Elvis & The Imposters/Blondie play Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, August 5, 2019

[Man out of Time]

Elvis and The Imposters and Blondie play the Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, in Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA on Monday August 5, 2019.

Ticket Prices $29.50 - $175.00 (plus fees) There seem to be some tickets still on sale.

The venue website has this preview:

"Elvis Costello & The Imposters and Blondie will co-headline a coast-to-coast tour this summer. Produced by Live Nation, the 13-city tour will kick off July 20th in Bethel, NY at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and make stops in Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and more, before wrapping August 10th in Seattle, WA.

Elvis Costello and Blondie shared spots near the top of the UK Singles Chart 40 years ago when Blondie's "Heart Of Glass” sat neck-and-neck alongside Elvis Costello & The Attraction’s "Oliver's Army” in the company of The Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor and ABBA. The same week, Blondie's seminal album Parallel Lines reached #1 on the Album Chart while Costello's Armed Forces landed at #3.

Elvis Costello & The Imposters’ last tour in late 2018 found the combo reaching new live performance peaks. The band "came out swinging” (Star Tribune) in Minneapolis, were “unstoppable” in Anaheim (OC Register) and played an “epic and euphoric” (Variety) show in LA that even at nearly three hours “[left] ‘em wanting more.” The Imposters are: Steve Nieve (keyboards), Davey Faragher (bass) and Pete Thomas (drums).

In 2017, Blondie hit the road in support of their most collaborative album yet, Pollinator (BMG). Their spectacular live shows drew acclaim for their “flair and precision” (Rolling Stone), while being called “formidable” (LA Weekly) and “artful, rocking” (City Pages). Pollinator was praised by the likes of New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork and many more for its dynamic blend of Blondie's trailblazing sound and new influences from some of modern music's greatest innovators including Sia, Dev Hynes, Charli XCX, Dave Sitek, Joan Jett, and more. It features the euphoric disco-infused single "Fun," the propulsive 80s-esque anthem "Long Time," and the irreverent "Doom or Destiny."

Elvis Costello's wide-ranging recording career began in 1977 with the release of My Aim Is True in a catalogue that include such diverse highlights as This Year's Model, Get Happy, Imperial Bedroom, King Of America, Blood & Chocolate, The Juliet Letters with the Brodsky Quartet, The River In Reverse with Allen Toussaint and Wise Up Ghost with The Roots.

The 1998 release, Painted From Memory contained the first of more than thirty songs composed with Burt Bacharach, while the 2017 box-set re-issue of Paul McCartney's Flowers In The Dirt includes 15 demo duet recordings made by McCartney and Costello prior to the release of the albums Spike and Flowers In The Dirt, on which his co-written hit singles, "Veronica" and "My Brave Face," were first released.

Costello previously appeared alongside Deborah Harry with composer/poet Roy Nathanson and the Jazz Passengers both in concert and on the recordings "Fire At Keaton's Bar and Grill" and "Individually Twisted" in the 90s.

Elvis Costello & The Imposters’ widely renowned Look Now was released by Concord Records in 2018 and of which Variety said, "It's so funny to be seeing him, after all this time, making a great cake of an album that doesn't really sound that much like any of the 30 before it." The catalogue will soon include the E.P., Purse, containing songwriting collaborations with Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney and musical settings of lyrics by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 1976, Blondie has brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco and ska together and racked up four indelible Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits - “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “The Tide Is High” and “Rapture ” - as well as six #1s on the UK Singles Chart including “Maria,” “Sunday Girl,” and “Atomic.” Debbie Harry – genre-spanning visionary, complex songstress, incandescent front woman and style icon - and the band's boundary-pushing pop have shaped the look and sound of many chart-topping female artists who have followed and have made Blondie widely recognized as one of the most influential bands of our time. Debbie will reflect on this and more in her highly anticipated memoir out later this year. Blondie’s Chris Stein recently released a photo book of his own entitled Point of View: Me, New York City, and The Punk Scene, following his successful first photo book, Negative: Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk. Selected as one of Amazon’s best photo books of 2018, Point of View showcases Chris’ brilliance as a photographer and documentarian, chronicling his life among his punk and new-wave peers and the downtown New York City scene in the 1970s through his insider lens.

Elvis Costello, Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve are all members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Elvis Costello is an Oscar-nominated and BAFTA and Grammy award-winning composer and member of the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. Costello has received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from both the University of Liverpool and the New England Conservatory. Costello's unconventional memoir, Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, was published by Blue Rider/Penguin in 2015. The New York Times review began, "Songs can be many things,” Elvis Costello writes in his new autobiography: “an education, a seduction, some solace in heartache, a valve for anger, a passport, your undoing, or even a lottery ticket. Mr. Costello’s book, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, manages to be all these things, and a pint of Guinness and a bag of chips. It’s streaked with some of the best writing – funny, strange, spiteful, anguished – we’ve ever had from an important musician." The book went on to spend several weeks on the NY Times Best Seller List.

Ever the bona fide international ambassadors of New York cool, Blondie - vocalist-songwriter Debbie Harry, guitarist and co-writer Chris Stein, powerhouse drummer Clem Burke, and long-time band members bassist Leigh Foxx, guitarist Tommy Kessler and keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen - has become and still remains a true national treasure; one whose influence both shaped and continues to inform the worlds of music, fashion, art and pop culture. Blondie's chart-topping success, fearless spirit and rare longevity led to an induction into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, a NME Godlike Genius Award in 2014, a Q Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2016, and more than 50 million albums sold worldwide to date."

Who's going?

[johnfoyle]

Anyone ?

[And No Coffee Table]

01. Pump It Up
02. Clubland
03. Accidents Will Happen
04. Green Shirt
05. Photographs Can Lie - including The Look Of Love
06. Episode Of Blonde
07. (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
08. Unwanted Number - including numbers songs medley
09. Beyond Belief
10. Watching The Detectives
11. A Face In The Crowd - EC on piano
12. Monkey To Man - including Clean Up Woman and The Monkey preamble
13. This Year's Girl
14. Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter
15. I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
16. High Fidelity
17. Everyday I Write The Book - including Mr. Big Stuff
18. (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?

The "numbers song medley" was several snippets of songs with numbers in the titles — One (Nilsson/Three Dog Night), 19th Nervous Breakdown, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Highway 61 Revisited, When I'm 64, etc., all in numerical order, plus an early birthday greeting to Pete.

[And No Coffee Table]

Longtime LA radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer made a brief appearance to announce Blondie would be out soon.

No Doubt's version of "I Throw My Toys Around" served as EC's entrance music.

EC did the bit with Elvis Presley singing "Rio" and "Heart of Glass," I think before "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter."

The ending of the show was obviously affected by the 11pm curfew, with "Alison" and an encore break being skipped.

The highlights for me were "Episode of Blonde," "Unwanted Number," and "A Face in the Crowd." This was the first time I saw any of the "A Face in the Crowd" songs in person.

A Facebook report says Diana Krall and family were in the audience.

I was worried the co-headliner format would lead to non-fans getting restless during EC's set, but I thought the audience was pretty good. Blondie suffered a bit by starting while it was light out and many seats were still empty.

[And No Coffee Table]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebalti ... ry-in-l-a/

Blondie And Elvis Costello Deliver A Night Of Musical Mastery In L.A.
By Steve Baltin

Shortly after she and her Blondie band mates covered the record-breaking "Old Town Road" at L.A.'s Greek Theater, frontwoman Deborah Harry quipped, "See you never know what is gonna happen."

That she could say that with a straight face and have it be true on a night when Blondie and co-headliner Elvis Costello shared the stage, bringing nearly 90 years of onstage experience together, was maybe the biggest testament to the continued vitality, musical invigoration and creative excellence both these Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame legends share.

Take the case of Blondie, who took the stage first. Certainly the band could have gone up there and just done a string of familiar hits, from "Heart Of Glass" and "Call Me" to "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture." While they did all those hits, recognizing the crowd wanted to see the songs that made Blondie iconic, they often did them with a new spin.

"Heart Of Glass" paid homage to both fellow '70s icon Donna Summer and producer Giorgio Moroder, who produced "Call Me," with a refrain from Summer's disco classic "I Feel Love." A joyful rendition of "The Tide Is High" featured a segment of Deee-Lite's 1990 hit "Groove Is In The Heart."

In the 17 songs they packed in an abundance of musical styles, highlighted by the Latin flavor of "Wipe Off My Sweat"; the hip-hop feel of "Rapture," which Harry introduced by saying, "This was a crazy song when we did it. It was met with a lot of confusion, but it turned out to be a very important song"; the punk feel of "Atomic" and "Sunday Girl" and the noir vibe of "Fade Away And Radiate" and a cover of "From Russia With Love."

Playing with one of the greatest and most acclaimed songwriters of the last half a century, Blondie showed off their own considerable songwriting prowess by reminding everyone not only of the sheer number of hits they had, but how memorable and how influential and diverse that catalog is.

Following a 30-minute intermission, Costello and his Impostors came out and immediately laid down the intensity and tempo of the night with a ferocious "Pump It Up."

Playing absolutely inspired against a superb visual backdrop of lights and Vegas-like images that looked like a slot machine, Costello and the band wove their way through all terrains of his long and storied career, with a lot of the famous biting Costello humor thrown in.

For instance, as he told of the current brief "coast and coast" tour with Blondie, rather than the traditional "coast to coast" trek, he mentioned visiting a civil war landmark in Gettysburg. "We thought we should see one of the sights of the civil war before the next one breaks out," he quipped.

Then talking about the Bethlehem gig he joked, "We started at Bethel and our show with Blondie was so good they canceled Woodstock."

As biting as the humor was though, and clearly all done in good spirits as Costello was very jovial, changing hats often and singing "Happy Birthday" to drummer Pete Thomas, his greatest fervor was saved for the performances.

"Episode Of Blonde" was transcendent, as was "Unwanted Number," where Costello and his band free-form jazz style did snippet after snippet of great songs with numbers in them, like the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown," Three Dog Night's "One," Meredith Wilson's "76 Trombones" and many more.

Playing with his longtime band Costello was very comfortable improvising, mixing things up and having fun with the arrangements. That was one of the joys of watching two veteran acts on the same night, both have the experience and ease onstage to take the songs wherever they wanted to with a seamless perfection.

Bye the time Costello and the Impostors wrapped up just before 11 with a magnificent "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" fans had been treated to three hours of songwriting and musical mastery from two greats.

[And No Coffee Table]

Photo gallery:
https://relix.com/blogs/detail/elvis-co ... a-gallery/

[sweetest punch]

https://variety.com/2019/music/reviews/ ... 203294348/

Concert Review: Elvis Costello and Blondie Are Still This Century’s Model at the Greek
Chris Willman

“I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that,” sang Debbie Harry, repeatedly — as is the custom in “The Tide is High” — before, in concert, also repeatedly, she cajolingly demanded to know, “Are you?”

Well, no, Debbie, we are not that kind of girl at all, answered the responsive cheers of the full house, eager to be part of the resilience as well as the resistance Monday night at the Greek Theatre. The joys of survivor-ship were a big part of what was being celebrated in the co-headlining bill of last millennium’s models, Blondie and Elvis Costello & the Imposters, closing in on the end of a short joint tour and sounding not much worse for the 40-years-on-from-1979 wear. “Rapture” doesn’t date, as it turns out, and neither does actual rapture.

The bill was a de facto tribute to powerhouse drummers, with mutual Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famers holding down the beat. Still powering Blondie, Clem Burke played from behind plexiglas, and from the enthusiasm he mustered for the duty, it almost seemed as if the barrier might be for our protection, not his audio segregation. Pete Thomas, the Attraction-turned-Imposter, was three days away from his 65th birthday, Costello pointed out, and puts a punishing spin on that marker.

Costello used the performance of a recent song, “Unwanted Number,” as an excuse to riff at length, mid-song, on rock ‘n’ roll arithmetic, finally sticking the landing with some wry commentary on age. “One is the loneliest number! It takes two!” he shouted. “… Nineteenth nervous breakdown!… Twenty-four hours from Tulsa! 36-22-36! … Fifty ways to leave your lover! Highway 61! When I’m 64! Of course once you get above those numbers, there are not so many good songs,” he cracked. “I’ve still got a few good weeks left,” added Costello, who will join Thomas in being 65 toward the end of August.

There is, of course, quitting in baseball, and also in new wave, and so it’s to both acts’ credit that they have not just ridden the tide of which Blondie spoke but resisted becoming nostalgia acts — even though, to be sure, it was the 1977-83 time frame being most celebrated by both bands in their setlist. Costello has kept his artistic vitalization alive longer than almost anyone else in rock, with the possible exceptions of Dylan and Springsteen, and proved it with three songs from last year’s highly regarded “Look Now” album plus one from a stage musical set to be produced next year.

Blondie’s latter-day output has not been as consistent, but the group did have a couple of comparatively recent songs (“Fun” and “Wipe Off the Sweat”) to add to the set. More than that, maybe, it’s their refusal from the start to be caught in a new-wave lockbox that keeps the group seeming eternally young. Harry referred to the flack that the band got when they put out a rap song, “Rapture” — and then seemed to almost be trolling for more of it by playing a condensed version of “Old Town Road.” “How did we get this song? I don’t even know,” said Harry. “Mr. Chris Stein, you did it,” she added, passing the blame or credit for the timely Lil Nas X cover they’ve been doing every night on the tour. If these two weren’t snobs before, they’re not about to start in their late 60s and 70s.

Speaking of Chris Stein, it was a pleasure to see him back on stage with Blondie after he took a break from a previous tour. He has passed over most of the more flamboyant guitar duties to Tommy Kessler, who joined the touring unit in 2010, and who does things like play solos behind his head or shred with just his left hand, crowd-pleasing touches that might have embarrassed the Blondie of the CBGB’s era but just seem like good fun four-tenths of a century later. But just when you thought Stein was going to remain a recessive presence on his stool toward the rear of the stage, he’d burst forth with the solos that you sensed he actually took an interest in doing — like the one at the end of “Rapture.” (Per the lyrics, that solo is actually supposed to be monstrous, so Stein can hardly give that one up to the relative novice.)

Harry herself remains a fashion plate, with a spectacularly spangly dress, and also dishes up surprisingly robust versions of the most familiar songs, taking nothing for granted or particularly easy at this late date. If anything she’s gotten less chill as the decades meter has turned over; an encore of “You’re Too Hot” found her willing to work her punkier roots for all the heat they were worth. That came right after a cover of “From Russia With Love” that had her playing Bond girl, at the president’s expense (although the overhead image of a presidential seal was the only indicator it was intended as political commentary).

This is not one of those co-headlining tours where the acts switch places, as Costello’s firewalking is a pretty hard act to follow, even for iconic Blondie, and so he followed with a blazing set that lasted an hour and 40 minutes — in other words, a really short one, by his standards. He threw in enough unusual picks that it was only as the 11:00 curfew approached that he seemed to realize he’d run out of time to sing “Alison,” for one of the few times in his mercurial but still crowd-pleasing career. That wouldn’t have been a shame if he hadn’t revitalized the song on the past couple of tours with the recent addition of backup singers Brianna Lee and Kitten Kuroi — but there was plenty else for them to do as a vocal trio over those 100 minutes, up to and including a climactic “Peace, Love and Understanding” that did take the union slightly overtime.

Kuroi and Lee were first seen in these parts two years ago on a summer 2017 tour commemorating “Imperial Bedroom” that also passed through the Greek. They were brought aboard because that album demanded some kind of additional vocalizing to fit the more ornate album being celebrated, even though Costello had resisted backing vocals on all but a few occasions in his career. But it worked out so well that he not only kept them on for subsequent tours, as seemingly permanent additions to the Imposters, but has them singing on every song of the set. On a very few occasions, like “Accidents Will Happen,” the choruses don’t gain much from their presence. But mostly the backing singers’ addition is an incalculably huge augmentation. It adds some all-important female energy on stage (something Costello had a bit of when he brought go-go dancers along on the Spinning Songbook tour, which you can’t really revive indefinitely without some quizzical looks), but mostly it just brings out more of the latent warmth in a catalog that has historically tended toward the cynical side. “This Year’s Girl” with a tender heart — who’d’a thunk it 40 years ago?

Costello’s good spirits included paying tribute to the recently late New Orleans great Dave Bartholomew — “Songwriters and producers, they outlive singers, usually. He lived to 100,” he noted, “so I’m going into the production business after tonight” — by reciting the lyrics to Bartholomew’s “The Monkey Speaks His Mind,” followed by his hard-rocking answer song from the 2000s, “Monkey to Man.” (As an example of “answer songs,” Costello sang a snippet of Betty Wright’s “Cleanup Song,” then seemed genuinely startled that bassist Davey Faragher knew the tune and started playing along — “We never played that song, ever”.) Another rarely played highlight was the spoken-word-fueled “Episode of Blonde,” from the early 2000s, maybe being busted out in honor of the other act on the bill. He peppered the crowd with asides, like the one in which he imagined Elvis Presley living long enough into the ’80s to have covered Duran Duran’s “Rio”… and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.”

And only by inference was there any political commentary. Perhaps even more subtly than Blondie’s presidential seal, there was Costello singing the title song from his hoped-to-be Broadway musical, “A Face in the Crowd,” based on the (some would say) Trump-prophesying novel and film of the same name. “It’s going to be hitting the stage next year,” he promised. “Are you all going to come see it? Well, I think we better get a bigger theater, then. This is the story of a no-good, double-talking, womanizing, hard-drinking, hillbilly son of a bitch. So you’ll be obviously not so disappointed to know that I won’t be taking the lead role in it because I’m too sweet and innocent.” He described a blowhard media personality turned politician, and “you know how this ends: He reaches down into the deep secret heart of the crowd and listens to the wicked things that they wish for and sings this here song.” We do know how that ends, and we like it better when Costello’s singing it.

Nostalgia was not so much on his mind, but he did express an enthusiasm for being back with “Debbie, Chris and Clem” who, along with him and the Attractions, “were a poster on somebody’s wall in Gilford in about 1978. That’s before all these other very good-looking people like Sting came along and pushed us out of the way.” Here’s to both acts not having been pushed very far.

[And No Coffee Table]

Thanks to woz for the stage setlist:



They didn't play "I Want You" or "Alison."

[sulky lad]

Fantastic, well researched and pertinent review from Variety - which makes a real change to the "His Aim Is Still True" re-visits we have seen so often - well done and thanks, Chris !

[sweetest punch]

https://www.pollstar.com/article/live-r ... ter-139659

Pollstar | Live Review: Elvis Costello & The Imposters And Blondie Pump It Up At L.A.’s Greek Theater

Watching the bands of one’s youth grow older and mature can be painful, but Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Elvis Costello and Blondie weren’t content to rest on their laurels – or their greatest hits – but continue to push the envelope in intriguing ways. This summer’s co-headlining tour, with original Blondie members Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke, et al, opening for Costello’s Imposters is the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of an old-time baseball doubleheader, in this case two classic bands for the price of one ticket.

In the wake of the recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, the graying audience – some with their kids in tow – queued up at the numerous metal detectors to get in for the show, the ninth in an attenuated 12-city summer shed tour that wraps with dates at the Santa Barbara Bowl (August 7), San Francisco’s Concord Pavilion (August and Seattle’s Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery (August 10) which is proving a potent, complementary package.

Of the two groups, Blondie – steadily improving as a live act with heavy metal riff-shredder Tommy Kessler, keyboardist (and occasional keytar whiz) Matt Katz-Bohen and longtime bassist Leigh Foxx ably filling the shoes of past members Gary Valentine, Jimmy Destri, Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison – seemed to be the real crowd-pleaser of the evening. The normally reticent Harry, now 74 years old but looking as youthful as the one-time Max’s Kansas City waitress, bounded onstage with dark shades, a sparkly silver-spangled dress, leggings and sneakers, romping through the opening salvo of “One Way Or Another” and “Waiting on the Telephone,” both anchored by the indomitable beat of drummer Clem Burke, one of the great tub-thumpers in all of rock, a fan himself adorned with the same CBGBs T-shirt worn by many in the audience.

Of course with bands like Blondie, like the proverbial sharks in Woody Allen’s theory of dating, if you’re not moving forward, you’re dying, and the band did manage to dip into their most recent album, 2017’s Pollinator, making sure to plumb their disco dance-rock roots with “Fun,” helpfully juxtaposing it besides its logical predecessor, the Giorgio Moroder Golden Globe-nominated co-write “Call Me,” from the American Gigolo soundtrack accompanied on the three back-of-stage video screens with clips from their appearance on Glenn O’Brien’s "TV Party" back in the day in Noo Yawk City and even a keytar interlude.

“We’re starting early damnit,” moaned Debbie, the sun still setting in the balmy summer sky, but the energy picked up as darkness set in.

The stage turned blood-red for “Rapture,” as a white-haired, white-bearded Chris Stein, now seated on a chair, provided a throbbing psychedelic lead, channeling both Clapton and Hendrix as his fingers slid up and down the frets. Bringing rock history up to date from their influential pop-rap fusion, the band launched into a slowed-down sensual cover of “Old Town Road,” yet another unlikely fusion of hip-hop and country that led Harry to muse, “You see, you never know what’s going to happen ... That one took us all by surprise.”

Other new songs provided the kind of momentum that keeps a band fresh. “Wipe Off My Sweat,” from 2011’s Panic of Girls, combined Kessler’s “Hotel California”-ish spaghetti western flamenco guitar with Clem’s timbale beat, as Debbie removed the shades and began to warm up to the task at hand, her now huskier voice still capable of melting hearts. Kesller’s acid-soaked guitar on “Fade Away and Radiate” prompted the evening’s first standing ovation, while the reggae-inflected “The Tide Is High” had the crowd yelling back the “Oh, no—o-o” refrain to Harry’s “I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that” over a nod to Deee-Lite’s classic post-disco hit, “Groove is in the Heart,” followed shortly by their own unlikely Europop crossover, “Heart of Glass.” For the encore, Debbie leaned into the theme song from the James Bond flick "From Russia with Love," backed by the presidential seal, with the bald eagle clutching dollars and golf clubs in the night’s only slyly political gesture. Harry’s solo turn on “Don’t Touch Me (You’re Too Hot)” led into the “Born to Run” strains of “Dreaming,” as Debbie chanted, “We are free” and Stein laid out one more sitting guitar solo.

After a brief intermission, Elvis Costello and the Imposters – featuring Attractions keyboard whiz Steve Naïve and rock-solid drummer Pete Thomas, with longtime bassist Davey Faragher and lissome vocalists Alisha “Kitten” Kuroi and Briana Lee – took the stage with a solid one-two-three punch of “Pump It Up,” a Latinized “Clubland” and “Accidents Will Happen,” the latter accompanied on the video screens with images of the Armed Forces album.

Looking like Hank Williams in his jaunty white fedora, Elvis was in a garrulous mood, often accompanying the songs with back stories, though his patter eventually forced him to stop the show at its 11 p.m. curfew, curtailing an encore, as Costello admitted the band was being kicked off the stage.

The one-time enfant terrible is now a wizened vet, crooning his way through the Burt Bacharach collaboration, “Photographs Can Lie,” which began with a snippet of “The Look of Love,” with Costello hitting the high note with ease. A samba beat and Elvis’ grinding, wah-wah funk guitar characterized one of the deeper cuts, “Episode of Blonde,” from 2002’s When I Was Cruel, while fiery vocalists Kitten and Briana wailed on “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea.” Costello’s take on “Unwanted Number,” from his most recent album, last year’s critically acclaimed comeback, Look Now led into a meditation on number songs, from Harry Nilsson’s “One” to “19th Nervous Breakdown,” When I’m 64,” “77 Sunset Strip” and “99 and ½ Won’t Do,” before acknowledging Pete Thomas’ 65th birthday in three days.

Bathed in ominous red and green spotlights, Costello’s “Watching the Detectives,” driven by Pete Thomas’ clip-clopping beat, while Steve Nieve’s cascading, tinkling ivories helped fuel “Burnt Sugar is So Bitter,” another new song from Look Now. For the latter part of the show, Costello was flanked by both singers, racing through the Stax-like Sam & Dave R&B of “I Can’t Stand Up,” “High Fidelity” and the soulful “Everyday I Write the Book,” interpolated with a nod to “Mr. Big Shot” before a rousing “What’s So Funny (‘Bout Peace Love and Understand)” (the screens insisting, “Thou Shalt Not KKKill”) completed the aborted set without performing set standards like “Alison” or “Radio, Radio,” but as the sated crowd filed out, no one seemed to mind. The post-punk New Wave has aged into classic rock, not necessarily gracefully, but without losing any of its vitality.

[sweetest punch]

https://www.musicconnection.com/elvis-c ... ngeles-ca/

[Man out of Time]

Over on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums, SixOClockBoos wrote:


"Just arrived from my show! Both times seeing both artists live and I loved every moment of it!

Blondie's setlist was pretty much the same as mentioned above. "Maria" wasn't played (much to my dismay), but instead the band broke into a short cover of America's current #1 hit, "Old Town Road".

I was at the show mainly for the Elvis Costello show and that was phenomenal. It had wonderful visuals displayed on the three screens on the back, amazing lights (green, purple and red during "Watching The Detectives") and some wonderful banter stories inbetween some of the songs. (One of stories mentioned how he would've liked to see Elvis Presley sing the hits of the 80's and 90's and he then goes on a tangent saying how he would've done some songs by Oasis, but since they don't play any of his songs, he wasn't going to do any. He later jabbed at them by saying that they're still learning how to write songs. He goes back to Presley saying that he can imagine him singing "Rio" by Duran Duran).

I got the setlist for the Elvis show written down (including some of the song snippets he snag). Bolded the songs from Look Now. He did quite a few of them.

Pump It Up
Clubland
Accidents Will Happen
Green Shirt
The Look Of Love (snippet)
Photographs Can Lie
Episode Of Blonde
(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
Unwanted Number
Beyond Belief
Watching The Detectives
A Face In The Crowd (Unreleased)
Clean Up Woman (snippet)
Monkey To Man
This Year's Girl
Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter
I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
High Fidelity
Everyday I Write The Book
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding

Overall, loved the show. Would love to see him again at a full concert. Very surprised he did "Episode Of Blonde" and "High Fidelity". "A Face In The Crowd" was a nice listen. I would've taped the whole song if I knew at the time it was an unreleased song."


MOOT