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Elvis Costello / Spike 2LP gatefold reissue pressed on green vinyl

Limited to 2500 units • Full 15-track album

By Paul Sinclair

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60

Elvis Costello’s 1989 album Spike is to be reissued as a special limited edition 2LP green vinyl pressing in March.

The record was notable for being Costello’s first album without the Attractions since his 1977 debut, My Aim is True, and for being the first long-player to feature the fruits of his writing sessions with Paul McCartney (Spike was issued four months before Macca’s own Flowers in the Dirt, in February 1989).

The McCartney/MacManus penned ‘Veronica’ was the lead single and reached number 19 in the Billboard Hot 100. It remains Costello’s biggest hit in the US. Album track, ‘Pads, Paws and Claws’ is the other Macca collaboration on Spike.

Elvis Costello plays ‘Veronica’ for Warner Brothers employees out on their patio, June 6 1989

The album was Elvis Costello’s first for Warner Bros. and was produced with T Bone Burnett and Kevin Killen with sessions taking place in Dublin, New Orleans, Los Angeles and London. Other tracks include ‘Deep Dark Truthful Mirror’, ‘Let Him Dangle’, ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ and ‘God’s Comic’.

Like Brutal Youth in 2020, Spike is being issued across two vinyl records for the first time which makes a lot of sense when you consider the original vinyl contained 60 minutes of music! This actually allows for the reinstatement of song ‘Coal-Train Robberies’, which was omitted from the original vinyl, only appearing on cassette and CD (as the penultimate track).

The new 2LP set comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve and the records are pressed on light green vinyl, a shade personally chosen by Elvis Costello, we are assured. These are numbered and limited to 2500 copies worldwide.

This limited 2LP vinyl reissue of Spike is released on 4 March 2022 via Music On Vinyl. Pre-order from the SDE shop using this link or the button below.

Tracklisting

Spike Elvis Costello / 2LP green vinyl

    • Side A
      1. …This Town… 4:26
      2. Let Him Dangle 4:44
      3. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror 4:03
      4. Veronica 3:10
    • Side B
      1. God’s Comic 5:27
      2. Chewing Gum 3:43
      3. Tramp The Dirt Down 5:40
    • Side C
      1. Stalin Malone 4:04
      2. Satellite 5:42
      3. Pads, Paws And Claws 2:54
      4. Baby Plays Around 2:48
      5. Miss MacBeth 4:22
    • Side D
      1. Any King’s Shilling 6:03
      2. Coal-Train Robberies
      3. Last Boat Leaving

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60 Comments

60 thoughts on “Elvis Costello / Spike 2LP gatefold reissue pressed on green vinyl”

  2. How come various online shops are now selling vinyl at such different prices. Take this EC Spike for example: What Records had this LP for £24.99 (now Sold Out). Banquet Records price it at £29.99 (some left at time of this post) and the SDE Shop price is £35. Any opinions on why this is? Cheers.

      1. Yes I agree Paul, RT are going top of the range for this LP too. Do you not like What Records for some reason? Why are What Records and Banquet Records not added to the price widget you use on most release announcements? Do you think they (WR) undercharge for some products available on their site? Interested to know your meaning behind your above comment. Were you just kidding? The SDE shop sometimes does seem to be at the top of the range for price on some releases. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud you and SDE for your sterling work on getting items in to your online shop to sell on to music fans, I have been a follower of yours and a champion of SDE for many years as you well know. As I said I have noticed varying prices on the same item(s) from different retailers and wondered what all the members opinions of this difference in prices was. Does everyone shop around or just ‘buy it when they see it’? More so on Vinyl with these differences I think. Notice I have not mentioned Amazon as they don’t even seem to have the Spike green Vinyl for sale on their site. Cheers, Col.

        1. I like to think that we provide a good service, good packaging, and of course shopping at the SDE shop supports the SDE ‘ecosystem’ and helps to keep this site free. I don’t know much/anything about What Records but I do know the dealer prices of the products they are selling and their retail prices appear to be ‘not for profit’ since they are making no (or very little) money. Hence my charity remark.

          1. Spike was delivered to me about 15 minutes ago. It looked as if the postperson had tried to Tramp The Disc Down, as the package was scuffed and had several scratches/dings in it. However, due to the high quality packing that you use at the SDE Shop, the contents were unharmed and in pristine condition. Thanks for taking the time and care about the packaging, it can make all the difference.

          2. I started reading this ominously but really pleased all’s fine with the contents. Thanks Kevin :)

          3. Paul,
            I had a similar but different thing than what KevinS had. Mine just arrived, and because it has been raining hard today, the package was quite wet. But the packaging inside was dry and fine.
            BUT, there was a slight but prevalent problem these days. There was a tear in the bottom of one of the inner sleeves, and a tear in the top back cover. I knew the culprit right away – the way too pointy edges on some LPs, seemingly all on coloured vinyl these days.
            I have gotten quite a few, and have been able to get replacement covers and/or bespokee inner sleeves in most cases (by the way, this one is slight so I won’t ask you to do that). It happens on US and EU pressings alike, and it also happens in stores here, cause of course they also get their LPs shipped.

            I would like to know if you are seeing this trend in the UK or not? And maybe open this question up to others here, as I can see no reason this should be happening unless the manufactures are getting more lax in their qulity control in just trying to get discs out aas qisk as possibles with all the delays we’ve been having.

            P.S.: Never had a problem with any other SDE products

          4. Hi David… yes seam splits are a nuisance and can happen. Sorry this has happened with you, even if it is minor. Hard to know why and what the solution is. Sometimes manufacturers ship the records in generic poly-lined sleeves and include the printed inners ’empty’ so as to avoid this issue. However mostly, as with Spike, we get shrink-wrapped product from distributors.

          5. I guess i’ve just been unlucky in the past then. Glad your items survived the robust handling. ps where is my last reply to this thread Paul? Cheers, Col.

  4. You all look so enthusiastic about him ! I just realized that I don’t know much about EC, except, for some reason, the Live at the El Mocambo. Where should I start ?

    1. Latest album ‘The Boy Named If’ is excellent, and getting rave reviews. I’m starting on my EC journey too, and this is a good place to start.

    2. EC comps are plentiful and cheap. Two good ones are The very best of the man and The best of the first 10 years.

      If you like them and want to dig deeper, My Aim Is True and Brutal Youth are both excellent. The Burt Bacharach team-up also has its charms.

      I’d probably skip Kojak Variety, and ironically, Spike (which I personally find to be over-produced).

      1. The Girls! Girls! Girls! compilation on double cassette was permanently in my car tape player for the best part of six months in the early 1990s. A truly astonishing collection of songs and there were so many of them.

        1. Yes a great collection, which included short notes associated with each track. I seem to remember there was a different track listing for cd, vinyl & cassette, with only a few songs overlapping. And it was even released on DAT with a virtually identical track listing to one of the other formats. Has to be the best short format “best of” ever, possibly along with the Go Betweens 1978 – 1990 which also included excellent track notes.

          1. You’re right it was different on the different formats. I happen to think the double cassette was by far the best, but I’m a bit biased :)

          2. A tad late to this, but…

            I have all those versions and another – the DAT version. It came in the same kind of 2-CD case that CD sets first came in with a tray to hold the DAT where a booklet on a 2-CD set would sit. As I don’t have a DAT player I have not listened to it, but I got the set autographed on the blank back of the front cover.
            When he first saw it he looked a bit puzzled as maybe he had never seen one before. I imagine I may be the only person with a signed EC DAT.

    3. My initial recommendations would include This Years Model, Imperial Bedroom, King of America, though you wouldnt go far wrong with at least a dozen others.

  5. OT: I would like to make one or two suggestions for artists not yet covered here that I like and I believe would be worth it, where can I do that?

  6. Another sidenote to the current discussion. Has anybody else had hassle with Amazon UK with the Jamiroquai Traveling Without Moving reissue? I put in a pre order last October. It was put back of course for five weeks. Supposed to have been released last Friday 21 January. I never recieved it. Countless online chats and phone calls to Amazon UK are still ongoing, as the item is out of stock. Their excuse is it wasn’t processed properly and that I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t recieved it! I’m holding out for a better conclusion to this latest debacle, as this is happening more often. You put in a pre order to guarantee a delivery, only for Amazon to fobb you off with any old excuse for someone not doing their job properly. Question is, do I wait, as some people do, for it to come back in stock, or cancel and take a gift card off my next order, as a gesture of goodwill?

    1. Speaking as someone who has just dealt with Amazon’s customer ‘service’, I would take the credit note and move on.

      Especially as at the time of writing HMV are still showing in as ‘in stock’ on their eBay page (for £29.99).

  7. Glad to see this underrated album finally getting a decent reissue on vinyl. I’m fine with my deluxe CD edition but this does look like a nice reissue.

  8. I remember being in my local indie record store in Cirencester (it’s now long gone) in May 1989 and the WEA rep was in chatting to the owner, bitterly complaining that A&R were making his job very difficult picking such a fragile ballad as ‘Baby Plays Around’ for the (2nd?) single as it wasn’t in his view at all radio friendly and shops weren’t biting stock-wise. ‘You just can’t service a track like that’ were his words. Still, glad he was there when I was in as he had the new Howard Jones 12″ (The Prisoner) in his bag that I was there hunting for :)

        1. For what it’s worth: when the red-vinyl Brutal Youth edition came out a few years ago, it was offered for sale on Amazon (co.uk). It turned out they were unable to get stock, and eventually cancelled my order. By then the record was sold out everywhere. This release is equally limited and may be just as difficult to obtain. Will Amazon have learned?

  10. Great album, but as usual the pricing on this is absolutely horrible. £35 with no bonus tracks, and pointless colored Vinyl. This pretty much is a poster boy release for everything wrong with the industry right now. Ship out the same old material with a limited run to pull in the punters and those with FOMO.

    That said, it is a great album with Costello’s most brutal song “Tramp the Dirt Down”. McCartney’s co-written songs are the least interesting here.

    1. ‘Coal-Train Robberies’ is a bonus track since it isn’t on the original vinyl. Also putting a 60 min album on two records is actually a really good idea. For once, it’s not spreading an album over two records for the sake of it.

      1. True about the bonus track, my bad. But it doesn’t make up for what they could have done and the pricing. There’s already a 2-CD release of this out there from Rhino that sounds excellent and wipes the floor with this. Let’s be honest, this is just another hipster Vinyl release with manufactured scarcity at a high price. The music isn’t hard to find – on Vinyl or CD – but of course you won’t get the pretty colors.

        We should demand more, much more, from the labels.

        1. What WOULD have made this an essential purchase would have been if they had spread the original album over 3 sides, and then reserved the fourth side for b-sides and outtakes etc.

          I think MoV did this with some of their Big Country releases, so the idea is not without precedence.

          1. Ideally this should receive a box with ALL of the b-sides, outtakes, etc. on the CD edition. A four sided release wouldn’t do it justice.

    3. It’s not a reissue by the original label (Warner), it’s a Music On Vinyl release. Music On Vinyl is a brand created in 2009 and owned by dutch distributor Bertus (one of the biggest distributors in Europe). Their records are pressed by Record Industry pressing plant. RI was founded in Haarlem in 1958 (named Artone in the beginning) by Casper and Wim Slinger (2 oil traders). CBS later bought half of the company and used it as their main pressing plant in Europe. For example, the Haarlem plant pressed 35 million units of MJ’s Thriller in the 80s. After Sony bought CBS in 1989 and decline of vinyl sales, Sony planned to cease operations in Haarlem in 1998 so Ton and Mieke Vermeulen (founders of Touche Records) took over the plant and renamed it Records Industry.

      Music On Vinyl specialize in 180g and quality pressings, often in limited editions. No need to complain about that Spike reissue because without them there would be no vinyl reissue of that album. Warner Bros originally released that album in 1989 and so far MoV reissued the album on black vinyl in 2013 and now in colored vinyl.

      MOFI (US) and MoV have reissued most of Elvis Costello’s back catalogue on 180g vinyl. Universal (with BackToBlack) have also reissued Elvis Costello’s back catalogue (1977-1986) on 180g vinyl.

      MoV will also continue to reissue (and repress) Elvis Costello’s 90s back catalogue. I think they’re doing a very good job. For what it’s worth it’s Elvis Costello himself who picked the color of that Spike reissue.

      1. That’s very good to hear. I was going to say that I hoped that Mighty Like A Rose and (especially!) Painted From Memory would be in line for future vinyl pressings. Brutal Youth is a lovely sounding vinyl reissue. These aren’t particularly cheap, but they are niche releases and I’d rather pay a bit more and not be disappointed by the items when they appear. The original pressings of Spike and Mighty Like A Rose aren’t great, so it’s not just a matter of picking up decent second hand copies. I have those already and they certainly aren’t decent!

      2. While I have never had a problem before from MOV, as I mentioned to Paul above, this one suffers from discs that are too pointy on the edges which cut into innersleevs and covers, semingly only on coloured vinyl. If you have some link to MOV maybe you could ask them why this has happened so much lately.

  11. A pretty good album it was from start to finish. Widely promoted at the time with copious amount of press and TV interviews. The McCartney connection being a pretty good angle for selling the album. Aside from co-writing two songs on the album, McCartney also plays his Rickenbacker bass on the opening track “…This Town”.

  12. Does anyone know if there is a certain set color palette that you can choose from to make colored vinyl, and any variations are more complicated or costly to produce? I ask because very very often the color chosen is ugly, appears to be the very basic color (red, green, yellow, blue, green) in shades that usually do not compliment the artwork in any way, are quite a mismatch, and are otherwise ugly.
    The one in question here at least matches the title!
    If I think about the ABBA Voyage ones, apart from the Australia exclusive, the colors had nothing to do with the artwork (granted, it was basically two tone), however it wasn’t the worst culprit in my eyes.

      1. One of the reasons coloured vinyl is more expensive is because they have to clean the presses afterwards to make sure there’s no residue for the next job. Time is money etc.

  13. Great one Paul, thanks, just ordered it. I think across this, the new album, Brutal Youth and the Armed Forces box, I’ve spent more money on EC than any other artist in the last year!

  14. Great news, Paul, double vinyl certainly justified! One observation: King of America used mainly American musicians (without tears), although the odd Attraction did feature too ;)

    1. King of America is such a good album. The credit is “The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates” so the Attractions were credited, although you’re right, it doesn’t really sound or ‘feel’ like an Attractions record.

      1. I think the only track that was the whole line up is “Suit of Lights” which is very much in their style. Fantastic album especially the Coward Bros. bonus song “The People’s Limousine”

        1. Indeed. They only appear on Suit Of Lights (although three or four other songs were recorded) but certainly didn’t sound out of place amongst the staggeringly impressive cream of American session players assembled for the rest of the album. The original plan was for The Attractions to play on half of the album. Already unhappy with this arrangement, they waited to be called to the studio while recording was taking place without them and got more and more pissed off. Elvis and Bruce’s relationship never really recovered. It’s something of a minor miracle that they got together again for Blood And Chocolate afterwards, which turned out to be one of EC and The Attractions best records. Moody buggers with fragile egos, musicians! Kind of goes with the territory.

          1. I think it was really during B and C that Bruce and Elvis fell out. They didn’t work together again until Brutal Youth

          2. I saw the live show in Philadelphia and was backstage and met both James Burton and Ron Tutt of Elvis Presley fame! But also I talked with Bruce and hid wife Sue (bothe very nice) and at one point was going to take them on a trip out to Amish country as they had the next day off. But I then nixed it as I had accidentally run over something with the car earlier and didn’t want to get them stuck somewhere and not get back to laeve for the tour in time.

  15. I went down to the Night-time Release Event at Tower Records, Piccadilly. Everyone was queueing up Regent Street, so I was somewhat at the back, but Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello crossed the road in front of us, strumming “Leave My Kitten Alone”. Clearly the idea was back to when EC did busking in the US to promote “My Aim Is True” but it didn’t work that way as everyone in the queue just followed the troubadors. Anyway, I managed to stay quite close to the duo, on Nick Lowe’s right, as they walked down the road while various press/photographers took photos. They carried on playing while in front of Tower Records, then they went inside and we waited for our chance to get our albums, and meet Elvis and get them signed in person. (Nick hung back from the table so he didn’t do the signing).

    Anyway, over the next week i kept an eye out for the press reports, but they all managed to crop Nick Lowe out of the photos, let alone me!

    (course, if anyone knows if these photos are around, let me know plz)

    1. Super stoked for this one on two vinyls, favorite Elvis album. Recently bought a mint original of this lp, it really suffers from having so many tracks squeezed onto it as quite assuredly the cd sounds better.

  16. Instant order from SDE. I’m not a huge EC fan yet Spike is one of my all time favourite albums. Splitting it across two discs makes good sense as it’s quite a dense listen.

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