"I'd much rather any day go and see NRBQ playing than any of our illustrious punk bands in England," Elvis Costello told an interviewer.
Tonight (April 7) the choice is tougher; between the greatest rock and roll band on wheels: NRBQ at the RPI McNeil Room, and pop's most arrestingly quirky solo performer: Elvis Costello at the Palace.
Elvis Costello has released 10 albums since his last visit to the Palace a decade ago on his second U.S. tour. He's known as much for the often abrasive confidence with which he attacks new styles as for the fluent melodies he creates. And he reaches back to both the marching bands of New Orleans and the string-band music of his newly chosen homeland in Ireland for the settings of his new songs on Spike (Warner Bros.) — several co-written with Paul McCartney, who plays some bass. too.
Members of his longtime group the Attractions also appear on several tunes, but Costello is performing as a soloist.
"I'm broke," he told an interviewer recently. "I'm going on the road solo 'cause I can't afford to put a band together."
Economics aside, Costello is an experienced soloist, having earned his first record deal by storming into Stiff Records' chief Jake Rivera's London office with his guitar in 1976 and launching both a song and a career.
And in 1984, after Goodbye Cruel World — his rant against show business conventions — Costello and producer, pal T-Bone Burnett toured as a duo, the Coward Brothers.
He once told an interviewer, "A song that was a real song could be played on the piano or guitar and didn't need a symphonic production extravaganza to make it live."
And he's also said that, "The grand hysterical gesture goes over a lot better live."
Opener Nick Lowe produced several Costello albums, and began an up-and-down solo career with the brilliant Pure Pop for Now People (Columbia) about the time Elvis was getting started He also played the old JB Scott's with a terrific band recruited from veterans of his pub-rock outfits Brinsley Schanz and the legendary Rockpile.
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