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The pre-announced setlist for Night One indicated that the evening would be devoted to pre-1978 material — songs from his debut album, My Aim Is True, and a few others that were recorded later or eventually came out as bonus tracks on various CD reissues. Additionally, there would be a few covers of other people's songs that were an early influence on him, including three presumably late-breaking additions due to the unfortunate news of the day (more on that in a second).
For the casual Costello concert-goer, an alert: there is a chance this could be the only appearance of "Alison" at any of these shows. One of my first Costello bootleg cassettes was of a 1984 show in Los Angeles that was rendered nearly unlistenable by an audience member yelling, "Ali-sonnnnnn!" throughout the entire event, and then screaming her head off during the whole song when he finally played it. Of course, I could be wrong and perhaps it will turn up again in the Gramercy encores on other nights. Anything is possible, especially if that woman from L.A. 1984 is in attendance.
The excitement surrounding opening night was tempered by the sad news that Burt Bacharach had passed away the day before at the age of 94. His decades-long songwriting partnership with Costello (about to be celebrated with the release of a deluxe box set, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, out March 3) has produced some of the most emotionally riveting songs of either man's entire career, earning the duo a Grammy in 1998 for their song "I Still Have That Other Girl." The collaboration was again featured on Costello's Grammy-winning Look Now in 2018, with a trio of songs intended for Broadway that have yet to make it there (their long-in-development stage adaption of Painted From Memory and a hoped-for Austin Powers musical are a cautionary message to aspiring playwrights that even the involvement of two legendary songwriters is no guarantee that you will make it past workshops and on to out-of-town previews).
Costello performed "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" on the Live Stiffs tour in 1977, at precisely the moment when it might've been dismissed as "easy listening" by the crowds in attendance, expecting songs of "revenge & guilt" like "Lipstick Vogue" and "No Action." The juxtaposition between that Bacharach/Hal David number and tunes from the freshly-recorded This Year's Model showed that there wasn't much daylight between "Baby, if your new love ever turns you down / Come back, I will be around" and "I think about the way things used to be / Knowing you're with him is driving me crazy."
Elvis paid tribute to Burt multiple times Thursday evening, delivering heartfelt renditions of "Baby It's You," "Anyone Who Had A Heart," and "Please Stay" while promising that future nights would include selections from the Bacharach/Costello canon once Steve Nieve arrives from France to join him on piano.
But the mood of the evening wasn't somber — it was celebratory, even if Costello occasionally referenced the possibility that a few of these songs might conceivably be making their last appearance in concert. Starting out with the first two tracks from his debut album, the singer appeared to be in fine fettle, immediately establishing a rapport with the crowd as he informed us, mid-anecdote, that this show wasn't Springsteen on Broadway. The intimate, occasionally conversational vibe of the evening made the comparison feel apt – when Costello was explaining the way certain songs influenced his writing (as when he played Van Morrison's "Domino" back-to-back with the early version of "Living in Paradise") or crediting/blaming Randy Newman's influence for his darkly comic "Wave a White Flag," it almost felt confessional, as if he was sharing a secret with the audience.
His performance of "Stranger in the House" felt more vulnerable than I've ever heard him sing it before, and he somehow made "Sneaky Feelings" feel like a brand new song. In fact, the primary energy of the night wasn't of a songwriter dusting off his early catalog for a trip down memory lane. To hear him urgently tear into the rarely played "I'm Not Angry," it was clear that he was re-connecting with these songs in the present moment, and finding new reasons to sing them again.
As someone who is always longing for deep cuts and rarities to pop up in a setlist, the effect was overwhelming, with "pre-professional" songs like "Imagination (Is a Powerful Deceiver)" or Clover's "Mr. Moon" appearing just minutes apart from album tracks like "No Dancing," none of which I ever anticipated I would hear live. At one point, Costello name-dropped the song "The Night Before Larry Was Stretched," an 18th century Irish execution ballad that he has covered on a record but never before played in concert. He laughed as he said it, but for a brief moment, it felt like there was a non-zero chance it could actually happen, as the song would certainly fit the night's theme of having been written prior to 1977.
Friday night's pre-announced 10 songs range from 1981's Trust to 2009's Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, and consist mostly of things I've never heard him play live. If there's a theme connecting them, I haven't been able to crack it, but I'm certain that all will be revealed when Costello returns to the Gramercy stage for Night Two…
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