Stanford Daily, May 4, 1984

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Elvis Costello live


Tim Grieve

Waiting in line upstairs at Tresidder on a Sunday morning two months ago, I thought to myself, "This had better be good."

I'd rolled myself out of bed early to be one of the first callers on the charge-by-phone ticket line. But all the lines were busy, so I pulled on a dirty pair of jeans and dashed for Tresidder. An hour later, I was back in bed, tickets in the desk, but not really knowing what I'd got.

"Elvis Costello in a solo concert," the tickets said. Hmm. Elvis on the road without the Attractions was a strange thought. That Elvis' most recent album was nine months old made it stranger still.

With no album to plug, Elvis had little reason to tour. But there it was on the ticket. "Elvis Costello in a solo concert."

I didn't know what to expect then. And Saturday night as we sat down inside the Warfield Theatre, I still didn't know what to expect.

I couldn't have expected what I got.

Sure, anybody could have anticipated a fine show, the kind Elvis Costello always puts on. But not this kind of show.

It was strange from the beginning. T Bone Burnett, a favorite of musicians like Pete Townshend and Elvis Costello and not much of anybody else, walked on stage as the opening act. Faking a Jerry Lee Lewis piano jam and snapping his fingers through an a capella version of Roger Miller's "King of the Road," T Bone prepared the audience for a strange night before moving on to his own material.

After bows to Elvis Presley, Spam and Motel 6, T Bone left the stage and, moments later, Elvis appeared.

Dressed in a blue polyester suit and a psychedelic rayon shirt, Elvis strummed an acoustic guitar tentatively before breaking into "Accidents Will Happen."

Accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, Elvis sang more clearly than in his last tour, where he competed with the Attractions, the T.K.O. Horns and Afrodiziak, two female backup singers.

And, more than ever before, Elvis showed a a sense of humor. Looking back at a dozen guitars waiting on stage for his use, Elvis introduced his "very special guest, Elvis Costello and his guitar army. Actually, Blue Oyster Cult will be on a little later."

And when fans in the balcony started to snap their fingers to "Green Shirt," Elvis admonished them with four loud attacks on the strings of his Telecaster.

Later, he deadpanned his way through a cover of The Specials' "Your Girlfriend is What I Like Best About You."

As his second of four encores, Elvis performed a country and western set with T Bone Burnett. The pair, calling themselves the Cowers, strummed and sang their way through a half dozen country tunes, looking not unlike Buck Owens and Roy Rogers on Hee Haw.

Burnett then explained the current controversy over the city's official song and began singing the introduction to "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" before the duo broke into their own proposal, the 1960s classic "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in your Hair)."

But when it came to Elvis' own songs, he captured every bit of emotion the songs have to offer, all made more pure by his solitary figure, strumming a guitar or fingering his grand or electric piano.

"Motel Matches," "Everyday I Write the Book," "Alison," "Man Called Uncle," and many others played solo were somehow more gripping than the full-accompaniment versions, but "Mystery Dance," "Mouth Almighty" and other beat-conscious tunes lost their punch.

Elvis introduced a number of new songs, probably for his follow-up album to last summer's Punch the Clock. With only simple accompaniment, it's hard to tell what sort of musical direction Elvis will take now — he's already done rock 'n' roll, Motown, pseudo-classical, piano bar and country-western albums — but the content of the songs is more political than his more personal previous efforts.

Tied to "Shipbuilding," a tragic story of a shipbuilder's son who is killed in one of his father's ships, the new political songs made for an emotional — albeit not surprising — peace statement from Elvis, whose previous sorrows have usually fallen in the out-of-love man range.

But Elvis wasn't out of love at the Warfield Saturday night. The crowd called him back for four encores and begged for a fifth. As the house lights came on the fans left happy, knowing they'd seen yet another side of the complicated Elvis Costello, but still not sure what to expect next.

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The Stanford Daily, May 4, 1984


Tim Grieve reviews Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett, Saturday, April 28, 1984, Warfield Theatre, San Francisco.

Images

1984-05-04 Stanford Daily page 09 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.

Page scan.
1984-05-04 Stanford Daily page 09.jpg

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