More of the Music of Elvis Costello
- A vintage UK pressing with very good Hot Stamper sound on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
- Get Happy, coming right before the brilliant Trust, contains Elvis classics like “I Can’t Stand Up (for Falling Down)” and “Motel Matches”
- 5 stars: “…a 20-song blue-eyed soul tour-de-force…” and killer recording quality make this a Must Own for Elvis fans
This is the record that came out right after Armed Forces, which is a huge favorite around these parts, and the venerable All Music Guide gives both albums five big stars. I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but it’s certainly full of good material. Out of the twenty songs on here, exactly one clocks in at over three minutes.
What The Best Sides Of Get Happy Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as 1980
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
There’s not a lot of top-end on this recording. The mistake the American mastering engineers made when Columbia released their version was to brighten up the sound, which does nothing but make it aggressive and transistory. This is the way Get Happy is supposed to sound and trying to change it only makes it worse.
What We’re Listening For On Get Happy
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Side One
- I Can’t Stand Up (for Falling Down)
- Black & White World
- 5ive Gears in Reverse
- B Movie
- Motel Matches
- Human Touch
- Beaten to the Punch
- Temptation
- I Stand Accused
- Riot Act
Side Two
- Love for Tender
- Opportunity
- The Imposter
- Secondary Modern
- King Horse
- Possession
- Men Called Uncle
- Clowntime Is Over
- New Amsterdam
- High Fidelity
AMG Review
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Get Happy!! was born as much from sincere love for soul as it was for Elvis Costello’s desire to distance himself from an unfortunate verbal faux pas where he insulted Ray Charles in an attempt to get Stephen Stills’ goat. Either way, it resulted in a 20-song blue-eyed soul tour-de-force…
As it furiously flits through 20 songs, Costello’s cynicisms, rage, humor, and misanthropic sensibility gel remarkably well.