http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... 9231c.html
New York Daily News
Ageless Elvis is king at Beacon
By TYLER GRAY
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
After almost 30 years of making records, Elvis, it seems, is far from dead - Elvis Costello, that is.
To the crowd at the Beacon Theater on the upper West Side last night, Costello was king. He and his band, the Imposters, treated fans to a roller-coaster set that inspired more standing and sitting than a Baptist sermon.
Apart from a few yells at stray fans who stood when the pack collectively agreed to sit, the loyal crowd seemed thrilled to be part of the intimate performance.
"We must have seen him 20 or 30 times - all in New York," said Marc Knispel, a 44-year-old computer programmer. His wife, Judi, 41, pointed out that the crowd, like Costello, seemed to be aging. "Even we feel young here," she said.
There was a recognizable face or two in the house, too. Actor Robert Wuhl, best known as the star of the HBO series "Arli$$," was eagerly awaiting the show in the lobby with other fans.
"I won't cheapen the real fans by putting myself in their category," Wuhl said. "I'm minor league. I'm double-A compared to them."
In his grand tradition of collaboration (with the likes of Burt Bacharach, T-Bone Burnett and Paul McCartney), Costello himself introduced a familiar face, legendary blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, and the two shared the stage for a song.
Costello touched on his hits, including "Radio Radio" and "Watching the Detectives." The title track to his latest album, "The Delivery Man," came off as sweet and endearing, although he belted it out in his signature vocal style, sliding up to nail the notes.
Costello seemed pleased with the crowd's response, too. He launched into a story about the days before he played ornate theaters like the Beacon. Instead, he holed up at a place called the Lonely Hearts Club, he said. "Everybody who goes to a Lonely Hearts Club is incredibly shy, and they didn't clap."
The audience erupted - as they did in bursts all night - in a round of cheers.
Originally published on April 23, 2005
' Ageless Elvis is king at Beacon' , NY
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stormwarning
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- Location: Manhattan
These are the songs I remember, but I'm sure they're not in the correct order.
Welcome To the Working Week
Uncomplicated
Clown Strike
Radio Radio
Country Darkness
Bedlam
Needle Time
Either Side of The Same Town
Chelsea
Clubland
Our Little Angel
Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down
Poisoned Rose
Kinder Murder
In The Darkest Place
When I was Cruel No.2
Detectives
The Delivery Man
Mystery Dance
Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do
Monkey To Man
Pump It Up
Hidden Charms -- with Hubert Sumlin
Mystery Train
You Really Got A Hold On Me (standalone, not in the middle of DDTM)
Heart of The City
Scarlet Tide (hushed silence for the off-mic verse)
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Mug for the first time before the show, and Pip and Miss BA for the second time. Sadly only Pip and I could make it to the show. Thanks for the beer Pip !
Welcome To the Working Week
Uncomplicated
Clown Strike
Radio Radio
Country Darkness
Bedlam
Needle Time
Either Side of The Same Town
Chelsea
Clubland
Our Little Angel
Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down
Poisoned Rose
Kinder Murder
In The Darkest Place
When I was Cruel No.2
Detectives
The Delivery Man
Mystery Dance
Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do
Monkey To Man
Pump It Up
Hidden Charms -- with Hubert Sumlin
Mystery Train
You Really Got A Hold On Me (standalone, not in the middle of DDTM)
Heart of The City
Scarlet Tide (hushed silence for the off-mic verse)
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Mug for the first time before the show, and Pip and Miss BA for the second time. Sadly only Pip and I could make it to the show. Thanks for the beer Pip !
Where's North from 'ere?
It was my pleasure, Mr. Warning! I guess we must have missed Robert Wuhl. Who did we decide we saw? The new pope ... and ... Laura Dern from 10 years in the future?
If he did any other songs I cant think of them. Highlights for me were The Poisoned Rose, Hidden Charms (with Elvis singing into the guitar pick ups) and You Really Got A Hold On Me ...
If he did any other songs I cant think of them. Highlights for me were The Poisoned Rose, Hidden Charms (with Elvis singing into the guitar pick ups) and You Really Got A Hold On Me ...
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miss buenos aires
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- Contact:
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Who Shot Sam?
- Posts: 7097
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Poisoned Rose was ace. That was the highlight for me. Country Darkness and The Delivery Man were also quite good, and Chelsea was the best I've ever heard it.pip_52 wrote:If he did any other songs I cant think of them. Highlights for me were The Poisoned Rose, Hidden Charms (with Elvis singing into the guitar pick ups) and You Really Got A Hold On Me ...
Mother, Moose-Hunter, Maverick
John O reports to listserv -
A great show, I can now understand the reports, the shows are better
than
the set lists indicate. The NYC crowd was VERY into it, standing for
most of
the show. Too many greatest hits, but lots of gems, too. Elvis voice
was
very strong, chatted a bit. It seems that his membership in Encores
Anonymous has him now abstaining instead of binging.
Highlights - Hubert Sumlin playing guitar one on track - Hidden
Charms!!
What a novel pleasure to go to an EC concert and see a real guitarist!!
Also
- Next Time 'Round, In the Darkest Place, The Poisoned Rose and by far
the
highlight of the night, a rip-shit-up version of Nick's Heart of the
City.
Here's the list, more later:
setlist, Elvis Costello & the Imposters,
Beacon Theater New York 4.22.05:
1 Waiting For the End of the World
2 Uncomplicated
3 Clown Strike
4 Radio, Radio
5 Country Darkness
6 Bedlam
7 Needle Time-really vamping
8 Next time round!!!
9 Either Side of the Same Town
10 (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
11 Clubland/I Feel Pretty
12 Our Little Angel w/story
13 Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
14 The Poisoned Rose-wow!
15 Kinder Murder
16 In the Darkest Place!!!!!!!!
17 When I Was Cruel No. 2
18 Watching the Detectives
19 The Delivery Man
20 Monkey to Man
***Hubert Sumlin Arrives***
21 Hidden Charms!!! EC sings into pickup
***Hubert leaves***
22 Mystery Dance
23 Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do
24 Pump it Up
25 Mystery Train
26 You Really got a Hold on Me
27 (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding
28 Heart of the City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
29 The Scarlet Tide
Peace,
John O
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to John on the radio -
Salvage & Recovery Radio
Every Monday Night 8 to 10 pm EST
WUSB 90.1 FM, Stony Brook, LI, NY
http://www.wusb.org - johno@wusb.fm
Listen online @
dialup stream: http://stream.wusb.stonybrook.edu:8080/listen.pls
broadband stream: http://stream.wusb.stonybrook.edu:8090/listen.pls
A great show, I can now understand the reports, the shows are better
than
the set lists indicate. The NYC crowd was VERY into it, standing for
most of
the show. Too many greatest hits, but lots of gems, too. Elvis voice
was
very strong, chatted a bit. It seems that his membership in Encores
Anonymous has him now abstaining instead of binging.
Highlights - Hubert Sumlin playing guitar one on track - Hidden
Charms!!
What a novel pleasure to go to an EC concert and see a real guitarist!!
Also
- Next Time 'Round, In the Darkest Place, The Poisoned Rose and by far
the
highlight of the night, a rip-shit-up version of Nick's Heart of the
City.
Here's the list, more later:
setlist, Elvis Costello & the Imposters,
Beacon Theater New York 4.22.05:
1 Waiting For the End of the World
2 Uncomplicated
3 Clown Strike
4 Radio, Radio
5 Country Darkness
6 Bedlam
7 Needle Time-really vamping
8 Next time round!!!
9 Either Side of the Same Town
10 (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
11 Clubland/I Feel Pretty
12 Our Little Angel w/story
13 Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
14 The Poisoned Rose-wow!
15 Kinder Murder
16 In the Darkest Place!!!!!!!!
17 When I Was Cruel No. 2
18 Watching the Detectives
19 The Delivery Man
20 Monkey to Man
***Hubert Sumlin Arrives***
21 Hidden Charms!!! EC sings into pickup
***Hubert leaves***
22 Mystery Dance
23 Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do
24 Pump it Up
25 Mystery Train
26 You Really got a Hold on Me
27 (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding
28 Heart of the City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
29 The Scarlet Tide
Peace,
John O
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to John on the radio -
Salvage & Recovery Radio
Every Monday Night 8 to 10 pm EST
WUSB 90.1 FM, Stony Brook, LI, NY
http://www.wusb.org - johno@wusb.fm
Listen online @
dialup stream: http://stream.wusb.stonybrook.edu:8080/listen.pls
broadband stream: http://stream.wusb.stonybrook.edu:8090/listen.pls
Glad you made it in...and how do you know it wasn't the actual Laura Dern of today -- make up, movie lighting, and, now, CGI can work wonders!pip_52 wrote:It was my pleasure, Mr. Warning! I guess we must have missed Robert Wuhl. Who did we decide we saw? The new pope ... and ... Laura Dern from 10 years in the future?
If he did any other songs I cant think of them. Highlights for me were The Poisoned Rose, Hidden Charms (with Elvis singing into the guitar pick ups) and You Really Got A Hold On Me ...
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
Pip -- Glad you made it in!...And how do you know it wasn't the actual Laura Dern of today -- make up, movie lighting, and, now, CGI can work wonders!pip_52 wrote:It was my pleasure, Mr. Warning! I guess we must have missed Robert Wuhl. Who did we decide we saw? The new pope ... and ... Laura Dern from 10 years in the future?
If he did any other songs I cant think of them. Highlights for me were The Poisoned Rose, Hidden Charms (with Elvis singing into the guitar pick ups) and You Really Got A Hold On Me ...
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/24/162716.php
Concert Review: Elvis Costello & The Imposters at the Beacon Theater
by Lisa McKay
Elvis was in the building Friday night, and the sold-out crowd at the Beacon Theater was eager to see him. Costello, nattily attired in a three-piece suit and accompanied by the Imposters, was clearly just as happy to be there when he took the stage at 9:00 and opened his two-hour set with a rousing “Welcome To The Working Week”.
The show was opened earlier by young Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche, who sang several appealing tunes, accompanying himself with some very fine guitar playing. His comfortable stage presence, even in the face of the few boors who needed to reaffirm for him that they were there to see Elvis, endeared him to the rest of the audience. He ought to be heard from in these parts more often, and after Friday night, he likely will be.
Given Costello’s long (and still flourishing) career and his own omnivorous tastes, a setlist for any show is always interesting, and not something you’d want to bet the farm on beforehand. This evening’s was no exception, and while the current tour (entitled The Monkey Speaks His Mind) is in support of his most recent release, The Delivery Man, the two-hour show had Costello dipping deep into his own musical past and included some really well-done covers that Elvis has stamped indelibly with his own musical sensibilities. His onstage performances are invested with so much energy and so much engagement with his material that even his oldest songs sound fresh and immediate. While his fans don’t always appreciate the musical detours his career has taken, it’s impossible to question his dedication to his work and his determination to give his audience their money’s worth. Both he and the Imposters worked hard and were in fine form throughout the evening.
Not surprisingly, the packed house was enthusiastic in its embrace of such crowd-pleasers as “Watching The Detectives”, “Radio, Radio”, “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” and “Pump It Up”, and there were some nice surprises in the form of “Mystery Dance”, “Kinder Murder” and “Clown Strike”. While Costello has never been known as a guitar virtuoso, his playing skills have really developed over the years and were displayed to good advantage during a long version of “Clubland”, which was one of the highlights of the show for me. The newer material was nice to hear in live performance and the tracks I like the best off the album were good here, particularly “Bedlam”, accentuated by Pete Thomas’s frenetic drumming, “Needle Time” and “Monkey To Man”, in which Costello invited the rest of us to sing along.
About two-thirds of the way into the show, Costello introduced blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who accompanied him on “Hidden Charms”, a song once recorded by blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, with whom Sumlin played for many years (and which was covered by Costello on Kojak Variety), and featured a little bit of a playful Elvis singing into his guitar pickups.
Costello had cancelled a show because of illness a couple of weeks ago, and towards the end of the evening, his voice was showing signs of hoarseness, made more visible by his idiosyncratic vocal delivery, but he held on through a rousing finish that included an impassioned version of Smokey Robinson’s “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” (which Costello frequently pairs with his own “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” but which stood on its own this evening), “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” and Nick Lowe’s “Heart Of The City”. He has taken to closing shows on this tour with “The Scarlet Tide”, a lovely ballad that he wrote for the soundtrack of the film, Cold Mountain, and which is also the closing track on The Delivery Man. He sings the last verse off-mic, a stillness falling over the audience for the first time all evening.
The monkey will continue to speak his mind throughout much of the summer – if you manage to catch a show, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Concert Review: Elvis Costello & The Imposters at the Beacon Theater
by Lisa McKay
Elvis was in the building Friday night, and the sold-out crowd at the Beacon Theater was eager to see him. Costello, nattily attired in a three-piece suit and accompanied by the Imposters, was clearly just as happy to be there when he took the stage at 9:00 and opened his two-hour set with a rousing “Welcome To The Working Week”.
The show was opened earlier by young Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche, who sang several appealing tunes, accompanying himself with some very fine guitar playing. His comfortable stage presence, even in the face of the few boors who needed to reaffirm for him that they were there to see Elvis, endeared him to the rest of the audience. He ought to be heard from in these parts more often, and after Friday night, he likely will be.
Given Costello’s long (and still flourishing) career and his own omnivorous tastes, a setlist for any show is always interesting, and not something you’d want to bet the farm on beforehand. This evening’s was no exception, and while the current tour (entitled The Monkey Speaks His Mind) is in support of his most recent release, The Delivery Man, the two-hour show had Costello dipping deep into his own musical past and included some really well-done covers that Elvis has stamped indelibly with his own musical sensibilities. His onstage performances are invested with so much energy and so much engagement with his material that even his oldest songs sound fresh and immediate. While his fans don’t always appreciate the musical detours his career has taken, it’s impossible to question his dedication to his work and his determination to give his audience their money’s worth. Both he and the Imposters worked hard and were in fine form throughout the evening.
Not surprisingly, the packed house was enthusiastic in its embrace of such crowd-pleasers as “Watching The Detectives”, “Radio, Radio”, “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” and “Pump It Up”, and there were some nice surprises in the form of “Mystery Dance”, “Kinder Murder” and “Clown Strike”. While Costello has never been known as a guitar virtuoso, his playing skills have really developed over the years and were displayed to good advantage during a long version of “Clubland”, which was one of the highlights of the show for me. The newer material was nice to hear in live performance and the tracks I like the best off the album were good here, particularly “Bedlam”, accentuated by Pete Thomas’s frenetic drumming, “Needle Time” and “Monkey To Man”, in which Costello invited the rest of us to sing along.
About two-thirds of the way into the show, Costello introduced blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who accompanied him on “Hidden Charms”, a song once recorded by blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, with whom Sumlin played for many years (and which was covered by Costello on Kojak Variety), and featured a little bit of a playful Elvis singing into his guitar pickups.
Costello had cancelled a show because of illness a couple of weeks ago, and towards the end of the evening, his voice was showing signs of hoarseness, made more visible by his idiosyncratic vocal delivery, but he held on through a rousing finish that included an impassioned version of Smokey Robinson’s “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” (which Costello frequently pairs with his own “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” but which stood on its own this evening), “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” and Nick Lowe’s “Heart Of The City”. He has taken to closing shows on this tour with “The Scarlet Tide”, a lovely ballad that he wrote for the soundtrack of the film, Cold Mountain, and which is also the closing track on The Delivery Man. He sings the last verse off-mic, a stillness falling over the audience for the first time all evening.
The monkey will continue to speak his mind throughout much of the summer – if you manage to catch a show, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
-
Distorted Angel
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- Contact:
Imagine my surprise
Thanks for picking up my review off of Blogcritics (I'm Lisa). As you might imagine, I was pretty surprised to see it here. I've been lurking on this board just about forever, and believe it or not, this is my first post. So, hi!
-
selfmademug
Still can't believe I missed this, dammit. Poisoned Rose! A top tenner for me. A stellar setlist-- Waiting for the End... must have been a fantastic opener.
Well, it was lovely enough to see Ms.s Pip and BA again, to say nothing of meeting the deservedly famed Stormwarning. Roll on, July!!
BTW, does anyone know if the Beacon still sells standing room tix downstairs?
Well, it was lovely enough to see Ms.s Pip and BA again, to say nothing of meeting the deservedly famed Stormwarning. Roll on, July!!
BTW, does anyone know if the Beacon still sells standing room tix downstairs?
-
Who Shot Sam?
- Posts: 7097
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:05 pm
- Location: Somewhere in the distance
- Contact:
That setlist is incorrect. First tune was "Welcome To The Working Week", not "Waiting For The End Of The World". I remember thinking it was a strange choice for a Friday night. Other than that, looks about right.johnfoyle wrote:Here's the list, more later:
setlist, Elvis Costello & the Imposters,
Beacon Theater New York 4.22.05:
1 Waiting For the End of the World
2 Uncomplicated
3 Clown Strike
4 Radio, Radio
5 Country Darkness
6 Bedlam
7 Needle Time-really vamping
8 Next time round!!!
9 Either Side of the Same Town
10 (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
11 Clubland/I Feel Pretty
12 Our Little Angel w/story
13 Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
14 The Poisoned Rose-wow!
15 Kinder Murder
16 In the Darkest Place!!!!!!!!
17 When I Was Cruel No. 2
18 Watching the Detectives
19 The Delivery Man
20 Monkey to Man
***Hubert Sumlin Arrives***
21 Hidden Charms!!! EC sings into pickup
***Hubert leaves***
22 Mystery Dance
23 Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do
24 Pump it Up
25 Mystery Train
26 You Really got a Hold on Me
27 (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding
28 Heart of the City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
29 The Scarlet Tide
Mother, Moose-Hunter, Maverick
-
bambooneedle
- Posts: 4533
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:02 pm
- Location: a few thousand miles south east of Zanzibar
Wow, what a show!
As EC has been doing on this tour, there were no intermissions or encores. The pace was relentless; the show ROCKED!
The sound, while not perfect, was much better than previous Beacon shows I've seen him do. He barely stopped to talk -- just a few comments before Our LIttle Angel and Monkey to Man.
I thought the Imposters' version of "In the Darkest Place" was another highlight no one else has mentioned in this thread.
He left the stage by saying "It's good to be home. See you in July at Summerstage with Emmy Lou." Pretty good advertisement, as the crowd was riled up and tickets went on sale at noon the next day.
By the way, the image of the setlist above is interesting because it includes a bunch of songs that weren't played, including "Rocking Horse Road" and "Suit of Lights."
As EC has been doing on this tour, there were no intermissions or encores. The pace was relentless; the show ROCKED!
The sound, while not perfect, was much better than previous Beacon shows I've seen him do. He barely stopped to talk -- just a few comments before Our LIttle Angel and Monkey to Man.
I thought the Imposters' version of "In the Darkest Place" was another highlight no one else has mentioned in this thread.
He left the stage by saying "It's good to be home. See you in July at Summerstage with Emmy Lou." Pretty good advertisement, as the crowd was riled up and tickets went on sale at noon the next day.
By the way, the image of the setlist above is interesting because it includes a bunch of songs that weren't played, including "Rocking Horse Road" and "Suit of Lights."
//I can't forgive you for things you haven't done yet
Re: Imagine my surprise
Welcome, DA. Please post away! Sounds like this was another great show. I'm going to see him at Jazzfest on Saturday, and I'm hoping for a good custom set. Dirty Dozen or Allen Toussaint guest appearances perhaps?Distorted Angel wrote:Thanks for picking up my review off of Blogcritics (I'm Lisa). As you might imagine, I was pretty surprised to see it here. I've been lurking on this board just about forever, and believe it or not, this is my first post. So, hi!
-
selfmademug
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/art ... index.html
Feature
Overheard: What the Audience Really Thought about Elvis Costello
David Lewis52, Sales
He played “Pump It Up” hotter than I’ve seen in his whole career, which I’ve followed since 1978.
Emily Winner23, Marketing
We were just thinking how sad it is that a bunch of 60-year-olds are outlasting us. It’s hard to get a bunch of old white people in a seated theater moving.
Alyssa zeller23, Fashion Designer
There was a touch of merengue, which got me going.
Jim Johnstone32, Human Resources
He has a great voice—but it was shit sound where we were sitting in the balcony.
Jessica Duers35, Teacher
Bone-chilling. “Clubland,” “Watching the Detectives,” unbelievable. Elvis’s voice was pure silk.
Chris Duers39, Computer Programmer
Seeing [guest blues performer] Hubert Sumlin was like getting pretty close to the crossroads. Or as close as a white guy from Connecticut can get.
Beacon Theatre, April 22, 8 PM
Feature
Overheard: What the Audience Really Thought about Elvis Costello
David Lewis52, Sales
He played “Pump It Up” hotter than I’ve seen in his whole career, which I’ve followed since 1978.
Emily Winner23, Marketing
We were just thinking how sad it is that a bunch of 60-year-olds are outlasting us. It’s hard to get a bunch of old white people in a seated theater moving.
Alyssa zeller23, Fashion Designer
There was a touch of merengue, which got me going.
Jim Johnstone32, Human Resources
He has a great voice—but it was shit sound where we were sitting in the balcony.
Jessica Duers35, Teacher
Bone-chilling. “Clubland,” “Watching the Detectives,” unbelievable. Elvis’s voice was pure silk.
Chris Duers39, Computer Programmer
Seeing [guest blues performer] Hubert Sumlin was like getting pretty close to the crossroads. Or as close as a white guy from Connecticut can get.
Beacon Theatre, April 22, 8 PM
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sec ... cleId=9820
Listening to The Monkey
On stage and on disc, Elvis Costello is still The Man. And The Monkey.
By Devin McKinney
Web Exclusive: 06.03.05
"Deep down in the jungle where the coconuts grow / There's a signifying monkey that the WORLD should know … ”
-- "The Signifying Monkey" (Willie Dixon)
It was already humid inside the Beacon Theater when Elvis Costello and his backing band The Imposters took the stage on an April night to play the single New York show on their recent tour schedule. By the end of the two-hour performance, the building was a virtual tropic zone, the seats were vibrating, and the crowd had gotten funky in more ways than one.
The star came out wearing a Stetson, a black suit, and cowboy boots covered with tiny mirrors -- a country gentleman with a touch of glam. The Imposters -- keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas, bassist Davey Faragher -- were their usual modest, uncostumed selves. The show started with "Welcome to the Working Week," the first song on Costello's first album, 1977's My Aim is True, and ended with "The Scarlet Tide," the final track from his most recent, 2004's The Delivery Man. If the show was not quite the choreographed career retrospective those bookends might imply, it ranged widely enough to remind one of the many shapes and shades this trickiest of pop stars has taken on: his adrenalized peaks and alcoholic valleys, all the times he has put his audience to sleep, all the times he has taken its head off.
My Aim is True was the first LP I laid down money for, and to a middle-class kid in 1977, $11 was no passing amount. Costello had been featured in Newsweek and elsewhere, and his look was transfixing: oversize glasses, ill-fitting suit, misshapen Fender Jazzmaster guitar -- everything about him looked awkward and miscalculated. His songwriting, though, went right to the point, and My Aim is True was heralded as a New Wave testament, first strike of the young punk genius. To me the album sounded pinched, fussy, and irritating, a series of little tantrums. I never grew to like it -- but I never got rid of it.
This Year's Model came next, then the unbelievable Armed Forces; as Costello's tantrums got bigger, they got better. Until one night in March 1979, that is, when he got drunk at a Columbus, Ohio, motor lodge and made a racist slur about Ray Charles. Without warning, the fledgling star was embattled, and a real career was under way. He'd known love, and now he would know hate. He'd asked his listeners for an extreme response, and now he got it -- for the wrong reasons. Few artists have ever gotten themselves in such a horrible, life- and career-staining mess. But instead of finishing him, the mess fed him. Whatever turmoil he went through personally (apparently it was extensive), Costello kept growing as an artist, and the music kept coming.
Over the next 20-odd years there were soul albums and country albums and hodgepodge albums and return-to-rock albums, along with voluminous collaborations, guest appearances, soundtrack cameos, and anomalous one-shots. Some of these were brilliant and some were boring and some were neither. But in the best of Costello's music, the warmth grew deeper while the anger got sharper.
Appearing in 1985 to modest acclaim and meager sales, King of America -- rereleased last month by Rhino as the final installment in its five-year-long series of Costello reissues -- marked one of those junctures in an artist's career when emotional walls come down and the floor falls away from all you thought the artist had to give. Suddenly Costello's voice was graver, more haunted and thoughtful; his lyrics captured love and pity along with malice and outrage, as if his eyes were now seeing into people, not just through them. Both carnivorously angry ("Little Palaces," a punk-folk broadside against Margaret Thatcher's slums, doubtless influenced by Costello's then-recent work with the furious Irish band The Pogues) and dreamlike in its passages of empathy and remorse ("American Without Tears," "Sleep of the Just"), King of America revealed an artist in full -- one who'd learned sadness through success, who’d seen compassion through contempt, and who now knew that life was long.
Halfway through the Beacon Theater show, Costello brought out a surprise guest, introducing him with great portent as "the man who brought it all together." There was a ripple of high expectation: Could it be Bob Dylan, who everyone knew was scheduled for a five-night engagement at the Beacon a few days later? No, it was better than that: Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's lead guitarist, the wicked fretboard magician whose rhythms and solos filled the great Chicago blues singer's definitive records of the ’50s and ’60s ("Killing Floor," "Wang Dang Doodle," "Goin' Down Slow") with white sparks and knife points and city heat.
Sumlin, who will be 74 this year, came out for one song -- "Hidden Charms," a Wolf tune Costello recorded in 1992 for his Kojak Variety album. An immaculate gray suit draped over his bony frame, Sumlin resembled an elegant old spider creeping around his corner of the stage. But when he took his solo, he ripped and funked the song like a young hotshot, and age was a mere earthly veil.
Whereupon Costello, creeping toward Sumlin, shouted his vocal into the face of his own guitar, using its electronic pickups as microphones and producing a hollow, cheesy, sci-fi resonance. Lord, what a strange little scene! For these moments, the stuffy but expansive Beacon was a sweat-dripping Arkansas roadhouse, circa 1953 -- or 2053. And in a flash I saw Elvis Costello many years from now, in his twilight, looking as Hubert Sumlin looks now: a hunched little glasses-wearing bluesman, creeping away from the spotlight as he weaves funk from amplified steel, at once carrying a tradition and twirling it like an old keychain.
That tradition, as Costello sequenced it this night, encompassed a passionate delivery of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" -- Smokey Robinson by way of the Beatles -- and a version of "Mystery Train" that I can categorically say was the hardest and loudest ever heard by anyone, anytime, anywhere. It also encompassed Costello's knowledge that his own early recordings have themselves entered the tradition, that young bands like The Hives and The Strokes continue to recycle the sound of "(What's So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" even if they can't get anywhere near its feeling; and that the "five little fingers" climax of "Watching the Detectives" is as immortal a moment of rock ’n’ roll stop-time as the Coasters' "Yakety yak -- don't talk back" or David Bowie's "Awwwwwwwwwhambamthankyoumam!"
In a sense, Costello is the tradition. He switches regularly and easily from the punk's snotty stance to the codger's throaty nostalgia, from absurd to deadly serious, from country to rock to soul to classical -- all without ever effacing his identity or telegraphing his next move. Which is to say he preserves an active sense of perversity and surprise to complicate the respect and affection he's earned over the decades. That perversity has to do with growing old, not just gracefully but slyly; with wanting to creep in and out of the spotlight, tossing down the mic and bellowing into his guitar; with wishing to be heard clearly but never understood too easily. It has to do with all the times he wanted the world to listen, and it wouldn't; and maybe still with that time in Columbus, Ohio, when he found that the world was ready to listen, but only when he said the wrong thing.
It has also to do, somehow, with Costello casting himself as a signifying monkey in our popular culture. And what does that mean? I'm still not certain, though there are clear parallels between The Monkey and The Man. The Monkey natters and chatters, is obnoxious and lovable at once. It's peripatetic and forever searching. It fascinates for its ability to imitate human behavior -- a kind of behavior that Costello, though estranged from and suspicious of it, has always attempted manfully to understand in his reports from the social and emotional front lines. ("Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being," he sang in 1978's "Lipstick Vogue.")
But the Monkey image is Costello's, not mine. At the Beacon, he declaimed an absurdist narrative that has been stuck in my head ever since -- because I suspect it may have been offered as a metaphor for himself.
"On this very day, 50 years ago -- or maybe it was 51 -- The Monkey spoke." Costello identified the beast no further, leaving those of us who needed an explanation to supply our own. But he told of how The Monkey had once emerged from obscurity to stand before the people of the world and declare himself -- his presence, his truth. Whatever the precise nature of that truth, the people of the world chose to turn away from it.
Costello erupted in comic fury. "Did they listen to The Monkey?" he shouted.
"No," we replied.
"Did they listen to The Monkey?!"
"No!"
"Did they listen to The Monkeeeyyyyy???!!!"
"Nooooo!!!"
Then he and The Imposters did "Monkey to Man," a comedy song from The Delivery Man, sung by a band of zoo-dwelling simians to their less-evolved human servants.
This line of inquiry could lead to some interesting places -- among them the racist and racialist connotations of the word "monkey," and the painful fact that Elvis Costello, a longtime anti-racism activist, will forever be considered a bigot by some for having once uttered a few really stupid, drunken words. Maybe Costello is viewable as a white version of the signifying monkey, the shape-changing, double-dealing, multi-voiced trickster figure that's been tracked through African American folklore by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and other black scholars. Maybe Costello and Sumlin should have dueted on "Signifying Monkey," the first song ever written by the same Willie Dixon who penned "Hidden Charms" and gave Sumlin and Howlin' Wolf their highest moments.
Maybe. Or maybe not. Costello is in command of his voices and diabolically precise with his effects, so if the Monkey story was an open-ended metaphor -- for himself, his mission, how he conceives his role and his status -- it's because he chose to leave it open. Enough that he teased out a question, popped open a possibility. All I know for certain is that Elvis Costello, who as it happens is 50 right now (or maybe it's 51), still has it in him to go anywhere, scramble up any tree, and drop anything he wants on us.
On a steamy, near-tropical night at the Beacon Theater, The Monkey signified.
Devin McKinney is the author of Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History (Harvard). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc.
Listening to The Monkey
On stage and on disc, Elvis Costello is still The Man. And The Monkey.
By Devin McKinney
Web Exclusive: 06.03.05
"Deep down in the jungle where the coconuts grow / There's a signifying monkey that the WORLD should know … ”
-- "The Signifying Monkey" (Willie Dixon)
It was already humid inside the Beacon Theater when Elvis Costello and his backing band The Imposters took the stage on an April night to play the single New York show on their recent tour schedule. By the end of the two-hour performance, the building was a virtual tropic zone, the seats were vibrating, and the crowd had gotten funky in more ways than one.
The star came out wearing a Stetson, a black suit, and cowboy boots covered with tiny mirrors -- a country gentleman with a touch of glam. The Imposters -- keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas, bassist Davey Faragher -- were their usual modest, uncostumed selves. The show started with "Welcome to the Working Week," the first song on Costello's first album, 1977's My Aim is True, and ended with "The Scarlet Tide," the final track from his most recent, 2004's The Delivery Man. If the show was not quite the choreographed career retrospective those bookends might imply, it ranged widely enough to remind one of the many shapes and shades this trickiest of pop stars has taken on: his adrenalized peaks and alcoholic valleys, all the times he has put his audience to sleep, all the times he has taken its head off.
My Aim is True was the first LP I laid down money for, and to a middle-class kid in 1977, $11 was no passing amount. Costello had been featured in Newsweek and elsewhere, and his look was transfixing: oversize glasses, ill-fitting suit, misshapen Fender Jazzmaster guitar -- everything about him looked awkward and miscalculated. His songwriting, though, went right to the point, and My Aim is True was heralded as a New Wave testament, first strike of the young punk genius. To me the album sounded pinched, fussy, and irritating, a series of little tantrums. I never grew to like it -- but I never got rid of it.
This Year's Model came next, then the unbelievable Armed Forces; as Costello's tantrums got bigger, they got better. Until one night in March 1979, that is, when he got drunk at a Columbus, Ohio, motor lodge and made a racist slur about Ray Charles. Without warning, the fledgling star was embattled, and a real career was under way. He'd known love, and now he would know hate. He'd asked his listeners for an extreme response, and now he got it -- for the wrong reasons. Few artists have ever gotten themselves in such a horrible, life- and career-staining mess. But instead of finishing him, the mess fed him. Whatever turmoil he went through personally (apparently it was extensive), Costello kept growing as an artist, and the music kept coming.
Over the next 20-odd years there were soul albums and country albums and hodgepodge albums and return-to-rock albums, along with voluminous collaborations, guest appearances, soundtrack cameos, and anomalous one-shots. Some of these were brilliant and some were boring and some were neither. But in the best of Costello's music, the warmth grew deeper while the anger got sharper.
Appearing in 1985 to modest acclaim and meager sales, King of America -- rereleased last month by Rhino as the final installment in its five-year-long series of Costello reissues -- marked one of those junctures in an artist's career when emotional walls come down and the floor falls away from all you thought the artist had to give. Suddenly Costello's voice was graver, more haunted and thoughtful; his lyrics captured love and pity along with malice and outrage, as if his eyes were now seeing into people, not just through them. Both carnivorously angry ("Little Palaces," a punk-folk broadside against Margaret Thatcher's slums, doubtless influenced by Costello's then-recent work with the furious Irish band The Pogues) and dreamlike in its passages of empathy and remorse ("American Without Tears," "Sleep of the Just"), King of America revealed an artist in full -- one who'd learned sadness through success, who’d seen compassion through contempt, and who now knew that life was long.
Halfway through the Beacon Theater show, Costello brought out a surprise guest, introducing him with great portent as "the man who brought it all together." There was a ripple of high expectation: Could it be Bob Dylan, who everyone knew was scheduled for a five-night engagement at the Beacon a few days later? No, it was better than that: Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's lead guitarist, the wicked fretboard magician whose rhythms and solos filled the great Chicago blues singer's definitive records of the ’50s and ’60s ("Killing Floor," "Wang Dang Doodle," "Goin' Down Slow") with white sparks and knife points and city heat.
Sumlin, who will be 74 this year, came out for one song -- "Hidden Charms," a Wolf tune Costello recorded in 1992 for his Kojak Variety album. An immaculate gray suit draped over his bony frame, Sumlin resembled an elegant old spider creeping around his corner of the stage. But when he took his solo, he ripped and funked the song like a young hotshot, and age was a mere earthly veil.
Whereupon Costello, creeping toward Sumlin, shouted his vocal into the face of his own guitar, using its electronic pickups as microphones and producing a hollow, cheesy, sci-fi resonance. Lord, what a strange little scene! For these moments, the stuffy but expansive Beacon was a sweat-dripping Arkansas roadhouse, circa 1953 -- or 2053. And in a flash I saw Elvis Costello many years from now, in his twilight, looking as Hubert Sumlin looks now: a hunched little glasses-wearing bluesman, creeping away from the spotlight as he weaves funk from amplified steel, at once carrying a tradition and twirling it like an old keychain.
That tradition, as Costello sequenced it this night, encompassed a passionate delivery of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" -- Smokey Robinson by way of the Beatles -- and a version of "Mystery Train" that I can categorically say was the hardest and loudest ever heard by anyone, anytime, anywhere. It also encompassed Costello's knowledge that his own early recordings have themselves entered the tradition, that young bands like The Hives and The Strokes continue to recycle the sound of "(What's So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" even if they can't get anywhere near its feeling; and that the "five little fingers" climax of "Watching the Detectives" is as immortal a moment of rock ’n’ roll stop-time as the Coasters' "Yakety yak -- don't talk back" or David Bowie's "Awwwwwwwwwhambamthankyoumam!"
In a sense, Costello is the tradition. He switches regularly and easily from the punk's snotty stance to the codger's throaty nostalgia, from absurd to deadly serious, from country to rock to soul to classical -- all without ever effacing his identity or telegraphing his next move. Which is to say he preserves an active sense of perversity and surprise to complicate the respect and affection he's earned over the decades. That perversity has to do with growing old, not just gracefully but slyly; with wanting to creep in and out of the spotlight, tossing down the mic and bellowing into his guitar; with wishing to be heard clearly but never understood too easily. It has to do with all the times he wanted the world to listen, and it wouldn't; and maybe still with that time in Columbus, Ohio, when he found that the world was ready to listen, but only when he said the wrong thing.
It has also to do, somehow, with Costello casting himself as a signifying monkey in our popular culture. And what does that mean? I'm still not certain, though there are clear parallels between The Monkey and The Man. The Monkey natters and chatters, is obnoxious and lovable at once. It's peripatetic and forever searching. It fascinates for its ability to imitate human behavior -- a kind of behavior that Costello, though estranged from and suspicious of it, has always attempted manfully to understand in his reports from the social and emotional front lines. ("Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being," he sang in 1978's "Lipstick Vogue.")
But the Monkey image is Costello's, not mine. At the Beacon, he declaimed an absurdist narrative that has been stuck in my head ever since -- because I suspect it may have been offered as a metaphor for himself.
"On this very day, 50 years ago -- or maybe it was 51 -- The Monkey spoke." Costello identified the beast no further, leaving those of us who needed an explanation to supply our own. But he told of how The Monkey had once emerged from obscurity to stand before the people of the world and declare himself -- his presence, his truth. Whatever the precise nature of that truth, the people of the world chose to turn away from it.
Costello erupted in comic fury. "Did they listen to The Monkey?" he shouted.
"No," we replied.
"Did they listen to The Monkey?!"
"No!"
"Did they listen to The Monkeeeyyyyy???!!!"
"Nooooo!!!"
Then he and The Imposters did "Monkey to Man," a comedy song from The Delivery Man, sung by a band of zoo-dwelling simians to their less-evolved human servants.
This line of inquiry could lead to some interesting places -- among them the racist and racialist connotations of the word "monkey," and the painful fact that Elvis Costello, a longtime anti-racism activist, will forever be considered a bigot by some for having once uttered a few really stupid, drunken words. Maybe Costello is viewable as a white version of the signifying monkey, the shape-changing, double-dealing, multi-voiced trickster figure that's been tracked through African American folklore by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and other black scholars. Maybe Costello and Sumlin should have dueted on "Signifying Monkey," the first song ever written by the same Willie Dixon who penned "Hidden Charms" and gave Sumlin and Howlin' Wolf their highest moments.
Maybe. Or maybe not. Costello is in command of his voices and diabolically precise with his effects, so if the Monkey story was an open-ended metaphor -- for himself, his mission, how he conceives his role and his status -- it's because he chose to leave it open. Enough that he teased out a question, popped open a possibility. All I know for certain is that Elvis Costello, who as it happens is 50 right now (or maybe it's 51), still has it in him to go anywhere, scramble up any tree, and drop anything he wants on us.
On a steamy, near-tropical night at the Beacon Theater, The Monkey signified.
Devin McKinney is the author of Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History (Harvard). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc.