Last Saturday night we traveled to Reno to see Elvis Costello and the first night of his Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour. First a bit of history: about twenty-five years ago Elvis toured with a big spinning wheel with names of songs on it. We saw that tour but it was a l-o-n-g time ago. And now, all these years later, he is doing a short tour again with a new, huge, updated wheel. The photo on the right gives you an idea of the size of the wheel. He gets people from the audience to come up and spin the wheel. Then he and the band play the song that is chosen by the wheel spin. Meanwhile, the audience member(s) get to relax with a beverage in some chairs on stage, or also have the option of dancing in the metal go-go cage at the left side of the stage. Yep, big fun!
To start, Elvis and his band, The Imposters, came out and played a few songs, starting with a rocking "I Hope You're Happy Now," "Mystery Dance," and "Radio, Radio." What a great 1-2-3 punch, and they were just getting started! It was time to pull the first couple of people out of the audience and let them spin the wheel. Elvis was joking around with them and hamming it up as he was talking about the wheel and it was all quite a hoot, in the best sense of the word. Anyway, you get the idea. It continued on like this for about two hours total.
When the main set ended, the crowd was roaring for an encore. Which of course happened. The complete setlist is below, and included two Beatles songs also.
BTW, I have more crappy cell phone pix and maybe even some crappy cell phone video, which I may try to post soon too. All in good time.
The songs, with a few comments by me…
|