Elvis Costello and the Imposters live at Birmingham Symphony Hall
A great night of almost non-stop music, played with skill and energy.
EC and the Is return to Birmingham in the magnificent Symphony Hall was marked by an enthusiastic audience response to a set that mixed songs old and new, fast and slow. The band ran onto the stage, dressed almost entirely in black. The exception was EC himself who sported a dark blue suit and red shirt with black and white tie. Initially the sound was muddy (although not as bad as their previous appearance at the cavernous Birmingham Academy), but by the third song, our Welsh sound engineer (Geoff) had things fixed. Afterwards he claimed that the band never sound checks – they rehearse on stage, then when it comes to show time, play twice as loud as in rehearsal. This is his story and he’s sticking to it.
The show kicked off with a rocking “Welcome to the Working Week” followed by a brash “Uncomplicated” featuring some melodica from Professor Naïve. “45” followed with some good backing vocals from the similarly bearded Davey Faragher, whose support for EC in this respect continues to be one of the best things to come out of the transfiguration of the Attractions into The Imposters.
“Brilliant Mistake” from King of America was introduced as “a song from our new record” a reference to the reissue. Mostly songs weren’t introduced at all, and on the few occasions when they were, no titles were mentioned. In many cases songs began before the applause for the preceding one had finished. This approach allowed EC to rip through 34 songs in less than 2½ hours.
One surprise in the first half of the set was “Radio Silence” from WIWC. This was played slightly slower than on the album version, with more bass and an overlong and drawn out ending featuring those little hands of concrete in full guitar hero mode.
The show also featured two new “jokes” (according to Pete Thomas, who knows these things). EC opined that he knew he was back in England when he saw Antiques Roadshow on TV. This show is, he said, unique to England. He remarked particularly on an episode where someone had turned up wearing a mohair sweater and bondage trousers wanting to have them valued by the show’s experts.
“Our Little Angel” was introduced with the familiar narrative about playing lonely hearts clubs back in Liverpool in his days with Alan Mayes. The girls standing on one side, looking like they’ve come straight from a Catholic day school social, dressed like Dana, but less sexy. The boys on the other side of the room, wearing 15 sweaters (each), picking spots and trying to get up courage to cross the floor. Under the illuminated exit sign stands a thin older man with a pencil moustache, wearing a blazer and tie, waiting to pick up weak women. Steve introduced some honky tonk piano into this song, with good effect, and played a really effective piano break in the middle of “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”. On other songs, his playing was usually too far down in the mix to really stand out. The show features few ballads where his contribution can stand out. He must sometimes feel like a portrait painter being asked to whitewash a wall.
EC played two unfamiliar songs – “The Butcher’s Boy” (a traditional English song), on the theme of suicide, followed The Delivery Man (which has some logic to it thematically). Bob Dylan used to play a version of this song in the 1960s and EC played it during the Meltdown festival in London in 1996. “Monkey to Man” followed that, as it was, according to EC, fifty years to the day since Dave Bartholomew’s ”The Monkey” was released.
EC then moved to sit on the edge of the stage, stage right, to play an old Brinsley Schwartz number – “Don’t Lose Your Grip on Love” – a ballad that would have fitted in any Coward Brothers set. EC remains a prime contributor to Nick Lowe’s pension fund through his performance of old Brinsley Schwartz numbers. Having got that far, he dropped off the stage to take up position in the front stalls where he sat and sang Alison and Suspicious Minds. Much activity by all the stage crew – getting a mike stand to him – adjusted for his position – guitar in his lap braced by his feet (clad in those pointy silver shoes) pressed against the stage in front of him. Paddy Callaghan hovered in the wings in case anyone chose this moment to seek revenge for Norwich (or Columbus), but no one did. EC’s foray into row A got the audience to their feet, where many of them stayed for the rest of the night. The Symphony Hall’s wide aisles, gentle slope and absence of bouncers encourages the audience to move down to the front to dance. EC launched into four fast numbers (“Mystery Dance”, “Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used To Do)”, “I Can’t Stand Up (For Falling Down)” and “High Fidelity”) which kept the audience on their feet. Things slowed after that with something of a sing along on Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me”. Attempts to involve audiences on this tour in community singing have met with mixed success and the Birmingham audience was not invited to help with vocals on “Monkey to Man”.
The set closed with “PLU”, “Oliver’s Army”, “Pump It Up” and (after a pause for applause) “The Scarlet Tide”, sung mostly off-mike. EC has been quoted as saying that if audiences won’t listen, he’ll sing quieter and quieter until they do. At Symphony Hall, the audience stood in quiet attention for the closing number whilst EC’s voice carried well as testament to the acoustic qualities of the hall.
After the show, EC was pretty hoarse, but in performance his voice is
holding up well.