Given that I barely enjoy going to shows at all these days, I'd pretty much sworn off going to see Elvis Costello anymore after his last tour. I've seen him 8 or 9 times over the years, and that's plenty. Plus, the last tour, he leaned heavily on unreleased material, which, yeah, swell, whatever. It was all fine and dandy, but I felt I'd seen EC enough for that to be my farewell to him.

But now he's announced a tour for next year concentrating entirely on early songs, from My Aim Is True to Blood and Chocolate, and that's tempting, although it would be more tempting if it only went through King of America and thus would spare the audience the traditional 12-3/4 hour rendition of "I Want You" - a perfectly fine song, but when performed live its main function is for the audience to take a long delayed bathroom break.

They make a big fuss about Charlie Sexton being in tow, but if he contributed much to the last EC show that I saw, it eluded me. Anyhow, he'll be in St. Louis July 3, so the next day is a holiday which makes it a little more tempting.

[www.brooklynvegan.com]

In MUCH more exciting news, Toto is going on the road with Christopher Cross and Men At Work next year.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2024 04:03PM by breno.

"In MUCH more exciting news, Toto is going on the road with Christopher Cross and Men At Work next year."

Taking advantage of that yacht rock doc on HBO, no doubt. Both Toto and Cross feature fairly heavily. MAW isn't in it,though.

I'd also largely decided I didn't need to see Costello anymore, but I am tempted by this set.

I will pass on Toto, however. The handful of songs I was forced to endure due to Steve Lukather's involvement in Ringo's All Star Band a decade ago are more than enough for this fella's lifetime.

I remember the Rolling Stone review of Toto's Turn Back: "Toto's music neither excites nor offends. In rock & roll, that's the unforgivable sin."

Elvis Costello is one of my favorites, but the main concern for me is how his voice has physically deteriorated in recent years, perhaps not coincidentally after he was treated for an undisclosed illness. As a result, it's become really hit-or-miss. When it isn't good, it sounds like he's struggling to stay in tune and even in time. But when it comes together - his glorious first show after Burt Bacharach died (I was there) or on his excellent last album, The Boy Named If... - it makes one wonder what might be causing the trouble the rest of the time.

Sexton's contributions are best heard on anything from My Aim Is True, usually "Alison." Elvis was never going to be a fluid lead guitar player like John McFee, so at best he let Steve Nieve approximate those lines on the keyboards, but with Sexton on-board, one can now hear them incorporated back into the arrangements on a regular basis.

And FWIW, I never got the dubious "yacht rock" revival. The term "yacht rock" alone is enough to be rightfully suspicious. I actually love Steely Dan, but I would never lump them in with Toto, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins or the Doobie Brothers in any of its incarnations. (Yes, I realize one-time Steely Dan collaborators Skunk Baxter and Michael McDonald and My Aim Is True guitarist John McFee figure in the mix. Point still stands.) Never want to play any of their stuff except for "What a Fool Believes": it may be a defining single of a genre I dislike, but it all works on that record mostly because the song itself is genuinely great IMHO.

The whole "yacht rock" thing makes my stomach churn. What's that radio station tag line?

"The kind of rock that doesn't rock the boat!"

To continue the Yacht Rock rabbit hole, I just watched the Yacht Rock documentary on HBO last week. The term was coined by a group of comedians who did a series of spoofs on YouTube about 2005. It was retroactively applied to a genre of music that never actually existed.

Essentially what these guys noticed is that a group of Los Angeles session musicians all played on the same artists records, wrote songs on each other's albums and all were R&B influenced, "sensitive" white dudes who threw a lot of jazz chords into their music.

Steely Dan isn't Yacht rock but they were the breeding ground for many of these musicians (most of whom went on to form Toto).

So by this Comedian group's definition all Yacht Rock specifically comes out of Los Angeles. Hall & Oates, while being R&B influenced white dudes, aren't part of the scene since they are from Philadelphia. The Eagles, while being from L.A. aren't part of the scene because they are country rock.

Ground Zero is "What a fool believes" by the Doobie Brothers, which created the template (the so called "Doobie Bounce").

Yacht Rock ends with the release of Thriller which was both the zenith of the genre (all the members of Toto play all through the Thriller album and the hit single "Human Nature" was written by Toto's keyboard player).

After the success of Thriller the top 40 changed and the hits stopped coming, for the most part.

The whole concept of course is B.S. for a scene that never really existed but the documentary is a lot of fun, especially if you are a gen-xer who grew up hearing these songs on the radio as a kid. There are also a lot of interviews with current musicians who express mad love to many of the members and songs highlighted in the documentary so it is well worth a watch if it scratches your itch.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2024 06:52PM by jothoma.

Elvis is unpredictable. I saw Elvis at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, a 5000 seat outdoor venue in the 80s. Was a great show, he did many of his best songs off his early albums. Had on red patent leather shoes and started the show with Angels Wanna. It was epic. Then I saw him in the early 2000s at MSG when he was in his “blues period”. A legendarily horrible show where he did all blues numbers for 90 minutes until the encores. People were literally sleeping in their seats. It was the Elvis version of Spinal Tap’s “Jazz Odyssey”.

The only other artist I experienced concerts so far apart in quality was Neil Young. Similarly - he did an acoustic hits show at Waterloo Village in NJ under a full moon that was one of the best musical events I ever experienced. And then (again at MSG) he did Greendale, Neil’s version of a bad high school play. Horrifically bad.

For Elvis, his recent OZ shows were reviewed pretty poorly. Caveat emptor.

I've seen E.C. four times. He's definitely been mercurial and moody, but the 2012 show where he resurrected the Spinning Songbook ... oh man, one for the ages. None of his shows has been awful, but that one is hard to top.

The Return of the Spinning Songbook was actually my first Elvis Costello show - at the Beacon on Bob Dylan’s birthday and one of the best shows I ever attended by anyone. (Highlights unique to that show: Questlove sitting in on “Black & White World” which was a surprise even for Questlove, and a birthday tribute to Dylan in the form of a solo acoustic cover of “License to Kill” - not a song I usually like, but Elvis damn well sold it.)

I noticed the other day that if you ignore the more dilettantish side projects (of which there are many), his discography from Spike to the present becomes much more leaner and consistent. His best years remain 1977-1986 but at least to me, there are probably three good, commendable albums with Warner Bros. (out of four studio albums that don’t feel like side projects) and the rock/pop albums with Universal and beyond are mostly okay with at least three to five cuts on each that would have added up to a really good, commendable EP in each case. (And I would say four, maybe even five of those albums are really good in their own right, including his most recent one.)

I’ll also add that one of my favorite releases is actually a box set of live EP’s called Costello & Nieve that could fit on two CD’s. It had a limited run and that was it.

The last EC record I liked was Blood & Choco. I must have missed the Attractions reunion.

The only show my wife and I ever left early was an interminable Elvis Costello concert. After the three hour mark, we decided that we couldn’t stay awake any longer. A lot of it was him at the piano playing boring songs, telling long stories. Occasionally punctuated with actual rock music to wake everyone up, before we got another dreary piano ballad.

But then the next time we saw him, co-headliner with Blondie, he came out and totally kicked butt. Super fun show.

As my wife said: with him, you never know what you’re going to get, but not in a good way.