Review of Buffo Italiano and Volare
Gold Wax, 1999-02-01, no. 55, p25
- Paul HoskenBuffo Italiano & Volare Review
When it comes to live recordings of Elvis Costello accompanied by just Steve Nieve there are two releases that have become milestones and by which all others are judged. One of these is "Costello & Nieve", the box set of five maxi singles that was officially released in the US at the end of '96 and a couple of months later in Japan. Unfortunately this excellent set was limited to 30,000 copies, and it's now almost impossible to find in the shops. The other notable Costello/Nieve release is a bootleg called "Aging Gracefully". This is a recording of a show at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, 15-May-96, that was broadcast on local radio. The sound quality of this double CD is so good that it's difficult to tell it apart from the professionally released box set. So when new bootlegs of Costello/Nieve shows arrive it's against these very high standards that they will be judged.
Both "Buffo Italiano" & "Volare" are audience DAT recordings, and this immediately puts them at a disadvantage when compared with the two releases above. Typical for this kind of recording is loud crowd noise, but it this case it's mainly restricted to just between the songs. The sound is clear, but slightly thin and distant. However, where these two bootlegs really score is with the songs selection. If you already have the box set and "Aging Gracefully" then there's still every reason to hunt down these two as well, because among the 39 songs that they include you'll find 28 that are new to the sparce Costello/Nieve concert treatment.
"Buffo Italiano" is a double CD recorded in Turin during a mini Italian tour in Febuary last year. It contains the complete show plus four bonus tracks from the same tour. The slow tempo of the first track, "Shot With His Own Gun" sets the atmosphere for the rest of the evening, which is very polite and 'Italian' in feel. The audience on this evening is extemely reserved and not at all boystrous, and I miss the shouts, hollers and excitement that usually accompanies their UK shows. Steve starts off the next number, "Temptation", with that lovely reworked melody line that I never get tired of hearing. It's during this number that Elvis' voice warms up, just it time for one of the highlights of this disc, a reworked version of "Talking In The Dark". This first appeared as a b-side back in '78. The song then flows into a good performance of "Poor Fractued Atlas", which unfortunately I consider to be one of the weaker numbers from the "All This Useless Beauty" album. After a sparse rendering of "Still To Soon To Know" things pick up a bit with "Long Honeymoon". But any momentum now gained is immediatly lost as they perform a new Steve Nieve composition called "Unfailing Welcome To The Voice", a song which I find hard to warm to. After "The Other End Of The Telescope" Steve leaves Elvis alone on the stage, lit by just a hand torch, to sing "Alison" in a very intimate fashion. The calm mood continues with "Gigi", a song that I would, however, prefer to see performed at the recent Costello/Bacharach shows with a large orchestra than here.
Although "Punch The Clock" isn't looked upon as one of Elvis' best albums underneath the hefty producion some good songs can be found, like "The Invisible Man", and the fabulous performance here proves it. I don't think 'nice' is really the right word to describe a song like "I Want You", but on this evening he sang it very delicately, and didn't inject the excessive emotion that he puts into some live versions. Mr. Nieve now returns to join Elvis for "God Give Me Strength", a song that is ideal for showing off his strong vocal abilities. And at long last the welcome inclusion of another uptempo number, "London's Brilliant Parade". "Watch Your Step", the last number on disc 1, is another highlight of the night, and contains some great interplay between Steve and Elvis.
Disc 2 opens with "Shipbuilding". A simple piano arrangement of this song was first broadcast on UK television was back in '83, and it doesn't seem to have changed much since then. "Veronica" starts with a lovely slowed down intro before bursting into the usual faster tempo that we're familiar with. This song, and the next "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" form another all too brief change of mood before returning again to the slower numbers with "Almost Blue". Elvis wrote this song with Chet Baker in mind, and after hearing Chet's version I can see that Elvis has in turn been influenced by it. The jazz feeling in the song is stronger than on the album version. "My Funny Valentine" is taken at an even slower pace and to my mind doesn't work well at this speed.
One of the problems with audience recordings is crowd noise, and "God's Comic" is a prime example of how this can spoil things. Towards the end of the song the audience join in with the sing-a-long "Now I'm dead. Now I'm dead" section and naturally the microphone picks this up very clearly. But at least they're nearly in tune! Something must have gone wrong at the start of "The Birds Will Still Be Singing" because there's about 30 seconds worth of silence. Maybe it was time to change the tape in the recorder. A nice version of "Accidents Will Happen" with a line from "24 Hours From Tulsa" tacked onto the end is spoiled by microphone rustling, and this continues onto the next track "All This Useless Beauty". The intro to "Shallow Grave" is also spoiled by some audience talking, but the song does contain an interesting Mark Ribot-style guitar solo. "Watching The Detectives" is performed very sparsly, and it's almost skeleton-like how the piano and guitar just draw the outlines of the melody. For the last number of the concert, "Couldn't Call It Unexpected", Elvis decides to not use a microphone, and just relies on the unamplified power of his voice. This may have sounded fine if you were at the concert, but on the recording it just sounds strange. The end of this song turns into a half-hearted sing-a-long, which slowly comes to a halt and the show just dies rather than coming to any kind of climax.
The bonus tracks included are noticably quieter than the rest of the CD and in general are unimpressive. "Clown Strike" and even the new song "Bright Blue Times" are nothing special, and did he forget the words in the middle of "So Like Candy"? But "All The Rage" is a winner, one of the best live vsersions of the song that I've heard. So, that's it for "Buffo Italiano", an interesting song selection, but the show itself and the sound quality don't hold up to the far superior "Aging Gracefully".
One critisism of the Italian mini tour was that there was little variation between the shows. For this reason "Volare" seems an ideal solution to this. Whereas "Buffo" contains a complete show, "Volare" is a collection of the tracks that differed from evening to evening. Because of the reserved nature of the shows and the crowds on this tour it's hard to tell that "Volare" is a composite and not all taken from the one show. It's only the occasional poor edit between tracks that gives the game away. The first two tracks on the CD are taken from the "Buffo" show, and while "God Give Me Strength" isn't anthing special "Talking In The Dark" is one of the highlights of that evening. Most of the songs included here are from Elvis' early pre-Warner Brothers era and it's very interesting to here them performed in the Costello/Nieve style. "Kid About It", "Man Out Of Time" and "Just A Memory" are three such songs and work well, the later of which is sung here with an extra verse included:
"I count the pages of the letter I write One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eigth, nine Tearing up the sheets of love this scent cannot disguise I start to count again and close my eyes. I'm not sure if this is a new verse, or an old one that was left off when recorded in the studio. It would seem that Elvis has rediscovered his "Punch The Clock" album because four of its tracks were reworked fortour. Two of these are next, "King Of Thieves" and "Mouth Almighty", and both are really excellently performed. "Mouth Almighty" contains some lovely piano playing and is possibly the best of all the tracks reviewed here. No, wait a moment, I was too hasty. The best track is the next one "You Little Fool". Elvis' says that for this version he went back to how the song was originally conceived.
"Sulky Girl" is a fine song, and the performance here is good, but still it seems to be missing something without The Attractions' power behind it. "Little Palaces" is another older song that it's nice to hear live again. Elvis wrote the song "Miss Mary" for Zucchero, and it's this version that I'm familiar with. I was hoping that Elvis' own original version would maybe add something to the song, but I was wrong. The melody gets lost a little, but it was well worth including this track because of it's rarity. "I'll Wear It Proudly" is another great performance of a great song. This certainly is an excellent bootleg. During "Shallow Grave" there's microphone problems which Elvis solves at the end of the song by literally throwing the mic away and using another for "From A Whisper To A Scream". The last track, "Alison", starts with Elvis singing unaccompanied. He's in great voice and uses his guitar just for slight support. The version he sings here is without the medley that is often tacked onto the end, and so the song has a pure, simple and passionate feel to it. What a nice way to end the CD.
To sum up I'd say that although "Buffo Italiano" has it's faults is a welcome additions to any fan's collection. However, "Volare" is the one to go out of your way to find because it's song selection contains some of the best of the Costello/Nieve performances. And if you're lucky enough to find these two along with "Aging Gracefully" and the "Costello/Nieve" box set then I guess you've pretty well covered this era of Elvis' career.
- Paul Hosken