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Elvis Costello: 10 Bloody Marys And 10 How's Your Fathers

Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 21 April 1984

10 AND 10 is 20 postaged stamps of the left-out-of-mainstream Costello: mislaid or temporarily missing 'B'-side moves, free 45s that got lost on the Press, things rarefied by lack of space, snatches of song previously reserved for the lot of America (these latter perhaps the least necessary; from that White Dwarf Star period when he began to feel the sin of actually being a success, hyperventilating, dilating, fulminating… I could do without 'Crawling To America', 'Radio, Radio', and a couple other Stiff-stuffing, past-the-post pub-rock-by-rotation numbers. Numbers? How many dashes in that last sentence?) Let's get happy instead.

Total word count of piece: 624

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