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Elvis Costello and the Attractions hit Derby last Saturday with all the venom and excitement that the advance publicity of his Armed Forces tour had promised.
The Assembly Rooms sell-out audience was primed when the first act of the evening took the stage — a Manchester poet who goes under the collective heading of John Cooper Clarke.
Clarke has many of the assets of Costello when it comes to delivering a lyric. His poems are economical, breathless and witty, being performed more as tuneless songs than ordinary modern poems.
He is not content to sit and wax lyrical, but prefers instead to jump up and down behind a microphone and deliver his words between mouthfuls of chewing gum. Perhaps the highlight of his set was a colourful character assassination of an erstwhile companion.
The support group were a New York band, aptly named Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Throughout their act the sound was atrocious and so many of his tuneful comments went unheard.
And so to the main course: Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
Elvis is something of an enigma in today's world of bronzed and beautiful pop performers.
He hasn't the style and purchased sophistication of Rod Stewart nor the raw street appeal of the Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldof, instead he is the bespectacled nine-stone weakling, perpetually with sand in his face.
He is the loser even in his songs, an oft-quoted line of his being "I said 'I'm so happy I could die,' she said 'drop dead' then left with another guy."
But his defeat comes over not with disgraceful acceptance but as a cacophony of memorable lyrics, classic tunes and reggae-like beats.
The combined forces of Elvis and the Attractions sprinted on to the stage at around 9.10 and went straight into "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes" and from then on the pace was frantic with scarce a break between numbers.
By far the main bulk of the material was lifted from his second album and included such titles as "You Belong To Me," "Pump It Up," "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea," one notable exception being the ballad from his first album, "Alison."
Despite efforts by the heavies to keep everybody seated, when the band launched into "Lipstick Vogue" the crowd in the stalls seemed to rise as one and from then onwards the Assembly Rooms became a seething mass of bodies convulsing in time to the unquestionable talents of Elvis Costello.
The Attractions presented an uncharacteristic encore which comprised Elvis's first commercially successful single "Watching the Detectives," and his most recent offering, "Radio, Radio."
And so the Armed Forces have moved on. Much has been said of Elvis Costello recently, a common shout being "the second Dylan" and certainly his success in America would add some credibility to this claim.
However, perhaps the most telling comment remains among the publicity debris from his first album. "The King is Dead," it proclaimed, "Long live the King."
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