Elvis Costello - 1981-01-04 Vancouver

<<   1981-01-04 Vancouver

Elvis Costello And The Attractions
University Of British Columbia, War Memorial Gym
Vancouver, BC, Canada
4 January 1981


01. Shot With His Own Gun - EC & Steve Nieve
02. Beaten To The Punch
03. Luxembourg
04. B Movie
05. You'll Never Be A Man
06. Love For Tender
07. New Lace Sleeves
08. Lovers Walk
09. Black And White World
10. He's Got You
11. Temptation
12. Big Tears
13. The Imposter
14. Clubland
15. I've Been Born Again - King Horse
16. Secondary Modern
17. High Fidelity
18. From A Whisper To A Scream
19. Big Sister's Clothes
20. Oliver's Army (part)

Missing:
21. Watching The Detectives
22. I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
23. Pump It Up


Elvis Costello - vocals, guitar
Steve Nieve - keyboards
Bruce Thomas - bass
Pete Thomas - drums


Recorder: Unknown
Lineage: Unknown

Comments by area51GM:

40 years on..................................

Elvis Costello returns to the United States for the first time since the spring of 1979 and judging by the audience reactions in the first few dates of this tour, he is received rapturously and unconditionally. I feel that there must have been some sort of "Road To Damascus" moment between the end of 1980 and this gig since there is a radical change in the way the concerts on this tour are formatted. Apart from being significantly longer in most cases, there is also a much stronger emphasis on the pace and tone of the sets so that there is more of a contrast in speed and nuance and there is little of the headlong rush through the songs heard on all the previous tours. Although this tour starts off with a date in Canada - the only one until a return to the other side of the country late in the tour, Elvis chooses to play with hardly any references to anything pre 1979 from his repertoire and this seems similar to the tour of Scandinavia in November 1980 and in the first 20 songs, only "Big Tears" and "Oliver's Army" predate "Get Happy!!" and "Trust". In fact for the whole of the main set, only these two songs would have been heard before in any sort of live context except maybe "High Fidelity" and "Temptation" though both of these were played in very different arrangements on the U.S. tour of 1979 with "Temptation” actually being called by a different name at that time ("Idle Hands"). It seems like either an act of incredible confidence in his new material or a deliberate act to distance himself from the "revenge and guilt" persona that the audience might have expected from him.

During the main set, we get a change in pace with a cover of Patsy Cline's "(S)He's Got You" and the version of "The Imposter" is less frenetic than the version heard for example at the Concert For Kampuchea from December 1979. Steve also plays a funny little riff in "King Horse".

My recording of this concert came from a trade in the mid-1980s and is incomplete and ends with an abrupt cut in "Oliver's Army" and it lacks the final three songs, "Watching The Detectives", "I Can't Stand Up" and "Pump It Up". If anyone does have this, I'd love to hear from you! I've been pleasantly surprised by the increase in the quality of the recordings so far from this U.S. and Canada tour compared to some of the 1979 recordings for the most part and this is certainly very listenable. Many thanks to all those who recorded so many of this tour and then kindly shared the results of their labours with us and to the hero who traded this particular show with me way back then.

Lineage: Unknown source > TDK SA 90 cassette > Nakamichi DR3 > NAD 660 CD Recorder > EAC > TLH > Nero 9 for track separation and pitch checking > TLH > FLAC > you