|
A girl in the 12th row on the floor at Madison Square Garden last Saturday night wondered if the hairy man onstage was really Elvis Costello.
"I heard it wasn't him. Is it him?" she asked a fellow in the row ahead of her.
"Nah," he said with a smirk on his face, "I think it's one of the guys from ZZ Top."
Over the course of his 15-year career, Elvis Costello has changed, and grown and grown and grown and grown. He has a huge body of work from which to choose, a freedom that is both a burden and a blessing. He can be as nostalgic and as obscure as he wants to be. He started off a two-hour performance with a taped snippet of a gospel service, came onstage in dark glasses, red Doc Martens and a conservative olive suit, and — without a word — launched into "Accidents Will Happen" from 1979's Armed Forces, teasing his capacity audience before settling into an hour of slow, somber new and unfamiliar material.
Costello, 37, is less a rocker than a stylist. Through the entire middle of the show, he and the Rude 5 — bassist Jerry Scheff, guitarist Marc Ribot, keyboardist Larry Knechtel and on drums, the former Attraction Pete Thomas — seemed like a lounge act out of time. lots of brushed drums, an upright bass (used only on one song) decorating the stage, a three-minute song stretched out into a seven-minute opus, intent musicians swaying in a wash of muted blue or purple light. The majority of the crowd — apparently fans of the later records, getting more excited over "Veronica" from '89's Spike than "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" from his 1977 debut My Aim Is True — were happy to sit quietly, respectfully while Costello fairly crooned ballad after ballad.
In the last couple of years, Costello's voice has changed as much as his appearance. With shoulder-length hair combed and wavy and a full beard that fans out around his face, he looks like a rabbi or a wildebeest: with a voice that has come down out of his nose and deep into his throat, he's abandoned the venom that used to underscore his sarcastic lyrics and replaced it with a rich emotionality that carries new songs like "So Like Candy" (a Paul McCartney collaboration off the latest release, Mighty Like a Rose) and causes couples to embrace warmly during the tragic "Alison."
On stage Costello is in total control: turning Mose Allison's "Everybody's Crying Mercy But They Don't Know the Meaning of the Word" into comment on recent war; mocking his medium with ridiculously dated rock gestures, a guitar yank here and an exhausted stumble there; warning "watch out all you music lovers out there, I'm gonna play the piano," before performing two songs on an instrument he can't really play; appearing to have absolutely no relationship with his band; apparently not able to move below the chest until the second encore when he reappeared — sweating and ponytailed — to tear up the stage on "Pump It Up," proving he can still rock, leaving the crowd finally on its feet.
Bookending the show with some of his definitive older songs, sprinkling mid-period material like "I Want You" and "Suit of Lights" throughout, he gave die-hard fans what they wanted but left a lot of room to please himself. He treated "God's Comic" from the last album with the reverence fit for classic literature, explaining the story of a drunkard getting a scolding from God who is appalled at what mankind has done with the opportunity He bequeathed, asking, "What have you got now but some colorized Humphrey Bogart pictures and a couple of Michael Bolton records?"
Once so contemptuous of his own following and so easily irritated he'd abort a concert 15 minutes in, Elvis Costello is so happy now he smiles sometimes; at the show's end, he actually blew kisses to his fans.
* * *
At precisely 8 p.m., the Replacements — a rock 'n' roll quartet from Minneapolis — took the stage. They played a loose 45-minute set with mistakes, laughter and inter-band banter as if they were playing a high school gymnasium. Paul Westerberg sang and played guitar with passionate sobriety; Tommy Stinson, wearing his bass down by his knees, clowned with unstudied rock swagger; Slim Dunlap seemed entranced by his own guitar; and new drummer Steve Foley banged away like anything but the straight-arrow he appears.
On their last two LPs Don't Tell a Soul and All Shook Down the Replacements have grown markedly acoustic; on stage they still crank the amps. From the despondent "Swinging Party" from 1985's Tim to the crowd-pleasing "When It Began" off the latest album, the Replacements played as a cohesive unit, deflating rumors of the band's imminent demise. For their encore, they switched instruments — Westerberg on drums, Stinson on guitar and singing lead — and turned "Hootenanny" into a riotous jam.
|
