I`m not going to be able to match Cooley s excellent review in brevity on the Pixies and it s highly unlikely this tune is going to be very popular, but every play list with Missy Elliott, Dylan and Ska needs a bit of country music as a balance.

In 1986 Elvis Costello released 2 albums “Blood and Chocolate” with the Attractions and “King of America” with The Confederates. I had seen the Blood and Chocolate tour in Liverpool, with the spinning songbook, where members of the audience got on stage and spun a wheel and he sang the song where the dial landed. The second tour was with The Confederates, which I wanted to see, as it had the likes of James Burton, Jerry Scheff and Ron Tutt playing on it and they had all played with Presley in the Vegas years. However, I turned up at Manchester Apollo with a mate, but no tickets. The touts, as usual were hanging around and I can t remember how much above face value we paid, but it can t have been much, as neither of us were working. My mate, a big Beatles fan, pointed out Cynthia Lennon going in through a side door, but I wouldn’t have recongnised her. I am crap at that kind of stuff though.

The Apollo was freezing and the first song was called Stranger in the House, which I hadn’t heard before, but played it for the next few years, as I managed to get a copy of the concert on a bootleg tape from a record fare, which I used to go to regularly at the time. For years, I thought it was a cover version of a country song written by somebody else, but it was composed by Costello with George Jones in mind. It was released on Jones 1979 album “My Very Special Guests” which took 2 years to complete as apparently at the time Jones cocaine addiction and alcohol consumption had reached very high levels. The song was written in time for Costello s first album My Aim is True, (1977) but the record company thought it would be commercial suicide to release a country song on a “New Wave” album.
I remember someone shouting out “Sing Psycho”, a song he had played before and his reply was “Ask your Chief Constable to sing it” in reference to James Anderton who had given a number of controversial interviews around this time. It was early 1987.
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Towards the end of the concert, we ended up down at the front and when it was finished a roadie gave me a setlist taped to the stage. It was a Friday night we had some time to kill before the train and as we left me and my mate noticed a queue to go back stage. We joined it and got in. About 10 minutes later Costello came in and I remember him saying hello to a woman, who I assume was a “superfan”. What I also remember was that because he had written “Tramp the Dirt Down” (about Thatcher) he was asked whether he was disappointed that the Brighton Bomber hadn’t been more successful. It was the 80s after all.
He answered by saying political change should come through the ballot box and not violence. I am not one for autographs but got him to sign the setlist. There were two musicians that night called T Bone. T Bone Burnett and Tom “T Bone” Wolk. T Bone Wolk also signed it and quite modestly signed it “T Bone (the other).” He was a very affable bloke, who had played on a lot of Hall & Oats music, but sadly died about 15 years ago.

Strange thing about Costello is that he was married in 1974 and had a kid not long after. He almost admits in his autobiography that the hurt and wrongs done to him, he talks about in his songs he was doing to others, as he toured the UK and the world. There never was a Stranger in the house, but I like the song anyway.

Unfortunately it s not letting me upload the video I want, so I have uploaded a different one