Elvis & The Imposters play RAH, London 6 June '13

[Paul B]

I'd love to have combined the three nights! Tuesday was a gas, the entire hall standing the whole way through - but EC's guitar sound kept failing and the acoustics meant you could hear Pete's snare drum twice every time he hit it. Wednesday - great sound but for me the set had less flow and the spinners weren't as good value. Sod's law this was the night I dragged some less initiated friends along and they weren't as overwhelmed by the night as I'd have hoped. My son was along this night though and loved it. A big plus also was the near three in a row from KOA. Thursday - even better sound, for me the set flowed perfectly with a lot of (again for me) slighty lesser heard songs - the WIWC ones, the Cash spin. Elvis also seemed really pleased with and egged on by the audience response. I think the Wheel shows bring out more fairweather fans (good thing too), those who haven't got later albums and want to hear the old hits, their recognition of and enthusiasm for later material being lesser. Nevertheless the response last night to, eg, Jimmy last night was absolutely tumultuous. Across all nights it was also a pleasure to meet new friends, Moot, Verbal, a Japanese professor from Kyoto working at SOAS who was there two nights among others plus a woman who's now off to do 7 Springsteen shows in 6 countries in 9 days. I might still yet make Southend so it's not quite over yet for me. What a week it's been though!

[johnfoyle]

http://therebelmagazine.blogspot.ie/201 ... -hall.html

Friday, 7 June 2013
A Date With Elvis (At The Royal Albert Hall)

Posted by The Rebel Magazine


Last night I had a great time watching the Imposters. Elvis Costello, Pete Thomas, Steve Nieve, and Davey Faragher were all on splendid form. The songs he performed were: "I Hope You're Happy Now", "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's A Doll Revolution)", "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down", "High Fidelity", "Uncomplicated", "Mystery Dance", "Radio, Radio". There was then a medley of songs with the word "Girl" in the title ("This Year's Girl", "Sulky Girl" "G.L.O.R.I.A",and "Girls Talk"). "45", "I Want You", "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", "Riot Act". Bonnie Raitt was brought on as a guest and she spun his spinning songbook. Raitt was very jolly but said she couldn't sing as her throat was bad so Elvis serenaded her with "Either Side Of The Same Town". I thought their version of "Cry, Cry, Cry" was a bit lazy and I don't remember enjoying "Song With Rose" either.

Things vastly improved with "Brilliant Mistake", "Oliver's Army", "Man Out Of Time" and "Shipbuilding". Two songs with just Elvis and Steve Nieve on the grand piano ("She" and "Shot With His Own Gun", "London's Brilliant Parade", Elvis spoke about two of his relatives suffering from dementia and explaining that the reason he was going to perform a famous song about Margaret Thatcher was due more to the facts we shouldn't forget all the unforgivable misery she caused so many people. It must be said his new John Lennon style arrangement of "Tramp The Dirt Down" is a very powerful way to end the show.

His first encore was a lovely take on Nick Lowe's "Indoor Fireworks" sadly things then went very downhill with the tedious "A Slow Drag With Josephine", and, even worse, "Jimmie Standing In The Rain". "Watching The Detectives" was a bit of a mess but "Everyday I Write The Book" was great fun. He ended with fast and furious versions of a trio of crowd pleasers ("I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea", "Pump It Up", and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding").


The highlights for me were his stunning version of "Riot Act", the unexpected Jimi Hendrix style jam at the end of "Uncomplicated", a wild and crazy "I Want You", Pete Thomas's brilliant drumming on "Mystery Dance", Steve Nieve really going for it on "She", Elvis walking out into the audience and sitting on a man's lap whilst singing "Shipbuilding" and great versions of tracks from the King of America album. There were also lots of witty quips and silly stuff - when a fan screamed "Elvis, we love you", Costello quickly replied: "We love you too, both individually and as a group."

[nicola76]

Home at last! A chance to catch my breath and go back to work for a few days before heading to Gateshead and Blackpool

It was lovely to meet some other fans and share some stories - I'd have hated to have been the only one up dancing! Funny that the last review knocks Jimmie Standing in the Rain. It wasn't a song that I initially took to, but it's a real grower and now I really enjoy to hearing it live. Same with 'Josephine' which received a big cheer from the crowd (particular the whistling!) but each to their own! I felt this was a gig that Elvis grew in to. A great gig. And met some lively people too.

Perfect!

[Azmuda]

Three versions of She:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nOLXeUX8qc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO6a5kOgqO8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nu_fm47jFk

[Otis Westinghouse]

His first encore was a lovely take on Nick Lowe's "Indoor Fireworks"

Moron!

[verbal gymnastics]

His first encore was a lovely take on Nick Lowe's "Indoor Fireworks"

Moron!

No different to people attributing PLU to Elvis!

[Otis Westinghouse]

Morons!

[johnfoyle]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 50731.html






Arts & Ents > Music > Reviews

Royal Albert Hall, London

Simon Price on pop: Elvis Costello's army bares its soul once more

The old man of New Wave leaves his set list to luck these days, and the wheel of fate turns up some gems


As a stand-up comedian, Elvis Costello makes an excellent singer-songwriter. Minutes into the show, Costello replaces his trilby with a topper, brandishes a silver-capped cane and adopts a persona somewhere between Bruce Forsyth on The Generation Game and a circus ringmaster, complete with corny American accent. A natural comic he ain't. But you warm to him for trying.

The set-up of the 13 Revolvers tour is familiar. On a set that's half funfair sideshow and half Sixties supper-club, the titles of approximately 40 Costello songs are painted on a wheel of fortune, spun by audience members, to ensure that every show is different. It also allows for unscripted chortles, like the wisecrack from a superfan called Ant, stood next to his hero: "It's the Ant & Dec Show …."

As a rapid-fire format for Costello and his Imposters – bassist Davey Faragher plus Attractions stalwarts Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve (who absconds in the encores to play the Hall's massive organ) – to showcase his back-catalogue, it's fine. And it is mostly back-cat: Costello's upcoming album with The Roots can wait.

It opens with his cover of Sam & Dave's "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down". It's followed by "High Fidelity" whose Supremes-referencing first words are "Some things you never get used to". Which establishes Costello's credentials as a soul fan, if not quite a soul man. Regardless of the strength of his voice, which he demonstrates unamplified off-mic, its tone is too adenoidal for that.

There comes a day in everyone's life where they're grown-up enough to get Elvis Costello, and I passed it some time ago. At 13, his pedal steel-drenched cover of George Jones's "Good Year For The Roses" was insufferably schmaltzy, but now it's almost painfully close to the bone. Funny, that.

"Oliver's Army", though, is the big one. When you're a child, it's just a jolly romping pop melody. Then you figure out it's one of the most chilling political pop songs of all time. Its power is the sound of measured anger, articulated with restraint. Nowadays, sneaking a song about The Troubles, complete with the provocatively loaded phrase "white nigger" to No 2 in the charts, seems impossibly audacious. Performed half-quiet half-loud, it's requested tonight by a woman whose father is dying of cancer. Costello agrees immediately.

It's not the only moving moment: it's touching to hear the entire Albert Hall singing "Alison, I know this world is killing you …" Nor is it the only late Seventies smash. It's commonplace to credit The Clash with pioneering the rock-reggae cross-over, but nearly all the old punks had a try, not least Costello, whose "Watching The Detectives" and "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" are immaculate exercises in paranoiac reggae-noir.

"Some people won't like this …", he apologises before a track which was namechecked almost as often as "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" this April. "But as long as there are still people about who believe the things she believed, and are doing the things she did, we can keep singing this song". The song is "Tramp The Dirt Down". And it's not even the night's most powerful anti-Thatcher song. That would be the haunting, Falklands-inspired "Shipbuilding", which recently merited its own Radio 4 documentary.

An even more potent attack on Conservative values, "Pills And Soap", didn't make the wheel. And another personal favourite, "Every Day I Write The Book", refused to get picked. But you can't have everything. In the words of Steven Wright – unlike Costello, a proper comedian – where would you put it?

[Azmuda]

I Want You:

[Azmuda]

Lipstick Vogue:

[MistakenForLilies]

Song With Rose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHK7HGOcAw


You can see one of his ear monitors hanging out in this. He kept removing them and putting them back in during the RAH shows I saw, as if he was having trouble with them.

[verbal gymnastics]

It's funny to me in that the ear monitors don't seem to help him and if, as I suspect, there is a monitor with the lyrics, this seems to throw Elvis off as well.

[The imposter]

It's funny to me in that the ear monitors don't seem to help him and if, as I suspect, there is a monitor with the lyrics, this seems to throw Elvis off as well.

As a drummer I often had to suffer with a click track through my monitor for sequenced instruments. Sometimes I would wear headphones..but I would always prefer to wear just one earphone, so that you could also hear the ambient sound of your own instrument and also the instruments around you. It takes some getting used to and other than taping one earpiece to the side of the head, the solution is often one earpiece.

Lyric monitor is a different matter..would have thought they could only help.

[Azmuda]

Cry, Cry, Cry / Song With Rose / Brilliant Mistake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSFCwCuyyI

[Paul B]

If I only had the time...bet I could make an excellent concert video by editing all these multiple clips of songs together. I think it would have the edge over the the Wiltern one, in the sense that it'd be actually more in the spirit of the shows.

[johnfoyle]

I just noticed this on Steve Nieve's Facebook page from June 6th -



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_McDowell

[Azmuda]

I just noticed this on Steve Nieve's Facebook page from June 6th -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_McDowell

Malcolm starred in The Company (2003) which included EC's version of "My Funny Valentine" on its soundtrack.

[Man out of Time]

I just noticed this on Steve Nieve's Facebook page from June 6th -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_McDowell

Also this which was the back cover of the UK Single release of Oliver's Army:

MOOT

[And No Coffee Table]

And this:

[sulky lad]

My recording of this is up on dime now - might even get some more by the end of the week unless Mrs. Sulky turns my leave into a chance to alter the configuration of the West Devon landscape by setting me shifting millenia old landforms
Torrent number 467686 !