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It had to happen eventually, I suppose. Calgary finally got its first taste of so-called new wave (power pop) music Monday night.
Elvis ("I'm not angry") Costello, England's most successful exponent of revenge-and-guilt rock 'n' roll, and the (Battered) Wives, Toronto's publicity-grabbing, mock-hoodlum band, performed for a near sell-out crowd at the Jubilee Auditorium.
The volume was cranked up high and the mindless element in the crowd was getting giddy toward the end of the show, when Costello urged them to defy house rules and dance along to his "Pump It Up" closer. But, on the whole, this sampling of the nouveau rock turned out to be a rather uninspiring offering.
Costello, a former computer operator who changed his name from Declan McManus just long enough before Presley's death to avoid accusations of opportunism (but not of effrontery), is currently on the charts in England with a "straight" cover of Dionne Warwick's mid-sixties hit, "I just Don't Know What To Do With Myself."
I mention this, in passing, to suggest there is nothing new about "new wave," although Costello supporters will undoubtedly protest that their man has something new to say when the majority of successful pop artists are getting mileage out of musical ideas patented by others a long time ago.
I have listened to Costello's records, including some albums that have not been released commercially in this country, and I am satisfied he stands head and shoulders above any of the three-chord punkers who aspire to become the new champions of rock 'n' roll. That's why Costello recorded "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea." He has known for some time that he could become the elder statesman for the new wave movement and the possibility of artistic decline bothers him.
He writes intelligent lyrics, suffused with a wry humor and subtle ambiguities that suggest the mind-game experiments of mid-period Dylan. He sings at least as competently as Bruce Springsteen and he knows his way around the neck of his battered Fender.
But, like Warren Zevon, who put on a disastrous show here a few months ago, Costello seems unable to translate the achievements of the studio into a form suitable for live performance. The best songs from his two North American releases, "Mystery Dance," "Red Shoes," "End Of The World," "Radio, Radio," "The Beat," were delivered at such a breakneck pace last night that the phrasing ran off the tracks and the arrangements turned into sonic porridge. Whatever humor might be in the lyrics became either inaccessible or irrelevant.
Unlike Zevon, though, Costello was in charge of this performance from beginning to end. He was reputed beforehand to have a cold demeanor but, last night, he actually smiled a couple of times. The confidence of the Next Big Thing effectively dispelled any suggestions that Costello might really be an imposter with a shrewd public relations man.
It was left to the (Battered) Wives to supply the sham dimension of the show. This neo-British band, whose members affect the demented characterizations of madhouse creatures in a Jacobean tragedy, received a tremendous burst of free publicity recently when a group called Women Against Violence Against Women complained about the band's name.
The Wives promptly dropped the "Battered" from their publicity material (they still use the offending adjective on stage) and immediately graduated from part-time bar gigs to concerts. This would be fine, except that they don't really have anything going for them except notoriety and a rather quirky sense of humor. Some might call them offensive. I regard them as nothing more than opportunistic con artists.
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