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Sign of the times: Mud Island Amphitheater opened its 1994 season Wednesday night with something new — a multi-generational alternative-rock show.
The crowd of 4,058 ranged from preteens drawn by Crash Test Dummies' MTV video, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm," to middle-aged New Wave survivors who came to see the other Elvis reunited with his old band, the Attractions.
But Elvis Costello was no nostalgia act.
Costello and his superb band keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Steve Thomas — hit the stage running, ripping into "No Action" as if it were 1978 all over again.
Costello, whose real name is Declan MacManus, first came on the scene shortly after the Sex Pistols had self-destructed. Channeling punk rock's rage into bitterly articulate songs, he emerged as New Wave's premier songwriter.
But after breaking up the Attractions in 1986, he seemed to lose direction, dabbling in Irish folk music, writing songs with Paul McCartney and even collaborating with a string quartet.
But he's at his best with the Attractions, as their reunion album, Brutal Youth, showed.
They were even better live. With little banter between songs, Costello led the group through a few dozen items from his prodigious songbook. New songs like "Pony Street," "My Science Fiction Twin" and "Kinder Murder" alternated with such classics as "Less Than Zero," "Watching the Detectives" and "Radio, Radio."
There aren't many songwriters who would dare mix material so freely, but Costello's new stuff sounded just as good as his old.
To keep the pace from getting too relentless, Costello would occasionally turn his trademark Fender Jazzmaster loose for an acoustic Gibson, singing a few slower songs, the best of which was the ballad "Too Soon to Know," a song that echoed the epic heartbreak of Roy Orbison.
Crash Test Dummies opened the show with considerably less edge, but just as much brains. Brad Roberts led his five-member band through 45 minutes of his cleverly musing tunes. Opening with "God Shuffled His Feet," the title track of the Canadian band's second album, Roberts turned his rich, almost spooky baritone to just about every song on the disc, earning the biggest hand for the Dummies' current hit, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm."
Roberts joked that the chorus had originally been made entirely of expletives, but that since the Dummies are a family-oriented band, he changed it to "Mmm mmm mmm mmm."
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