Elvis Rocks DC May 18 2007
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- double dutchess
- Posts: 146
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 11:01 am
- Location: New York
Whoooo! I will be there, along with sister dutchess and boyfriend dutch.
It's funny, because I first saw the thread about the Boston show on May 15. I was so disappointed, because I have a class that night, from 5 to 8 and I'm about 2.5 hours from Boston. So that made me sad. And then I saw this thread. And I can easily get to my parents house by then. And getting to DC from my parents house is a heck of a lot easier than getting to Boston from here. And I love the 9:30 club! This is going to be great!
And martinfoyle, thanks for the hangover cure. I feel much better now.
It's funny, because I first saw the thread about the Boston show on May 15. I was so disappointed, because I have a class that night, from 5 to 8 and I'm about 2.5 hours from Boston. So that made me sad. And then I saw this thread. And I can easily get to my parents house by then. And getting to DC from my parents house is a heck of a lot easier than getting to Boston from here. And I love the 9:30 club! This is going to be great!
And martinfoyle, thanks for the hangover cure. I feel much better now.
I wasn't born the sharpest thorn
- Sulkygirl1
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From listserv -
Welcome To The Working Week
Shabby Doll
The Beat
Lovers walk
Secondary modern
Strict time
Brilliant mistake
Country Darkness
Temptation
Clubland
Beyond belief
Kinder murder
Alibi
Watching The Detectives
American gangster time
Lipstick vogue
Riot act
......................
I hope you're happy now
No action
You belong to me
Waiting for the end of the world
High fidelity
Uncomplicated
Radio radio
Imposter
...........................
Alison (solo)
(Band intros)
Sleep of the just
****** surprise guest !!!! Allan toussant!!!! ******
River in reverse
Monkey to man
Yes I can can (sung by allan....unplanned)
Hey bulldog
Pump it up
Peace love and understanding
Elvis was in friendlier form tonight, saying good evening before the
encores this time. He seemed gratified by the crowd response.
I think he dedicated The Imposter to Rudy Giuliani. Can someone
confirm that?
A little oldies set in the encores, No Action into You Belong to Me
into Waiting for the End of the World
big surprise in that they played a great Sleep of the Just in the
encores
and of course biggest surprise was Allen Toussaint coming out for three
numbers: TRIR, Monkey To Man, and Yes We Can.
Longest of the shows I saw, I think.
Off to bed
Dave
Welcome To The Working Week
Shabby Doll
The Beat
Lovers walk
Secondary modern
Strict time
Brilliant mistake
Country Darkness
Temptation
Clubland
Beyond belief
Kinder murder
Alibi
Watching The Detectives
American gangster time
Lipstick vogue
Riot act
......................
I hope you're happy now
No action
You belong to me
Waiting for the end of the world
High fidelity
Uncomplicated
Radio radio
Imposter
...........................
Alison (solo)
(Band intros)
Sleep of the just
****** surprise guest !!!! Allan toussant!!!! ******
River in reverse
Monkey to man
Yes I can can (sung by allan....unplanned)
Hey bulldog
Pump it up
Peace love and understanding
Elvis was in friendlier form tonight, saying good evening before the
encores this time. He seemed gratified by the crowd response.
I think he dedicated The Imposter to Rudy Giuliani. Can someone
confirm that?
A little oldies set in the encores, No Action into You Belong to Me
into Waiting for the End of the World
big surprise in that they played a great Sleep of the Just in the
encores
and of course biggest surprise was Allen Toussaint coming out for three
numbers: TRIR, Monkey To Man, and Yes We Can.
Longest of the shows I saw, I think.
Off to bed
Dave
Just an unbelievable show. How did Elvis know I was coming and arrange for AT to show up? Actually, it was great because I was at the show with two other New Orleans ex-pats. Just made an already great night that much more special.
Brilliant Mistake was awesome, and Sleep of the Just was just one of the coolest things I've heard him do. The band was tight as hell and the pace of the set proper just left my jaw on the floor. Literally, as each song ended they'd count into the next and away they flew. I gotta get into shape!
The sound was a little bass-heavy at the start, but overall turned out very nicely. I was towards the back of the hall so I didn't get a lot of nuance, but the crowd seemed very into, especially once the encores really kicked in.
Some of the songs he's experimented with in the past (Detectives, Clubland) were played very faithfully to their recorded arrangments and versions. I really like the new interpretation of Alison, with the changed second verse. Elvis said something to the effect of "its time to give the old girl a change" or something like that. The least amount of chat I've ever heard at an EC show from the man, but he let the music do the talking. Its awesome and inspirational that he seems so connected to material he wrote and recorded so long ago.
Brilliant Mistake was awesome, and Sleep of the Just was just one of the coolest things I've heard him do. The band was tight as hell and the pace of the set proper just left my jaw on the floor. Literally, as each song ended they'd count into the next and away they flew. I gotta get into shape!
The sound was a little bass-heavy at the start, but overall turned out very nicely. I was towards the back of the hall so I didn't get a lot of nuance, but the crowd seemed very into, especially once the encores really kicked in.
Some of the songs he's experimented with in the past (Detectives, Clubland) were played very faithfully to their recorded arrangments and versions. I really like the new interpretation of Alison, with the changed second verse. Elvis said something to the effect of "its time to give the old girl a change" or something like that. The least amount of chat I've ever heard at an EC show from the man, but he let the music do the talking. Its awesome and inspirational that he seems so connected to material he wrote and recorded so long ago.
- Sulkygirl1
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- Joined: Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:01 pm
- Location: Virginia
The show blew me away...great song selection, the band was on fire and Elvis was in top form.
He is an incredible performer with an amazing catalog of music and will always be my hero depsite the fact that he may not bring the house down for a tv taping or appear in an ad for a luxury automobile (big fucking deal ).
He is an incredible performer with an amazing catalog of music and will always be my hero depsite the fact that he may not bring the house down for a tv taping or appear in an ad for a luxury automobile (big fucking deal ).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... artsliving
The Washington Post
Elvis, Definitely Alive
Costello Plumbs the Depths of His Songbook For a High-Energy Show at the 9:30 Club
Monday, May 21, 2007
Elvis Costello has more musical personalities than Tupac has posthumous albums, but the one who turned up at the 9:30 club Friday is the most consistently satisfying: Call him the Shut Up and Sing Elvis. He never took off his black suit jacket or his black sunglasses, or loosened his black tie. He simply strode onstage and launched into "Welcome to the Working Week," smash-cutting 13 more songs together before he even said "good evening."
Elvis seems like a pretty contented guy these days, but it's good to see he can reconnect so easily with the pencil-necked, amphetamine-addled Angry Young Man of 1978, who stared out from the posters and T-shirts for sale at the back of the club.
All but a half-dozen of the set's 33 (!) songs were more than 25 years old. But if you're going to look backward, there are worse ways to do it: Although focused on the first third of his career (from which the albums have just been reissued for the umpteenth time), the show's breathless first half boasted so many rarities ("Lovers' Walk," "Riot Act," "Shabby Doll") that it never felt predictable. Even night's best cover, "Hey Bulldog," was about as obscure as a Beatles song can be.
Costello's willingness to fling open the back pages of his extraordinary songbook is one of the qualities that make him such a superb live performer. Of course, his daring would be in vain if the tunes didn't kill, but aided by the Imposters, Costello drove home the curios and the kinda-hits with such unrelenting kinetic force that you barely had time to remember the chorus of one tune before he counted off the next. A solo take of the seminal unrequited-love "Alison," its melody altered just enough to foil the singer-alongers, followed by the plaintive gem "Sleep of the Just," provided the only breather.
Late in the evening, New Orleans pianist and songwriter Allen Toussaint showed up to tickle the keys on "The River in Reverse" and "Monkey to Man," before singing his own "Yes We Can Can."
Tickets could be bought only with the credit card that sponsored the show. Costello, who used to refuse endorsement deals, introduced only one song all night -- the new "American Gangster Time" -- saying it was "about a mercenary [expletive]." When you rock this hard, you can get away with pretty much anything.
-- Chris Klimek
The Washington Post
Elvis, Definitely Alive
Costello Plumbs the Depths of His Songbook For a High-Energy Show at the 9:30 Club
Monday, May 21, 2007
Elvis Costello has more musical personalities than Tupac has posthumous albums, but the one who turned up at the 9:30 club Friday is the most consistently satisfying: Call him the Shut Up and Sing Elvis. He never took off his black suit jacket or his black sunglasses, or loosened his black tie. He simply strode onstage and launched into "Welcome to the Working Week," smash-cutting 13 more songs together before he even said "good evening."
Elvis seems like a pretty contented guy these days, but it's good to see he can reconnect so easily with the pencil-necked, amphetamine-addled Angry Young Man of 1978, who stared out from the posters and T-shirts for sale at the back of the club.
All but a half-dozen of the set's 33 (!) songs were more than 25 years old. But if you're going to look backward, there are worse ways to do it: Although focused on the first third of his career (from which the albums have just been reissued for the umpteenth time), the show's breathless first half boasted so many rarities ("Lovers' Walk," "Riot Act," "Shabby Doll") that it never felt predictable. Even night's best cover, "Hey Bulldog," was about as obscure as a Beatles song can be.
Costello's willingness to fling open the back pages of his extraordinary songbook is one of the qualities that make him such a superb live performer. Of course, his daring would be in vain if the tunes didn't kill, but aided by the Imposters, Costello drove home the curios and the kinda-hits with such unrelenting kinetic force that you barely had time to remember the chorus of one tune before he counted off the next. A solo take of the seminal unrequited-love "Alison," its melody altered just enough to foil the singer-alongers, followed by the plaintive gem "Sleep of the Just," provided the only breather.
Late in the evening, New Orleans pianist and songwriter Allen Toussaint showed up to tickle the keys on "The River in Reverse" and "Monkey to Man," before singing his own "Yes We Can Can."
Tickets could be bought only with the credit card that sponsored the show. Costello, who used to refuse endorsement deals, introduced only one song all night -- the new "American Gangster Time" -- saying it was "about a mercenary [expletive]." When you rock this hard, you can get away with pretty much anything.
-- Chris Klimek
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http://washingtontimes.com/entertainmen ... -4317r.htm
Costello pulls out his B list
By Daniel Wattenberg
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 22, 2007
With his ceaseless cross-generic dabblings and strange-bedfellow musical pairings, Elvis Costello has passed beyond mere eclecticism. He's become a thought experiment, the protagonist of a Borges story -- the man who proposes to write and record in every musical genre known, imagined and imaginable, limited only by the laws of acoustics.
Seeing Mr. Costello live these days, it can be hard to fight down expectations of something extra in the offing: an all-star jam with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits, a chamber-music recital sandwiched between electric sets, wife Diana Krall turning up to purr "Almost Blue" accompanied by the Metropole Orkest -- or at least a vocal duet with Lucinda Williams.
When instead all you get is an Elvis Costello concert, you almost feel cheated.
Elvis Costello and the Imposters sprinted through more than two dozen songs from the first decade of the music legend's career before a capacity crowd Friday night at the 9:30 Club, the penultimate date on a just-ended 10-city U.S. tour promoting two more milk-the-consumer Costello compilations -- "The Best of Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years" and "Rock and Roll Music."
Galloping through his set of mostly up-tempo rockers, the usually loquacious Mr. Costello did not speak to his appreciative -- if not transported -- audience until he had been onstage for more than an hour, when he finally paused to say, with a sly grin, "Good evening."
Despite the breakneck pacing and furious attack of the Imposters (the Attractions, but with Cracker's Davey Faragher replacing Bruce Thomas on bass) the show was oddly uninvolving for much of its length.
Starting with "Welcome to the Working Week," the set list was heavily weighted toward driving, almost forgotten album filler (the kind threatened with oblivion in the new cherry-picking download era) -- "The Beat," "Lover's Walk," "Lipstick Vogue" to name a few.
Call them rarities, if you want to be kind -- but what in the early-period Costello song catalog isn't a rarity? The only two Costello singles that ever cracked the U.S. top 40 were "Everyday I Write the Book" and "Veronica."
It's not as if fans are tired already of delectable early Costello pop confections such as "Accidents Will Happen" and "Oliver's Army" or gorgeous ballads such as "Party Girl" and "Almost Blue." Why not sprinkle a few through the set to vary the mood?
These are the kinds of songs that earned Mr. Costello a reputation as his generation's best pop songwriter -- "Strict Time" and "Uncomplicated," which made Friday's cut, are the sort that earned him a reputation as its most ... industrious.
(And how could he neglect "Shipbuilding," the antiwar threnody that could drive Don Rumsfeld to pitch a tent at Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey? Plainly, the bloody impasse in Iraq was much on Mr. Costello's mind -- he seeded his set with snippets of John Lennon's "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" and closed with his signature version of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding?")
Look -- I spent much of the packed concert in the standing-room-always venue hunting for a vantage point that afforded a view of the stage that didn't entail vibrating in place in front of a speaker tower that fired each explosive pulse of Pete Thomas' kick drum straight at my sternum. I felt lucky to get intermittent glimpses of V-shaped wedges of Mr. Costello -- and never really saw what Steve Nieve was up to on the keyboards. If the performance felt somehow remote, well -- for me, it was.
The concert did ultimately take off -- beginning with a suitably incendiary "End of the World" during the first of three extended encore suites.
The second encore saw Mr. Costello strap on an acoustic guitar for a solo "Alison," the searing ballad that became a standard without ever having been a hit. Its familiar melody was jazzily transformed beyond recognition in the second verse into a rebuilt Costello classic that would fit easily on "My Flame Burns Blue's" swingin' "Watching the Detectives" and mambo "Clubland."
Even the intimations of something extra were finally realized -- in the shape of Allen Toussaint. The New Orleans R&B giant sat in on keyboards for "The River in Reverse" (the Costello-penned title song from the 2006 Costello-Toussaint album collaboration), Mr. Costello's "Monkey to Man" and his own monument of soulful uplift, "Yes We Can Can."
In recent years, Mr. Costello has been indefatigably composing and releasing new music -- everything from classical and jazz to roots music and punishingly dull art songs. In the meantime, his original medium -- rock 'n' roll -- has been reduced to little more than a lucrative legacy. In this genre, he has mostly limited himself to repackaging, reissuing and refashioning material he recorded decades ago.
It's fair to wonder: Does Elvis Costello truly enjoy playing rock anymore?
On Friday night, he rehashed -- with professionalism, if not passion -- a generous but monotonous string of old rock songs that in the ITunes age could soon be forgotten. Nothing wrong with that -- but for his next trick, Mr. Costello might try writing some new rock songs that won't be.
The music world could use some sardonic, literate, meticulously crafted and catchy, endlessly inventive pop rock -- the genre that a protean polymath named Elvis Costello once made all his own.
Costello pulls out his B list
By Daniel Wattenberg
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 22, 2007
With his ceaseless cross-generic dabblings and strange-bedfellow musical pairings, Elvis Costello has passed beyond mere eclecticism. He's become a thought experiment, the protagonist of a Borges story -- the man who proposes to write and record in every musical genre known, imagined and imaginable, limited only by the laws of acoustics.
Seeing Mr. Costello live these days, it can be hard to fight down expectations of something extra in the offing: an all-star jam with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits, a chamber-music recital sandwiched between electric sets, wife Diana Krall turning up to purr "Almost Blue" accompanied by the Metropole Orkest -- or at least a vocal duet with Lucinda Williams.
When instead all you get is an Elvis Costello concert, you almost feel cheated.
Elvis Costello and the Imposters sprinted through more than two dozen songs from the first decade of the music legend's career before a capacity crowd Friday night at the 9:30 Club, the penultimate date on a just-ended 10-city U.S. tour promoting two more milk-the-consumer Costello compilations -- "The Best of Elvis Costello: The First Ten Years" and "Rock and Roll Music."
Galloping through his set of mostly up-tempo rockers, the usually loquacious Mr. Costello did not speak to his appreciative -- if not transported -- audience until he had been onstage for more than an hour, when he finally paused to say, with a sly grin, "Good evening."
Despite the breakneck pacing and furious attack of the Imposters (the Attractions, but with Cracker's Davey Faragher replacing Bruce Thomas on bass) the show was oddly uninvolving for much of its length.
Starting with "Welcome to the Working Week," the set list was heavily weighted toward driving, almost forgotten album filler (the kind threatened with oblivion in the new cherry-picking download era) -- "The Beat," "Lover's Walk," "Lipstick Vogue" to name a few.
Call them rarities, if you want to be kind -- but what in the early-period Costello song catalog isn't a rarity? The only two Costello singles that ever cracked the U.S. top 40 were "Everyday I Write the Book" and "Veronica."
It's not as if fans are tired already of delectable early Costello pop confections such as "Accidents Will Happen" and "Oliver's Army" or gorgeous ballads such as "Party Girl" and "Almost Blue." Why not sprinkle a few through the set to vary the mood?
These are the kinds of songs that earned Mr. Costello a reputation as his generation's best pop songwriter -- "Strict Time" and "Uncomplicated," which made Friday's cut, are the sort that earned him a reputation as its most ... industrious.
(And how could he neglect "Shipbuilding," the antiwar threnody that could drive Don Rumsfeld to pitch a tent at Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey? Plainly, the bloody impasse in Iraq was much on Mr. Costello's mind -- he seeded his set with snippets of John Lennon's "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" and closed with his signature version of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding?")
Look -- I spent much of the packed concert in the standing-room-always venue hunting for a vantage point that afforded a view of the stage that didn't entail vibrating in place in front of a speaker tower that fired each explosive pulse of Pete Thomas' kick drum straight at my sternum. I felt lucky to get intermittent glimpses of V-shaped wedges of Mr. Costello -- and never really saw what Steve Nieve was up to on the keyboards. If the performance felt somehow remote, well -- for me, it was.
The concert did ultimately take off -- beginning with a suitably incendiary "End of the World" during the first of three extended encore suites.
The second encore saw Mr. Costello strap on an acoustic guitar for a solo "Alison," the searing ballad that became a standard without ever having been a hit. Its familiar melody was jazzily transformed beyond recognition in the second verse into a rebuilt Costello classic that would fit easily on "My Flame Burns Blue's" swingin' "Watching the Detectives" and mambo "Clubland."
Even the intimations of something extra were finally realized -- in the shape of Allen Toussaint. The New Orleans R&B giant sat in on keyboards for "The River in Reverse" (the Costello-penned title song from the 2006 Costello-Toussaint album collaboration), Mr. Costello's "Monkey to Man" and his own monument of soulful uplift, "Yes We Can Can."
In recent years, Mr. Costello has been indefatigably composing and releasing new music -- everything from classical and jazz to roots music and punishingly dull art songs. In the meantime, his original medium -- rock 'n' roll -- has been reduced to little more than a lucrative legacy. In this genre, he has mostly limited himself to repackaging, reissuing and refashioning material he recorded decades ago.
It's fair to wonder: Does Elvis Costello truly enjoy playing rock anymore?
On Friday night, he rehashed -- with professionalism, if not passion -- a generous but monotonous string of old rock songs that in the ITunes age could soon be forgotten. Nothing wrong with that -- but for his next trick, Mr. Costello might try writing some new rock songs that won't be.
The music world could use some sardonic, literate, meticulously crafted and catchy, endlessly inventive pop rock -- the genre that a protean polymath named Elvis Costello once made all his own.
"
Look -- I spent much of the packed concert in the standing-room-always venue hunting for a vantage point that afforded a view of the stage that didn't entail vibrating in place in front of a speaker tower that fired each explosive pulse of Pete Thomas' kick drum straight at my sternum. I felt lucky to get intermittent glimpses of V-shaped wedges of Mr. Costello -- and never really saw what Steve Nieve was up to on the keyboards. If the performance felt somehow remote, well -- for me, it was.
"
This is how I felt at the Baltimore show plus poor acoustics.
Look -- I spent much of the packed concert in the standing-room-always venue hunting for a vantage point that afforded a view of the stage that didn't entail vibrating in place in front of a speaker tower that fired each explosive pulse of Pete Thomas' kick drum straight at my sternum. I felt lucky to get intermittent glimpses of V-shaped wedges of Mr. Costello -- and never really saw what Steve Nieve was up to on the keyboards. If the performance felt somehow remote, well -- for me, it was.
"
This is how I felt at the Baltimore show plus poor acoustics.