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Some people think rock 'n' roll is best when done by six guitarists in color-coordinated outfits backed up by a 20-voice choir, enough electronic gear to put a man on the moon and a team of accountants to count the money.
Elvis Costello has other ideas.
Mostly you just need Elvis, and, as 3,000 fans found out at a $1 get-acquainted concert in Seattle's Paramount Northwest theatre Friday night, that is quite enough.
Let us forget the hated word "punk.' Elvis Costello is an elemental performer well-schooled in the British tradition of machine gun rock 'n' roll. His voice comes from somewhere on the dark side of Randy (Short People) Newman and his music is firmly grounded in the vicinity of early Dave Clark Five, Animals, Them and America's Electric Prunes, troublemakers all.
He plays guitar and sings about rejection, jealousy, frustration, humiliation, rage, hate and, occasionally, third-rate romance. The same darn things that 24-year-olds have been singing about for years.
Doesn't sound so frightening, does it?
What is almost frightening is Costello s single-minded determination to entertain in his own desperate way.
The best story I know about him is how he got his job Did it by picketing the CBS Records international convention in London last summer. Every day for 11 days, there was Elvis, rummage sale suit, portable electric guitar and all, saying "sign me, sign me."
They did. For their troubles, the money-changers at CBS got My Aim Is True, the only one of all the albums lumped under the New Wave/Punk label to rack up impressive sales in North America (60 on the Billboard album chart and still climbing.)
A lot has to do with the fact that Elvis Costello looks and acts exactly like a new rock 'n' roll star must:
Give them something different. Which is why there is no light show, a dinky drum kit, a lone guitarist accompanying, and a raw, wailing organ that would shame a high-school band for simplicity.
Give them something exciting to focus on. And there is this Buddy Holly lookalike, standing pigeon-toed at stage centre, moaning and howling, burning, burning, all eyes on him.
Give them a mystery. So we are not told that until last summer Elvis Costello was Declan MacManus, a computer operator and son of a British dance band singer from the 1940s.
Keep your distance from them. He does not talk to the audience, seldom in fact, acknowledges their presence.
Make them part of a happening. The crowd, which loved him, had to work harder than any I've ever seen to get one mean encore. When half the house had filed out in disgust, Costello strode out amid the loose wiring and packing cases for a final electrifying fling, and that of course left them screaming for more.
Entertain, never explain.
They'll remember him.
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