Re: Elvis Costello Early Songs Tour

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.

Just got home from seeing EC's stop in the St. Louis region, and it was objectively a good show, but a frustrating one. He's always been afflicted with the "I wrote a great vocal melody for this song, but when I perform it live I'm going to intentionally butcher it for some fucking reason" disease, but jumpin' jeepers, has that disease ever metastasized. He looooooooooooooooooooooooves stretching out the first syllable of a line, resulting in the remaining syllables of that line falling ass over tea kettle all over each other to finish before it's time for the next line to be blurted out, resulting in vocals that are completely off meter and barely residing on the same continent as the rest of the song. I don't know what poor Alison has done to piss Elvis off, but his vocals wandered so far afield from where they were supposed to be that the song might as well have been about one of those senior citizens you occasionally read about who left their house in Scranton to go to the grocery store and are found three days later driving around in Omaha unable to find their house.

Several songs he reworked completely, to varying effect. I kind of liked "Clubland" as a jazz number, was perplexed by the decision to perform "Living In Paradise" to the tune of "Domino" which morphed into a full cover of that song, and was not a fan of "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" as a ballad.

Mostly, though, it was a very good show - not one of the best shows I've ever seen him do, but nowhere near the worst. Very middle of the pack, but probably as good as can be expected from an elderly curmudgeon closing in on 50 years of performing some of these songs, which God knows he must be sick of performing by now. It was great hearing some songs that I don't know if I've ever seen him do in concert before - "Fish & Chips Paper," "Strict Time," "The Comedians", etc., and he seemed much less inclined to manhandle those less often performed songs into unrecognizable cattywampusses than he did the standard chestnuts.

For some reason, he made several dismissive and mean-spirited remarks about Sabrina Carpenter. No clue why, given that she's one of the few mainstream pop megastars these days (on the short list with T Swift, Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, the Weeknd and a couple of others I'm too tired to try to think of) who are making music that I can actually fathom human beings enjoying. Not sure what was up with that, beyond him just looking for a cheap punchline to get knowing laughs from the "I've fallen and broken my hip"-sters who comprise his audience that are convinced that kids today don't know anything about good music. (And yes, yes, I realize I outed myself as one of those when I mentioned "one of the few mainstream pop megastars..." Guess I'm just irked he was using one of the ones I actually get as the punchline.)

And of course, this being a live show in 2025, I was mostly reminded of my desperate yearning to blissfully retire from concert going altogether, if only my goddamn friends would just let me and quit inflicting fucking tickets on me. I was stuck seated behind.some numbnuts poindexter who thought he was goddamn Annie Leibovitz and every thirty seconds was blocking my view with his stupid phone, thumb-and-forefingering the screen in an attempt to get the perfect photo of Elvis in a position slightly different than the one he was in 30 seconds earlier. For fucks sake. I could understand it if it was a Charli XCX show or something, but ain't nobody needs a hundred fucking photos of Elvis Costello's gigantic Liverpudlian noggin onstage in Chesterfield, Missouri. And when the jackass wasn't blocking my view with his idiot phone, he was canoodling with his equally irritating companion. There's nothing like having your view of a ripping version of "Green Shirt" blocked by a geriatric couple necking. Never really thought of "Green Shirt" as a make-out song, but it sure aroused Methuselah and Methuselette.

I can't think of the last show I went to where I didn't end up praying for seering hellfire to rain down upon a significant portion of my fellow concertgoers. (Wait! It was Sparks in Kansas City, 2023. Nothing could ever make me think ill of a roomful of Sparks fans. The apotheosis of mankind.) Anyhow, I've grown to loathe the entire experience and just wish my damn friends would let me stay home and slouch towards my inevitable grave in a manner I find agreeable.

Setlist:
Mystery Dance
Watching the Detectives (butchered beyond recognition version)
Green Shirt (geriatric frenching version)
Less Than Zero
Human Hands
No Action
Accidents Will Happen
Fish & Chips Paper
I Have No Clue What This Song Was
Opportunity
Blue Chair
Alison (beaten and left for dead by its author version)
Strict Time
High Fidelity
I Have No Clue What This Song Was
Deportees Club
Living in Paradise with Van Morrison
Red Shoes
The Comedians
Clubland
Everyday I Write the Book
Don't Want to Go to Chelsea
Pump It Up
Radio Radio
Peace Love and Understanding



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/04/2025 07:25AM by breno.

LOL

I Have No Clue What This Song Was #1 was apparently a Lee Dorsey cover, "The Greatest Love." (EC loves Dorsey. IIRC the album he did with Allen Toussaint has quite a few of the songs Dorsey made famous.)

I Have No Clue What This Song Was #2 is "A Face in the Crowd," the title song to that musical he wrote that has yet to be produced (based on the famous and sadly way too fucking timely film Elia Kazan made with a frightening Andy Griffith in the lead role).

A Face In the Crowd - the movie that for 60 years was considered the gold standard for harsh & cynical political movies, then reality exposed it as actually way too naive and trusting in the ultimate common sense of the rabble.

The other Andy Griffith movie that I would say is just as relevant today is, I kid you not, the early-70s made-for-TV motorcycling through Baja flick Pray For the Wildcats, in which William Shatner, Robert Reed and Marjoe Gortner play lickspittle ad execs knuckling under the increasingly deranged demands of their wealthy businessman client, Andy Griffith at his most intense and terrifying. If you've never seen it, I'm pretty sure it's on Youtube. It's not entirely free of the cheesiness of most of that era's made-for-TV movies (it's no Duel, The Night Stalker or Evil Roy Slade), but it's better than it has any right to be and Griffith and Shatner are both pretty damn good in it.

Griffith was underrated as an actor. He was so associated with down home aw shucks pussycats like Andy Taylor and Matlock that people forgot that when he got the chance to play villains, he could flick a switch and turn his big friendly face into a horrifying, leering psychopath and drive Mayberry completely out of your mind. It's too bad he didn't get the opportunity more often.

[www.youtube.com]

Man have you hit the nail on the head there! By Jan. 6 2020 I thought that "A Face In The Crowd" had miraculously transformed itself into a sugar-sweet, impossibly naive tale of unicorns and rainbows. Then last year happened. And it seems that you are also obsessed by the two top Evil Andy Griffith movies that have haunted me throughout my life. Not forgetting movie number three: another ABC TV Movie of the Week from 1974: "Savages" with Sam Bottoms as the human prey of sadistic hunter Griffith in the Mojave desert.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Yep, I also thought of Savages, but it's been so.long since I've seen it that I don't remember much about it, except that Andy was indeed an evil bastard in it. I need to track it down and give it a re-watch.

Just watched Savages on YouTube. Pretty good, though it takes its foot off the throttle at the end. Andy is pretty terrifying in it - not as over the top crazy as Pray for the Wildcats, but more relentless and calculating. The phony smile he always has plastered on his face when he's pretending the things he's saying to Sam Bottoms are perfectly reasonable is a nice touch.

It put me in the mood to watch more made-for-TV movies. I was hoping that Trapped, in which James Brolin gets locked in a department store after closing with several vicious guard dogs, would be on YouTube, but alas, I could only find a preview. So I've had to settle for Killdozer, which of course isn't settling at all. And it stars Clint Walker, who was from my neck of the woods. He was from Hartford, Illinois, a town where everyone was once warned not to turn on the lights in their basements due to them being full of gas fumes from the local refinery.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2025 09:17PM by breno.

Sam Bottoms has been on my mind since the night before we finally watched "Apocalypse Now" in its Redux edit. Astonishing. Which was driven by really wanting to see the "Hearts Of Darkness" documentary we read about in The Guardian [it's in UK/Ireland reissue now] last week but having never seen "Apocalypse Now.

The last day I was in Orlando in 2001 when moving I held a "Southern-Fried EVIL" double feature with "Pray For The Wildcats" and "Savages" from my ßetamax taped copies! This was the invite to friends:


We were talking about Elvis Costello?

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2025 10:38AM by Post-Punk Monk.

What a great thread. I arrived expecting a recap of EC live and instead learned about the maniacal evil genius of Andy Griffith.

Love this site…although sometimes you guys make me wonder how many rocks I’ve lived under!

(The only Elvis show I saw was a solo acoustic with a spinning wheel… wherever it landed was the song he’d play next.
Haven’t see any of Andy’s ‘evil’ movies… yet.)