"Rome, Italian Style" Track of the Day: Elvis Costello and Sy Richardson, "A Town Called Big Nothing (Really Big Nothing)"

Every weekday from July 1 to July 29, the "'Rome, Italian Style' Track of the Day" series of posts provides info on the tracks from A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Rome, Italian Style" playlist, which focuses on how musicians outside the film and TV music world interpret '60s and '70s film and TV music. The one-hour "Rome, Italian Style" block airs Mondays through Thursdays at 11am on AFOS.

(Photo source: The Elvis Costello Wiki)

Song: "A Town Called Big Nothing (Really Big Nothing)" by The MacManus Gang featuring actor Sy Richardson
Released: 1987
Why's it part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist?: It's one of my favorite artists, Elvis Costello (recording under his real name Declan MacManus), doing a spaghetti western-style tune, with a voiceover by Lite from Repo Man. I can't pass that up.

Costello, who did only backup vocals on "A Town Called Big Nothing," wrote the tune for a film he had a bit part in, Repo Man director Alex Cox's recently recut 1987 spaghetti western homage/spoof Straight to Hell, which stars Richardson, whose most noteworthy role outside of Cox's films was in the cult favorite Pushing Daisies (as the surly coroner with an unexplained grudge against Chi McBride's P.I. character Emerson Cod).

Listen to Costello do the British cowboy thing--decades before Daniel Craig in Cowboys & Aliens.