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A City Auditorium Music Hall audience stomped and applauded Elvis in concert Tuesday.
Not Presley, who has been dead five years this month. It was Costello, the bespectacled British songwriter who broke onto the rock music scene in 1977 with a scowl, talent and a driving beat.
By the time he made it to Omaha — which he greeted with a "So this is what Omaha is about!" — he was already heavily in transition into becoming one of the finest pop writers and crooners of his generation.
The debut here of Costello, the former Declan MacManus, was marked by a familiar silhouette. The dark secondhand shirt and suit, oversized guitar, knock-kneed stance, abruptly short hair and large horn-rimmed glasses were not much changed from the image on his first album, although he may have filled out a bit.
Many of the favorite old songs were there, too: kicking off with a speeded-up "Accidents Will Happen" and including "Green Shirt" and "You Belong to Me," with all the fire and punch of the original versions.
But there were also more smiles than frowns from the singer, and he relied less and less on his guitar.
By the close of the show, during a powerful reading of the slow-burning "Clowntime Is Over," he stood alone with his microphone away from the guitar and the mic stand, pouring his soul into his incredibly strengthened singing voice.
Costello came 82 tickets short of selling out the 2,602-seat hall, and the youthful crowd was full of new wavers weaned on E.C. classics like "Pump It Up."
Primed for a big show, they broke into the orchestra pit during "Watching the Detectives" to dance close to the stage (not without some violent resistance from the security force in an incident that didn't go unnoticed from the stage).
But Costello's appeal is so strong that even the most hyperactive, spiky-haired rebel was swaying back and forth to poignant love songs like "Alison" or any number of the strong numbers from the new album Imperial Bedroom, which was featured prominently.
Costello, who eschewed in concert the country-western songs he has recently experimented with, intended to "take out the beat" from his new record and put attention on the lyrics. In concert, he even shushed drummer Pete Thomas during "And in Every Home."
But mostly, the strong stage attack by the excellent three-member Attractions brought extra intensity to such new songs as "The Long Honeymoon" and "Kid About It."
He was aware of the mix, too, and smartly blended new song "Pidgin English" into an old favorite, "Hand in Hand." Another astute blending put a verse of the O'Jays' great "Back Stabbers" before his own "King Horse."
By the end, in a stunning four-song set that served as the single encore, he had completely won over the audience with his heartfelt singing, crowned with his lovely "Almost Blue," a song that deserves to be a standard of the decade as oft-recorded as the Beatles' "Yesterday."
Even more amazingly, he seemed to have accomplished turning a whole crowd of hearty revelers into appreciaters of smoky ballads that their parents might enjoy — all in one night.
Opening act Sussman Lawrence, a five-member band from Minneapolis led by Peter Himmelman, showed talent but not yet a distinct style in its short, professional set. Mostly, it benefited from the management of Schon Productions, which not coincidentally also promoted the concert.
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