½ Years. ![]() He may have been young, he may have been righteously pissed, but he sounds worldly on those early albums, and especially on Live at the El Mocambo. That breadth of interest and influence is apparent in even his earliest material: in its emphatic melodicism, in its clever arrangements, in his osmotic absorption of contemporary styles, even if they were raw (ska, pub rock) rather than refined (jazz, Bacharach). Because it came first, that angry-young-man intensity is often taken as his default setting, but perhaps Costello's punk-era sound was just another stopover on his odyssey through 20th century popular music.
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