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Perhaps some day 20 years from now the world will be deluged with a brand new breed of Elvis imitators, scrawny kids in horned rimmed glasses playing Fender guitars and singing "Less Than Zero," "Radio, Radio" and "Mystery Dance."
For like his namesake, Elvis Costello has an inherent sense of rock 'n' roll and the ability to condense vibrant rock music into songs less than three minutes long. He also has the uncanny knack of being able to speak to a generation on its own terms and in a language that forces the people of this generation to listen.
Costello finally gave Dallas one of those performances his fans here have only read about — a concert that was alive, urgent and pulsating. In his last appearance here, at a local club, Costello came across as another example of media hype, a performer who had conned a lot of people into giving him undeserved great notices.
Costello's concert Friday night had that same sense of immediacy, the same feeling of electricity, that generated Presley's early performances. And, like Presley, Costello left his audience wanting more, much more.
His show was short — 40 minutes to be exact — with no encore. He finally returned to a stage that night, but it was a couple of hours and 12 miles away from the one he left at the Dallas Convention Center Theater.
Costello's opening numbers Friday night, "Mystery Dance," "Pump It Up" and "This Year's Girl" was rock 'n' roll at its best and most demanding. The show fell off slightly after this, however, although the sixth song of his 14-song set (imagine a rock star of the 1970s being able to cram 14 songs into a 40-minute concert set), "Blame It on Cain," ranked alongside anything to be heard on a rock concert stage.
A new song, "Brighton Girl," displayed some of Costello's limitations is his singing range, although it was still a powerful number, and his live version of "Lipstick Vogue" showed an amazing lack of direction for so single-minded an artist. "Vogue" sequed into a nice version of "Watching the Detectives" although he granted his band a little too much leeway on this number. Costello's backup trio adds a lot of excitement to the artist's songs, but they lack the ability to venture too far afield as soloists.
The lighting for Costello's show was sample, but effective. No spots, just floodlights were employed, and Costello was bathed in one color while his band was shrouded in another. And when an instrumental break occurred during a song, Costello could just step back and become the same color as the band, i.e. a part of the band and not its star. The most dramatic example of this came during "Detectives," when Costello was bathed in bright red while the band was covered in green.
Later that evening, Costello showed another, heretofore unknown, side of his musical abilities at the Old Warehouse, joining Delbert McClinton and his band. The first two songs Costello played seemed right out of the basic Elvis Costello Songbook, but then McClinton led the band through a version of the blues song, "Rebecca." When it came time to take an instrumental break, McClinton nodded in Costello's direction and Elvis took off on a wonderful guitar solo. It wasn't brilliant, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a marvelous display of the man's hidden talents.
(Costello talked about his guitar abilities, his lighting, his approach to music and life on the road in the United States in an exclusive interview early Saturday morning at the Warehouse and that interview will appear Sunday in The News.)
Nick Lowe, who produced both of Costello's albums, opened Friday night's concert also displaying a fine rock 'n' roll sense. Ironically, this band also opened the last Bad Company concert in Dallas, but on that show Dave Edmunds was fronting the group and Lowe simply played bass. This time Edmunds played guitar and sang three fine numbers, "I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll," "Down, Down, Down" and "Falling in Love Again."
Lowe was particularly good on "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" and "Love So Fine."
Mink DeVille played between Lowe and Costello. Unfortunately, a prior commitment forced me to miss DeVille's set, but I hope to see this act again in another week.
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