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Hur! Hur! Hur! Tings are not what they seem here at the Hope, this hot, Day of Action summer dusk. Here's your NMN Rossi clone all set to suck up the reportedly-unconventional pleasures of one The Blurt on the recommendation of sundry associates. And here he be in the Hope's ground floor bar, sipping his Screwdriver like a good boy and his mince pies can't help but notice more than the usual quota of famous faces in the here and now — a Glen Matlock here, a Graham Parker there, several Name Artist managers and so forth — hardly local talent, most of them.
An economically fleshed barmaid friend spills the haricots: The Blurt will not be appearing. "You're here for Factory Act, I suppose." Knowing wink or equivalent.
"What else is there? I mean... (When in doubt, play dummy, as my Mama-San used to say.)
A very tall, skimpily-whiskered guitarist, a post-adolescent Milky Bar Kid on the bass; a sharply-planed, trim percussion man. Factory Act are a quartet. Mister Number Four wears a red jacket. His glasses are on the large side of XL. Their first song concerns problems of equilibrium.
Big on fibs I'm not, short on smarts quite likely. Nevertheless it's more than plain for everyone concerned that what we have here is a manifestation usually known as Elvis Costello & The Attractions. More or less: keyboardist Steve Naive's slot's temporarily filled by that able Daddy Longlegs, The Rumour's Martin Belmont.
Shortly prior to the starting gun, EC's manager had explained the situation: with Naive still in the U.S. following his tooth-skin escape in a car collision, Belmont was helping the group make their noises. What was previewed was something akin to the old-style Allman Brothers band guitar jamborees could well be the predominant characteristic of the night's music, a twenty minute "Waiting For The End Of The World." Appetising? Hmmm.
In fact, what followed over the next hour plus was anything but a second cousin twice removed of Live At The Fillmore; I recollect stumbling into an excited record store owner some twelve numbers in, and him gurgling "This is like 'Greatest Hits' and more!" The glow was entirely mutual.
Not having seen Costello since his Dominion Theatre season of Christmas '78, and not having seen him in such intimate circumstances in a good three years, this was a revelatory evening. The man's vocal control is remarkable, while his guitarmanship (the prodigious talents of Martin Belmont staying for the most part under wraps, him taking a primarily rhythmic, fill-in role in the proceedings) was frequently breathtaking. Most surprising of all though was his self-evident comfort on stage — Costello swapping repartee with the kids down front, allowing himself a more than occasional grin, being first and foremost a musician. This was warming stuff — the absence of cultivated sneers, the disappearance of the kind of orchestrated movement that playing large halls inevitably brings (or, more likely, demands; only exaggerated gestures count, as Lou Reed's pointed out more than once).
So here's EC, currently getting the maximum U.S. accolade of a verbose brown-nose lead review in Rolling Stone, (And in NMN I see — Non-Toadying Ed.) playing his balls off to a maximum of two hundred people in a little London cellar. And doing it in a kingly manner, no argument.
The EC songbook got a more than thorough thumbing: "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down" (a cover, yes, but Costello's own for all that), "The Beat," "You Belong To Me," "Lipstick Vogue," "High Fidelity" you name it, and Factory Act more than likely did it proud. But the marathon wasn't entirely composed of familiar laurels: the Soul '66 bent for Get Happy!! was followed through with a superb re-run of Marvin Gaye's "One More Heartache," what might have been a re-write of "Green Onions" re-titled (or at least hooked) "Help Me," and the Temps' "Don't Look Back." The country side of Elvis C wasn't neglected either; Ry Cooder may well have put the respectability stamp on the Jim Reeves chestnut "He'll Have To Go," but Costello's version was both refreshingly different and highly viable in its own right. This was doubly true for his excellent re-arrangement of another of the mandolin king's re-vibes, "Little Sister."
The absence of Steve Naive was obvious, of course. But what matters is that this current ensemble did itself more than proud, substituting the usual aggregation's keyboard flourishes for additional guitar energy, Costello infusing his playing with more than an occasional nod in the vintage Townshend direction. As to the grouping's ease with the material to hand, there was no doubt — plenty of segues, not a wrong start, finish or fill in the house.
Four encores, buckets of sweat, and talent by the ton.
And they did "Watching The Detectives," and "Chelsea," and "Pump It Up," and... Drat! Sometimes I wish I was a video camera.
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