|
Sometimes people get funny ideas.
Elvis Costello got it into his head to perform a solo tour, without his excellent backing band, and single-handedly brave the crowds that a few years ago he had chased out of the theatres after his shows by blaring white noise through the public address system.
Said crowds fell into the curious behavior of snapping up the tickets for this tour as if they were ducats for the Second Coming, and then received Costello with a mixture of idoltry and indulgence that would have embarrassed the angel Gabriel.
This reviewer, in the face of the deliriously happy crowds and the glowing reviews of the concert (notably The Daily, May 4), chooses to lay his credibility upon the line and attempt to explain why he hated nearly every second of the show and left the theater feeling cheated, betrayed, and, most of all, severely disappointed by Costello's "wonderful" show.
One could try to blame it all on high expectations — being in such an intimate setting with him one would expect to get to "know" him, and that prospect, especially because he himself had spent such great time and effort building up his aura of mystery, seemed tremendously promising.
That wasn't the problem; actually, Elvis did provide insight into his character and his songs — once. One of his songs, "Man Called Uncle," has always been difficult to fathom. The lines of the song, for the most part, hold up of themselves, but the overall theme of the song escaped me.
Before beginning the song, the second in his set, he announced that this was a song set in a singles bar, with a man alone, "staring into his drink, thinking of his wife, of his kids ... and of the 'Man Called Uncle.' " That may not seem like a lot, but it makes a world of difference in the understanding of the song.
But there wasn't any more of that in the show. Instead we were exposed to moments of attempted self-parody that slid into a mockery, to an infection of hilarity from the audience that sapped the serious songs of their impact, and, above all, a rather heartless show that showcased Costello's considerable talent while completely obscuring his spirit and inspiration.
Granting that his maturity has allowed him to distance himself from his former stances, knowledge of his previous ridiculous behavior has allowed him to inject some humor into his stage act. That is a stage in the development of an artist. Because of the quirky mood of the audience, Elvis took a huge leap on to the path of becoming a clown.
There was something wrong — although it would he fairer to say different — about the audience at the show. Perhaps because it was a solo recital, there was an older crowd than usual, and one that didn't seem like they were there to attend a rock concert, least of all an Elvis Costello show.
It is possible that the acts started the silliness first. T-Bone Burnett, opening, proved himself to be little more than a buffoon, starting by pantomiming piano playing along with a tape recording, a bit of schtick that was old when Steve Martin was exploiting it years ago. Then he proceeds to do a novelty Roger Miller cover, and then launch into a series of droning originals, interspaced with politically proper, trendy witticisms.
The crowd loved him. I had heard he was chased from the stage in New York — he seemed honestly surprised by his reception here — and I am yet unable to say what they saw in his act.
The crowd was otherwise eccentric. As Elvis began each song, as soon as the tune was recognizable the audience would break into simpering cooing and a brief smatter of applause. Such behavior may be appropriate at the Simon and Garfunkel reunion, but is out of place with rock's latest Angry Young Man.
Furthermore, they reacted out of scale to anything Elvis said or did. He came to the microphone to introduce a song, and the gang of sycophants met his words with a roar of laughter. Elvis, puzzled, asked "What's so funny about 'Here's a song?' " Nothing, obviously, but the audience was willing to believe that there was.
Worse, the audience was more interested in reacting to what Elvis did than in listening to what he sang. Any trademark gesture or nervous twitch brought on a gale of laughter, something that Elvis came to play upon. Worst of all, there was committed the unpardonable sin of the cult of Costello: A large part of the audience laughed during "Alison."
The crowd was more interested in its affairs and its interaction with the show than the act that was on stage. This seems to lay a large portion of blame upon the audience, but. frankly, given the performance Elvis delivered that night, I really couldn't blame the crowd for losing interest.
Half the problem was just the difficulty in carrying off a one-man show. Elvis is not a virtuoso guitarist, and many of his songs sounded instrumentally alike due to his technique of accompanying himself mainly by simply fretting the triad of the chord and thrumming the bass notes.
The major complaint, the real source of my discontent, lies in the fact that I did not get to see Elvis Costello that night. Instead of the last Angry Young Man, we saw band leader Ross McManus' son, having his night in the spotlights with his arrangements of certain pop new-wave tunes.
Elvis consistently sang unwieldy hybrid versions of his songs, throttled by the inadequacy of solo performance and subverted and diminished by the good-times atmosphere that robbed the songs of their emotional depth. As a younger man, he had said that "songs can be so powerful — people have forgotten that," but that night he turned his back on the power and worked on the shine of the polish, the merest superficiality of the emotions he had once tapped.
That's not to say that the show had no high points. On piano, Elvis delivered moving versions of "Just a Memory" and "High Fidelity," and, despite the indifference of the crowd, he carried out an extended finale on "Alison."
Arguably the highest point came after Elvis had played some highly forgettable material on an electric piano, mugging furiously as he did so. When the laughter and the cheers reached him he seemed to make a decision, and he pounded his fist on the piano as he left to perform a powerful version of "Riot Act," the one example of the passion of live performance lifting a song above its normal level that the show had to provide.
When Elvis brought out Burnett for an encore, and they introduced themselves as Hank and Harry, the Coward Brothers, the evening hit rock bottom. Some feeble country tunes and some equally feeble guitar figures brought the usual inexplicable explosion of enthusiasm from the crowd. At this point I felt I was sure that I wasn't watching Elvis Costello but rather some tawdry sociological phenomenon.
There was so very little of the power and the depth that I had associated with Elvis in that show. On the drive to the concert my friend told me that the night before he had seen old footage of him, from the days of his first album, and he noted he looked angry and like he had a lot to prove to someone. That night's show sprang from something else entirely.
Elvis had once said he understood only two emotions, guilt and the desire for vengeance. Now he sings songs of sorrow and self-pity — but under sorrow lies guilt and beneath self-pity is the anger of having been wronged that leads to vengeance. Perhaps not much has changed, or perhaps everything has.
When I first began listening to Elvis Costello I was going through hard times, my teenage years, and his songs touched me with an eloquence and purity unlike anything I had ever heard or seen. Now, hard times having become almost chronic, I came to his show expecting the catharsis of days past and am treated to buffoonery and Elvis affectionately chiding his audience like some elderly schoolmarm.
Elvis has matured. Those past days he was angry and an almost elemental force, but I doubt that he was very happy. Now he may very well be as happy as his stage persona that night suggested, and I have no right to begrudge him that happiness. But...
Joe Jackson has grown up, and writes fragile songs of mellowed uncertainty. Paul Weller has abandoned youthful righteousness for a sort of premature pragmatic optimism. Almost all the other bright lights of the movement to "revolutionize" music have sold out or, similarly, given up a fight they know to be unwinnable. Elvis was almost the only one left. Was.
Now he's an entertainer, a happy man with his first hit single under his belt. He still bubbles over with ideas and cleverness — a few of the new songs seemed very good and will, benefit from studio treatment — but the fire in him seems to have gone out.
It's a terrible thing to be the last one of your "crowd" to leave adolescence and abandon the moral force of the righteous young, but I'm just not yet able to move on. Perhaps that's how I'm behind the times, and maybe that's why I hated a show many others seemed to love.
Yet, the incandescent power and purity of those emotions still attract me. and Graham Parker remains a fellow raging voice. He and I shall continue our crusades for as long as we can. for as long as we need to. and I will keep my well-worn copies of My Aim is True and This Year's Model close at hand, and I shall keep my tarnished image of the young Elvis Costello foremost in my mind.
| 
