happy now opener?

[fredlynn19]

will elvis still open with "happy now" even without songwheel? cool opener for him.

[stricttime81]

My take on it is that it's kind of a middle finger due to the lack of interest in National Ransom, i.e., I know you ignored my new stuff, so are you happy now?, I'm doing the spinning songbook with mostly old hits.

[Top balcony]

My take on it is that it's kind of a middle finger due to the lack of interest in National Ransom, i.e., I know you ignored my new stuff, so are you happy now?, I'm doing the spinning songbook with mostly old hits.

This is cynicism of epic proportions!

As someone who has always loved this song I sincerely hope you're wrong.

My take is that this is a perfect opener for the organ - centric sound he's pitching for this time round. No surprise to see so many plaudits in the Steve Nieve thread.

Colin Top Balcony

[Jack of All Parades]

I am with you, Colin, on this take. His keyboard work fills the room and adds such varied color to the individual songs that there is little need for guitar. In fact, the night I heard them in Boston this May, EC's guitar sounds were conspicuously absent quite often in the playing on individual tunes, perhaps washed out in the acoustics of the theater, but though absent, hardly missed by me given the admirable and imaginative playing of Mr. Nieve.

[jardine]

i think there may be a whiff of middle fingers (yuck!) following NR "events," but revolver also seems like an interesting collapse of his own songbook with the spectacle series, like he is treating himself and and his back catalog and beatles and stones songs and other covers, etc., as a sort of vaudevillian or musical hall, well, "spectacle," where he and the band and his solo stuff are the "acts" along with the audience contest winner/spinners etc.

you know, some of this is almost as if the 1920/30s of National Ransom (jimmie, joesephine, you hung the moon, voice in the dark, and other threads) has morphed into a musical theatre performance itself corny and of that time a wee bit, even though--even the circus barker/emcee top hat audience teasing etc. seems like music hall-ish....? So maybe it isn't solely a cynical kick-back after NR's "failure," but a sort of expansion of something about it into a rather "new" relation to his own work and influences. . .? Hmm.

I must say that I can't think of many other artists who have this sort of expansive and relationship to their past with this broad and generous a sense of humor about the whole matter. . .

[stricttime81]

Don't get me wrong, I love the SSS tour, but I still think it's kind of a good-natured reference to the fact that he's finally doing what everyone has been clamoring for, after the inexplicable failure of the great NR. I wasn't implying that it was mean-spirited.

[jardine]

i'd imagine it is mostly good natured, but judging, perhaps unfairly, from how put off I am by what happened to NR, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a tinge there with IHYHN. . .

[Jeremy Dylan]

I'd imagine he'll stick with it. They opened with it in Sydney, which wasn't a wheel show.

[verbal gymnastics]

In most shows he starts with a song that says "I never loved you anyhow" but he ends with PLU...

[SoulForHire]

I've liked it when he would open with Accidents will Happen:

"Oh, I just don't know where to begin . . ."

[verbal gymnastics]

Elvis or his people must read this site because as soon as we start and finish a discussion about this he has changed the opening song. Twice.