From listserv -
Joyce reports -
Some tired ramblings...Terrific show! Two and a half hours. I really
enjoyed opening act Sondre Lurch (sp?). He seemed to really enjoy playing to such a big crowd.
Elvis' outfit was great. Peach cowboy shirt,
cowboy tie thingy, great cowboy hat, The Boots. His hair perhaps a bit too
long. Stage was big and the guys were plenty spread out. Thinking about
what I'd seen on recent setlists, I was very happy to see all the
interesting stuff getting played.
Crowd was nutty. One thing I love about
being in the very front (I was about 6th row back) is that you don't get
distracted by all the high drama in the audience. Very excited
audience. One idiot jumped on the stage at about the fifth number! Who wants to
get kicked out at the start of the show?! The guy looked confused about
what to do when he got there and then got tackled and knocked off the
stage by security when he headed towards Elvis. Another woman repeatedly
trying to climb the stage in a drunken stupor.
The Hand Pumper, The Girlfriend bitching loudly about people standing in front of her, The Clapper, the guy in the front row talking on his cell phone while sitting stoically in his seat with his arm around his date.
Anyway, Elvis
responded to the energy and seemed to be enjoying himself. Voice is still a bit rough but he sounded great. Hopefully someone will post a setlist as
I don't recall but there were plenty of highlights...Our Little Angel,
Heart of the City, The Judgment, Deep Dark Truthful Mirror, Mystery
Dance, Working Week, Love That Burns. Some of the few missed tracks on the
part of the setlist I saw: Little Triggers, Doomsday, Suit of Lights.
Merchandise has gotten outrageously expensive seems to me. I did buy a
tour program for $15 and will probably suck it up and by a mug tonight.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rozy adds -
Fabulous show--2 1/2 hours! Downtown Milwaukee streets *still* under
construction 6 years later!
Welcome to the Working Week
Uncomplicated
Clown Strike
Radio Radio
Country Darkness
Bedlam
Needle Time
Rocking Horse Road
Shabby Doll !
In Another Room !!
Chelsea
Clubland/I Feel Pretty instrumental
Our Little Angel
Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down
DDTM/Really Got a Hold On Me
Kinder Murder
WIWC
WTD
TDM
Monkey to Man
Alison/Suspicious Minds
Mystery Dance
Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do
Either Side of the Same Town
Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)
High Fidelity
Pump it Up
Love That Burns !
PLU
Heart of the City
Beyond Belief
Lipstick Vogue
I Want You
Scarlet Tide
Rozy
Milwaukee review /setlist
http://www.jsonline.com/onwisconsin/mus ... 319192.asp
Masterful Costello defies age and genres
By JON M. GILBERTSON
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: April 17, 2005
Bolo tie, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, Western-style suit and shirt: Had Elvis Costello been judged solely on his outfit when he strode onstage at the Riverside Theatre Saturday night, the audience might have mistaken him for a moderately and unapologetically disreputable, if amiable, used-car salesman with a dealership on the outskirts of Fort Worth.
Fortunately, his generous sampling of nearly three decades of masterful music did help to deflect that impression. (It didn't hurt that he removed the hat almost immediately). Going from New Wave rock to old-fashioned country to classic pop, Costello performed for more than 2 1/2 hours, and although he often sweated, he rarely strained.
He also didn't fall back on the conventional pacing most musicians use when trying to conceal the toll of age: a predictable, ponderous alternation between slow and fast numbers. Instead, he favored jarring shifts - veering from an opening quartet of serrated-edge rockers to the halting backwoods waltz "Country Darkness" (from his recent, messily brilliant album, "The Delivery Man"), or pausing in the midst of the intricately icy beauty of "Clubland" to pick a few bars of "I Feel Pretty" (yes, from "West Side Story") on his guitar.
Costello indulged his associational anarchy without much stumbling, thanks to the limber responsiveness of his band, the Imposters. Steve Nieve (the very epitome of the huddled professorial keyboard genius) and Pete Thomas (a Keith Moon-level drummer with a bigger body and a smaller drum kit) utilized considerable experience from their time supporting him in the Attractions, while relative newcomer Davey Faragher was unpretentiously effective on bass and backing vocals.
The frontman himself operated well beyond his theoretically intrinsic limitations. Costello's guitar playing did once garner him the nickname "Little Hands of Concrete," and the comparison between his voice and Bob Dylan's remains not entirely inaccurate - certainly, both squeeze intense emotion from constricted throats - but he burned down considerations of mere technical skill, goaded by the Imposters and by the long reach of his talent.
Known most widely for his songs of heartbroken rage and lovelorn contempt, Costello easily poured out an aching, scarred version of his biggest hit, "Alison," and a sinuously slashing take of "Watching the Detectives." However, he also shook his head at his younger self in "When I Was Cruel No. 2" (reminiscent of a James Bond theme song adapted to the foibles of middle age), wrung his hands regretfully in "Either Side of the Same Town" (maturely epic Americana and soul) and simply kicked up his heels for rollicking covers of Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and Nick Lowe's "Heart of the City."
Yet after the crashing noise, the vertiginous tempo changes and the high genre jumps, Costello closed with "The Scarlet Tide," a folk valediction that blanketed most of the near-capacity crowd in a respectful, mournful hush. Then everyone cheered wildly, having given their money to a salesman (or delivery man?) who, despite the look of his garments, had not cheated them.
From the April 18, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Masterful Costello defies age and genres
By JON M. GILBERTSON
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: April 17, 2005
Bolo tie, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, Western-style suit and shirt: Had Elvis Costello been judged solely on his outfit when he strode onstage at the Riverside Theatre Saturday night, the audience might have mistaken him for a moderately and unapologetically disreputable, if amiable, used-car salesman with a dealership on the outskirts of Fort Worth.
Fortunately, his generous sampling of nearly three decades of masterful music did help to deflect that impression. (It didn't hurt that he removed the hat almost immediately). Going from New Wave rock to old-fashioned country to classic pop, Costello performed for more than 2 1/2 hours, and although he often sweated, he rarely strained.
He also didn't fall back on the conventional pacing most musicians use when trying to conceal the toll of age: a predictable, ponderous alternation between slow and fast numbers. Instead, he favored jarring shifts - veering from an opening quartet of serrated-edge rockers to the halting backwoods waltz "Country Darkness" (from his recent, messily brilliant album, "The Delivery Man"), or pausing in the midst of the intricately icy beauty of "Clubland" to pick a few bars of "I Feel Pretty" (yes, from "West Side Story") on his guitar.
Costello indulged his associational anarchy without much stumbling, thanks to the limber responsiveness of his band, the Imposters. Steve Nieve (the very epitome of the huddled professorial keyboard genius) and Pete Thomas (a Keith Moon-level drummer with a bigger body and a smaller drum kit) utilized considerable experience from their time supporting him in the Attractions, while relative newcomer Davey Faragher was unpretentiously effective on bass and backing vocals.
The frontman himself operated well beyond his theoretically intrinsic limitations. Costello's guitar playing did once garner him the nickname "Little Hands of Concrete," and the comparison between his voice and Bob Dylan's remains not entirely inaccurate - certainly, both squeeze intense emotion from constricted throats - but he burned down considerations of mere technical skill, goaded by the Imposters and by the long reach of his talent.
Known most widely for his songs of heartbroken rage and lovelorn contempt, Costello easily poured out an aching, scarred version of his biggest hit, "Alison," and a sinuously slashing take of "Watching the Detectives." However, he also shook his head at his younger self in "When I Was Cruel No. 2" (reminiscent of a James Bond theme song adapted to the foibles of middle age), wrung his hands regretfully in "Either Side of the Same Town" (maturely epic Americana and soul) and simply kicked up his heels for rollicking covers of Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and Nick Lowe's "Heart of the City."
Yet after the crashing noise, the vertiginous tempo changes and the high genre jumps, Costello closed with "The Scarlet Tide," a folk valediction that blanketed most of the near-capacity crowd in a respectful, mournful hush. Then everyone cheered wildly, having given their money to a salesman (or delivery man?) who, despite the look of his garments, had not cheated them.
From the April 18, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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invisible Pole
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This belated review comes from PopMatters.
http://popmatters.com/music/concerts/c/ ... 0416.shtml
ELVIS COSTELLO
16 April 2005: Riverside Theatre — Milwaukee, WI
It's been a long time since the thrills at an Elvis Costello concert came from new songs. During his 2002 When I Was Cruel tour, his latest tunes were always upstaged by his classics. And it's hard to image 2003 audiences getting too excited by material from North, a dull classical-pop song cycle that fans rejected outright.
It speaks volumes about the longevity of those records that, during his recent stop in Milwaukee -- his first in five years -- Costello played only a lone song from Cruel and none from North. Judging by the crowd's response, though, songs from 2004's Delivery Man will become staples in Costello's set. These rollicking, country-rock numbers sound like they were written for live performance and Costello, decked out in a cowboy hat and silver boots, was prepared to sell them with everything he had. He performed each with a vigor and venom rarely heard since 1986's Blood & Chocolate, and the audience couldn't have been more receptive. They were as genuinely boisterous and festive upon hearing the Delivery Man rocker "Monkey to Man" as they were hearing "Pump it Up".
Indeed, the new songs overshadowed many of his classics, which were at an admitted disadvantage. How could any rendition of "Radio Radio" compete with its infamous 1977 Saturday Night Live performance? Or, how, after performing the song at almost every show for the last two decades, could Costello be expected to sing "Alison" with any real passion? At times Costello and his band -- the Imposters, featuring Attractions keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas with Cracker bassist Davey Faragher -- seemed to be playing these classics out of obligation, speeding up songs like "Watching the Detectives" and "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" not to rock them harder, but simply to get through them faster.
To keep things interesting, the band worked in a list of covers, or parts of other songs, that read like an incomplete list of Costello's influences. "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", transitioned into a cover of Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me"; "Alison" led into Mark James' "Suspicious Minds"; "Monkey to Man" ended with an homage to Toots Hibbert's "Monkey Man". Elsewhere, during solos, Costello's guitar quoted a few bars of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "I Feel Pretty", and Nieve played off the iconic riff from the Rolling Stone's "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".
The show provided perhaps the best argument against encores I've seen. Instead of shattering any momentum the band had developed during the set by leaving stage and going through the robotic ritual of making the audience clap until they returned, Costello individually introduced the Imposters during what seemed like a set-closing song and then, well, just kept on playing. Every time they finished another song, Costello would run over and consult his bandmates (well, at least Nieve and Thomas -- Faragher seemed curiously out of the loop) and pick another they felt like playing.
When all was said and done, they'd played a whopping 34 songs (36 if you count the full covers), ending with a gentle, acoustic rendition of the Oscar-nominated ballad "Scarlet Tide". During the song's climax, Costello walked to the side of the stage, far away from the microphone's reach, and sang an a cappella verse. The crowd fell silent as the legend's voice filled the theater in all of its flawed, natural glory. In a large, impersonal venue, Costello was still able to deliver this moment of intimacy -- it was the perfect note to end the night on.
— 11 May 2005
http://popmatters.com/music/concerts/c/ ... 0416.shtml
ELVIS COSTELLO
16 April 2005: Riverside Theatre — Milwaukee, WI
It's been a long time since the thrills at an Elvis Costello concert came from new songs. During his 2002 When I Was Cruel tour, his latest tunes were always upstaged by his classics. And it's hard to image 2003 audiences getting too excited by material from North, a dull classical-pop song cycle that fans rejected outright.
It speaks volumes about the longevity of those records that, during his recent stop in Milwaukee -- his first in five years -- Costello played only a lone song from Cruel and none from North. Judging by the crowd's response, though, songs from 2004's Delivery Man will become staples in Costello's set. These rollicking, country-rock numbers sound like they were written for live performance and Costello, decked out in a cowboy hat and silver boots, was prepared to sell them with everything he had. He performed each with a vigor and venom rarely heard since 1986's Blood & Chocolate, and the audience couldn't have been more receptive. They were as genuinely boisterous and festive upon hearing the Delivery Man rocker "Monkey to Man" as they were hearing "Pump it Up".
Indeed, the new songs overshadowed many of his classics, which were at an admitted disadvantage. How could any rendition of "Radio Radio" compete with its infamous 1977 Saturday Night Live performance? Or, how, after performing the song at almost every show for the last two decades, could Costello be expected to sing "Alison" with any real passion? At times Costello and his band -- the Imposters, featuring Attractions keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas with Cracker bassist Davey Faragher -- seemed to be playing these classics out of obligation, speeding up songs like "Watching the Detectives" and "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" not to rock them harder, but simply to get through them faster.
To keep things interesting, the band worked in a list of covers, or parts of other songs, that read like an incomplete list of Costello's influences. "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", transitioned into a cover of Smokey Robinson's "You Really Got a Hold on Me"; "Alison" led into Mark James' "Suspicious Minds"; "Monkey to Man" ended with an homage to Toots Hibbert's "Monkey Man". Elsewhere, during solos, Costello's guitar quoted a few bars of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "I Feel Pretty", and Nieve played off the iconic riff from the Rolling Stone's "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".
The show provided perhaps the best argument against encores I've seen. Instead of shattering any momentum the band had developed during the set by leaving stage and going through the robotic ritual of making the audience clap until they returned, Costello individually introduced the Imposters during what seemed like a set-closing song and then, well, just kept on playing. Every time they finished another song, Costello would run over and consult his bandmates (well, at least Nieve and Thomas -- Faragher seemed curiously out of the loop) and pick another they felt like playing.
When all was said and done, they'd played a whopping 34 songs (36 if you count the full covers), ending with a gentle, acoustic rendition of the Oscar-nominated ballad "Scarlet Tide". During the song's climax, Costello walked to the side of the stage, far away from the microphone's reach, and sang an a cappella verse. The crowd fell silent as the legend's voice filled the theater in all of its flawed, natural glory. In a large, impersonal venue, Costello was still able to deliver this moment of intimacy -- it was the perfect note to end the night on.
— 11 May 2005
If you don't know what is wrong with me
Then you don't know what you've missed
Then you don't know what you've missed
I think he means the song that I know from The Specials' first album which sounds like it COULD be a Toots and the Maytals song, but I'm hardly an expert there.
On the other hand, I can say for sure that "I Feel Pretty" is NOT by Rodgers & Hammerstein. (It's Lenny Bernstein and S. Sondheim.)
On the other hand, I can say for sure that "I Feel Pretty" is NOT by Rodgers & Hammerstein. (It's Lenny Bernstein and S. Sondheim.)
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
