Is it 1980? I am not a total curmudgeon about music. I love Katy Perry’s “Roar,” and Justin Timberlake wailing away on that “Holy Grail.” But this week recalls, by coincidence, two music stars who’ve survived and grown since their debuts circa 1977– Elvis Costello and Garland Jeffreys. One is from England, the other from Brooklyn. They appeared around the same time 36 years ago and kept getting lumped together in reviews. Who’da thunk they’d be back in the same review three and a half decades later?

Elvis Costello and The Roots have made a moody, incredibly catchy album with “Wise Up Ghost.” It’s Costello’s best album since before “National Ransom” and “Momofuko.” Costello always does well when bass and rhythm come into play. The Roots give him a groove, and the album recalls the best of “Get Happy!” and “Trust.” Don Was, running Blue Note at EMI- Universal, had a lot to do with this.

Costello remains king of clever of wordplay– “What you going to say to me?/Will be betraying me?” He’s back! (I wish the booklet weren’t printed in smaller type than a phone book.) “Come the Meantimes” is only one of the delights. Frankly, the more I’ve played “Wise Up Ghost,” the more each track has found its own place in my heart very much like Costello of yore. “Wake Me Up” and “Tripwire” are simply addictive. But the bell and the “right now” refrain, punctuated by Roots bass, make “Come the Meantimes” a potential concert classic. I think I am most in love right now with “Cinco Minutos Con Vos,” and incantatory duet with Costello and La Marisoul that amounts to their own operetta.

And then there’s the great Garland Jeffreys. His “Truth Serum” follows up a near perfect album called “The King of In Between.” Jeffreys puts out his own albums now after years and years with A&M. He recently celebrated his 70th birthday. His mixture of R&B and reggae and a little rock and roll never fails to have a New York sound, indescribably urban and pop. I’ve been mixing back and forth between Costello and Jeffreys all week. If someone in radio land would pick up Jeffreys’ “Is This the Real World?” I’d be very happy.

If you’re in New York on September 23rd, Jeffreys plays an album launch party at the Rockwood Music Hall. Don’t miss it.

Two great albums in one week. And next Tuesday– Sting, and Elton John. Real music. What a relief. No samples or “interpolations.” I am grinning from ear to ear.

PS You must listen to these albums on a stereo, with great speakers, and not through ear buds or on a computer. Wired speakers, not Bluetooth. Please, I beg you. Real music should not be compressed except for long trips.

Listen to Garland’s “Any Rain”:

I am surprised. For over a decade. Samantha Gailey Geimer has publicly supported director Roman Polanski and said that his rape of her, at age 13, was behind her. But in a book she’s publishing today, Geimer describes in detail the rape in 1977. The book also includes the photographs, never seen before, that Polanski took of her that day. The photos are placed in the book but not described until the Afterword, written by Geimer’s lawyer of 35 years, Lawrence Silver.

The photos illustrate the chapter, which I didn’t expect, in which Geimer responds the graphic details of what went on. Geimer says Polanski plied her with pills and Champagne. She worried that she would suffer the same fate as Karen Ann Quinlan. “What if I become the Coma Girl?” she thought.

There are three photos–two of them show Geimer looking woozy and stoned. In one she’s in a hot tub, her eyes shut. In the other, she’s looking back over her shoulder, arms crossed, on a window sill. The third is the sharpest– wearing a sexy dress, posing on a kitchen counter.

Polanski and Geimer, now high on Quaaludes, get into the hot tub. She writes: “It’s just me and him in the water and the steam and the bubbles. Then everything hits at once: the steam, the heat, the alcohol, the pill, and the panic. Have you ever been touched in a way that made you want to jump right out of your skin? This man had a reputation as a great lover. The problem is, he was not my great lover. I could have been any girl— as long as I was female, and as long as I was young. My chest tightens.”

I can’t reproduce the pictures here. and I can’t quote much more of the chapter– not just for copyright reasons, but because it would be too severe in this space.

Silver writes in his Afterword about the pictures in the book: “In the civil litigation, I demanded all photographs of Samantha. Polanski turned over the prints from that previously unseen first roll of film. But I believed there were more. What happened was this: In executing the search warrant, the police didn’t recognize the importance of a receipt/ claim check from Sav-On Drugs’
photograph department.

“Years later, I was told that Polanski gave his lawyer the receipt, and they secured the printed roll of film and negatives from the drug store. During the civil suit, his lawyer had to turn those photos over to me. These photographs, important both legally and historically, would likely have never been discovered if not for the civil suit.”

Geimer’s decision to publish now, and her details, aren’t exactly helpful to Polanski. She does acknowledge, however, that a lot of malfeasance went on with prosecuting him. Polanski served 42 days in jail. When he was released, it became clear that his original deal with the prosecution would be reneged on. That’s when he fled the United States.

I love that headline because Miley’s new single is called “Wrecking Ball.” Anyway, the odd engagement of Aussie Liam Hemsworth and former Disney star turned Spears-fish Miley Cyrus is over. I told you that in Toronto Hemsworth basically looked right through me when I told him how much I liked “We Can’t Stop,” Miley’s other new single. He obviously doesn’t know what’s hit her lately. She’s young, she’s changing. She’s not wearing a lot of clothes. People magazine confirms the split, as they say in tabloid land. Everyone is moving on to the next round. It’s a slow Monday.
Watch the video. That will tell you all of it: