We don't see a lot of people celebrating the 49th anniversary of some momentous achievement. For that matter, we don't see a lot of 48th or 47th anniversary galas, either. People tend to like nice, round numbers, so they tend to hang on until something hits the big 50. But Elvis Costello doesn't like to make the obvious choice, and so he's planning what, from our research, appears to be the first-ever 49th anniversary box set for his classic 1977 debut album My Aim Is True.
We have actually already passed the 49th anniversary of My Aim Is True, which had its initial UK release in July 1977. The album was the culmination of a long process. Declan MacManus first started performing UK club shows in 1970 while working as a computer operator, and he eventually changed his stage name, first to D.P. Costello and then to Elvis Costello. His Stiff Records label bosses suggested the enduring look with the big glasses, which Costello now calls "a Superman costume in reverse."
Costello's labelmate Nick Lowe produced My Aim Is True, and Costello's backing band on the record was Clover, a California group who'd moved to the UK and joined the country's pub-rock wave. (A young Huey Lewis sang and played harmonica in Clover, but he wasn't on My Aim Is True.) By the time the album came out, Costello formed his backing band the Attractions and found a place adjacent to England's punk explosion.
In a press release, Costello says, "When first proposed, I thought the whole idea of celebrating a 50th Anniversary of My Aim Is True was preposterous. It made my teeth itch... It couldn’t just be set up like a venerable object in a glass case." Instead, this fall we're getting the five-CD box set My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition), which includes 104 tracks, 52 of which are previously unreleased. The set will include a vast trove of demos, outtakes, live tracks and interviews, as well as a new remaster of the album from the original analog tapes.
Along with all the music, the My Aim Is True box set includes 72 pages of notes from Costello himself, as well as contributions from people like Nick Lowe, Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf, Jim James, and Costello's Attractions bandmates Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas.
To demonstrate the wealth of material in the box set, Costello has shared a bunch of versions of his 1977 single "Watching The Detectives," which wasn't included on the original My Aim Is True. Instead, that song came out after the album and became Costello's first UK hit. Below, check out the remastered version of the "Watching The Detectives" single, as well as the Pathway Studios version recorded with bassist Andrew Bodnar and drummer Steve Goulding, an early electric performance on the UK TV show Good Afternoon (as well as a brief interview clip from that episode), and a six-minute live version that Costello and the Attractions played at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in 1978. Also below, you'll find some of Costello's handwritten lyrics.
My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) is out 10/2 on UMe. Pre-order it and get all the details on everything that the set includes here. If you know of any other 49th-anniversary box sets, please let us know in the comments below.
