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On February 28, 1978, Elvis Costello was 23 years old and convinced of his own magnificence. His second album — but crucially, his first with the Attractions, the three musicians with whom he'd make his most celebrated records — the furious, paranoid, Aftermath-styled This Year's Model, would be released the following week, and would top the Village Voice and Rolling Stone critics' polls at year's end. At the close of his first U.S. tour, only two months earlier, he'd been thrown out of 30 Rock for aborting his Saturday Night Live performance of "Less Than Zero" mid-song to play the broadcast-industry indictment "Radio, Radio" instead, a stunt that got him banned from SNL for 11 years. (He was invited back decades later to recreate the moment with the Beastie Boys.)
Stepping onstage at the Warner Theatre for his first Washington, D.C. gig, aired on the radio radio by WHFS, the once-and-future Declan Patrick MacManus was full of ambition, swagger, impatience, and, probably, amphetamines. Opening with the apocalyptic stomp of "Pump It Up" and winding things down with the simmering "Chemistry Class" an hour later, the feral, compressed, too-clever-to-be punk rock he conjured up that night solidified his fan base in our nation's capitol, even though he'd soon start doing everything he could to sabotage his growing popularity and acclaim.
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