|
The billing of Saturday night's show at the Mann Music Center, "Elvis Costello: Solo and With the Rude 5," was a bit misleading. The implication was that a decent percentage of the evening would offer Costello alone, as on his tour of colleges earlier this spring. Yet the British musician performed only four numbers by himself, halfway through the set.
Then again, the "Rude 5" appellation was itself misleading. The full name of the backing group became the Rude 5 Plus 1, stemming from the late addition of Steve Soles to the original quintet of musicians assembled for the tour. Whatever the name, they certainly offered Costello the most versatile backing of his career.
The standard setup for most of the performance consisted of extra guitars, keyboards, bass, drum and percussion. To this, the musicians added trombone, tuba, baritone horn, vibraphone, even electronic drums.
Using the extra instruments in a variety of arrangements, nothing seemed forced or done simply for effect. Aside from a few nods to his first recordings from the late-'70s, Costello had the band concentrating on material from his last three albums, material that demands a more adaptable setting.
Yet at times the overall impact was somewhat less than satisfactory. Costello's strength has always been his songwriting, and for years he has sought escape from what he calls "the tyranny of the beat." In the recording studio, this has made his music increasingly tidy, not always to great effect.
So it was a little surprising when a thundering and dense sound mix blunted all subtleties. The elegant bass figure that opens "Brilliant Mistake" on record, for instance, went unheard in the noisome mixture.
Of course, being rough around the edges onstage is a Costello habit from his earliest performances, and he worked at avoiding a show biz veneer whenever possible. At times, Costello toyed with his audience and their assumptions of intimacy with him. Encouraging a singalong during "Radio Sweetheart," he patiently led the audience in an echoing of the chorus.
He then suddenly switched gears and began singing part of Van Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)." Stepping to the side of the microphone, Costello waited for the crowd to join him in the unfamiliar words. When only a handful of audience members chimed in, he pretended to be befuddled, even a mite upset.
The centerpiece of the set was "God's Comic," a typically off-kilter piece about a funny man meeting his maker. During a freewheeling rap, Costello spoke of a God who spends his free time flipping channels on cable TV, and who is horrified to discover one night that Jailhouse Rock has now been colorized. Threatening unspeakable acts, the Lord wondered, "Don't they know Elvis Presley is always in color?"
Costello then set his sights squarely at the rock 'n' roll audience, including his own. His God mused that maybe there were those people who didn't really mind the existence of starving and tortured people in the world, as it enables the privileged to wave their arms about in a football stadium as a means of solving the problem. Since Costello knows full well that his cult reputation has attracted many hipper-than-thou hypocrites, the blast hit its mark, stunning the more self-righteous in the crowd.
He managed all this while many sang along to the words, "Now I'm dead, now I'm dead / And I'm going on, to meet my reward." The result, needless to say, went beyond the normal boundaries of entertainment. With the horns tooting behind his impassioned, offbeat monologue, Costello sounded like some sidewalk preacher delivering a quirky and very personal perspective on the universe.
Earlier this year, Elvis Costello stated that his goal was to become an all-around entertainer; he even put on clown makeup for the cover of Spike. Yet this is the type of humor that, like Groucho Marx before him, would want no part of any club that would have him as a member.
At times, that club would seem to include the entire human race. But Costello has not reached a point where his alienation offers unrelieved despair as the only alternative. Such an attitude thankfully remains beyond him, as the Mann Music Center show proved again.
| 
