Elvis Costello : Clubland
On December 12, 1980 Elvis Costello released the UK #60 single "Clubland", b/w the energetic rocker "Clean Money" and a song written way back in 1976, "Hoover Factory". The single is an examination of the seedy side of night club life. There's menace in the lyrics: "With a handful of backhanders and a bevy of beauty/ You're going off limits/Going off duty/Going off with booty/They tell tales of fiction found on all the criminal types/Lead to a higher ranking man or a face with thin red stripes."
Costello writes in his memoir that the sing may have been inspired by The Police, specifically "Message In A Bottle".
Oddest of all, it now occurs to me the circular arpeggios in "Clubland" may have secretly been a disrespectful gloss of the Police's guitar style, though obviously with a darker lyrical content that their songs always seemed to lack.
This is the first single from Trust, which would be released in January of 1981
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