Dave Edmunds - "Girls Talk" (1979)

I remember buying Repeat When Necessary in London eleven years ago and playing "Girls Talk" to my wife when we got back home. She recognized it which was very strange to me. I had known the Elvis Costello demo for about ten years but I hadn't realized that once upon a time Dave Edmunds was something of a minor star and even got radio play in Israel.

I really own too many Dave Edmunds albums. I started buying them because of the Nick Lowe and Rockpile connection, always looking for a clincher to decide what the man was searching for and whether he ever found it. I mean, he's a great performer but the kind of music he wanted to play seemed to have vanished almost as soon as a Colonel Parker bought out Elvis' contract.

There's always three or four great tracks in any of his albums and he always seems to find an obscure song to cover that no one else would have made sense of. Like "Girls Talk" or Bob Seger's "get Out Of Denver" or Bruce Springsteen's "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)". But you always want to just shake the guy loose of his tightass formal mannerisms and hope he'll one day try to point at the future instead of the past.

Though God knows, his version of refried history can be awful fun sometimes.