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There was an Elvis sighting Wednesday.
Not at a Burger King in Kentucky, and not at a Ford dealership in Michigan. This time it was in Denver, at Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. And, no, it wasn't a sighting of Elvis "The Twinkie King" Presley. It was of the slightly off-mainstream Elvis Costello. And even if the King were still alive, he probably couldn't touch the quality of the performance Costello delivered for his sparse audience.
A meager 5,000 Costello faithfuls were on hand to lend their boisterous support to Costello's music, and to sing along whether he asked them to or not.
Fortunately, Costello didn't make them wait too long for a taste of his hit material. Firing his first salvo with "Accidents Will Happen," he led his band and audience through two hours of old favorites, as well as new insights from his Spike LP.
His band, the Rude Five, was a reflection of Costello's comedic expressions. There were not five, but six members of the Rude Five; musicians who are well-versed in the art of versatility. Switching instruments as easily as they blinked, they were ready to play whatever musical signature was called for.
Some of the new music from Costello's Spike LP was played in a downright carnival mood.
"Let Him Dangle" showed Costello's lighter side, and "God's Comic" was crystalized with a hilarious poke at cable-television moguls. Singing "I wish you loved me when I was alive, I was a funny fella," he described God as sitting in heaven on a giant turquoise waterbed, watching a giant fur-covered television. Drinking a "mystery cola" with one hand, switching channels with the other, lamenting colorized movies and rock stars selling candy bars, Costello's God waved the cable moguls to one side of heaven, to join the divorce lawyers, TV evangelists and CIA drug-dealers. This group would be used for medical experiments because, as Costello put it, "There's some things rats just won't do."
The show was billed as "Elvis Costello — Solo and with his Band," maybe because of Costello's extensive solo touring earlier in the year. This way, there was no question about which version of Costello's live show was in town.
He did take time out for some excellent acoustic renditions, and the short solo segment was fueled by the artist's gutsy voice.
His guitar-playing was little more than background noise for the rarely heard "Radio Sweetheart," the new "Tramp the Dirt Down" — in which Costello's singing hit top form — and a pairing of "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" and "Girls Talk" that returned the song list to more familiar territory.
At one point, Costello and his crew couldn't get his electric guitar to work. It turned out to be a bonus for the audience, which was treated to his crooning the ballad "Poisoned Rose."
For "Mystery Dance," the band took a turn into the past, sounding more like a band playing a '50s sock hop than an '80s cutting-edge concert.
It was all in fun, and expressed most notably by Pete Thomas' wipeout drumming.
The three encores were filled with some of Costello's bigger hits. "Man Out of Time," "Alison," and his latest hit, "Veronica," took care of the first encore, bringing an uplifting pace to the show.
The obscurity of Spike's "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" unfolded into a slick production of "Watching the Detectives," complete with a spy-music undertow, for the second encore. And Costello ended the third encore with the brisk anthem, "Pump It Up," taking the show to a heart-stopping finish.
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