Elvis Costello - 1979-02-27 Dallas (JEMS)
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Elvis Costello And The Attractions Convention Center Theater Dallas, TX 27 February 1979 01. Accidents Will Happen 02. Goon Squad 03. Oliver's Army 04. Less Than Zero 05. (I Don't Want To Go) Chelsea 06. Green Shirt 07. Big Tears 08. Hand In hand 09. Two Little Hitlers 10. The Beat 11. Big Boys 12. Lipstick Vogue 13. Watching The Detectives 14. Pump It Up 15. You Belong To Me Elvis Costello - vocals, guitar Steve Nieve - keyboards Bruce Thomas - keyboards Pete Thomas - drums JEMS 1st Gen Reseed. Original lineage: Transfer: JVC HR-S9911U > PreSonus FireStudio Project > Adobe Audition 3.0 > Trader's Little Helper 2.7.0 Generation: ANA(M) > VHS(1) > WAV [96kHz/24bit] > FLAC [Level 8] Length: 59:44 Transferred By: Mike Ziegler PLEASE DO NOT SELL OR ENCODE TO MP3 40 years on ................. and a rather splendid sounding audience recording from the JEMS archive which compensates for the gap between the West Coast shows in California from San Diego and two in Arizona. There was also a three day gap between the show in Phoenix and the first of two consecutive nights in Austin, Texas followed by a Houston show before this gem (JEM ?!) The concert begins, like 9 months earlier in Hollywood High School with Accidents Will Happen but in this case, the song is a full band version rather than the melodramatic ( and imho) highly effective Costello/Nieve version before the band launch into the more usual opener of Goon Squad. To re-enforce the reality of being in Dallas, Elvis sings the Dallas version of Less Than Zero with changed lyrics as "jenny talks about a house outside the U.S.A. This is followed by a lovely version of Chelsea with some surprisingly decent Elvis guitar playing and much less of his rather more usual atonal playing. Green Shirt follows this with a very long intro and the quality of this recording is brought home with a great mix on Big Tears where bass and guitar fuse superbly. There is no historical evidence of any issues that the band and entourage may have had in Dallas but Elvis dedicates The Beat to "the friendly welcome we got here in Dallas" and the song is marred by the bass sounding a little flat towards the end of the song. Lipstick Vogue gives Pete a spotlight and the light and shade in his playing is very evident in the drum patterns in the instrumental section and again gives a good indication of the quality of the recording. There is a break in Detectives where Elvis sings "I wonder who is it" and then Elvis exhorts the audience to "not give up now" at the start of Pump It Up and then quotes Red Riding Hood's grandmother (or the wolf) by saying "all the better to see you" which I'm guessing is either referring to the light shining on the audience or to his big glasses. Any ideas? The P.A. switches on the backing track after this but the audience calls out doggedly for an encore and they're rewarded with a stomping version of You Belong To Me , a most unusual set closer. My recording came from a long ago trade but lacked the last song so this is taken from the JEMS source, many thanks to Erik for sending it to me and to Mike who first upped this. It needed no interference from me for either volume or pitch adjustment and I've just split the tracks which include a long period before Accidents starts with the P.A. and the complete audience applause with the P.A. before the last song.
