https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 22396.html
A chocolate box of faded grandeur’: Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright and more on their favourite live music venues
As the coronavirus pandemic forces independent music venues around the UK to shut their doors in an unprecedented lockdown, musicians tell Roisin O'Connor about their favourite establishments, and why it's important to continue supporting them
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Elvis Costello
Favourite venue: The Olympia, Liverpool
While I have fond memories from playing everywhere from Liverpool Royal Court to the Brighton Top Rank or “The Frenchman’s Motel”, Fishguard, I would have to choose The Olympia on West Derby Road in Liverpool.
It is the venue where we opened our recent Just Trust tour and while we had splendid nights at such haunted vaudeville palaces as Blackpool Opera House, Sunderland Empire and The Palace Theatre, Manchester and even in the most anxious circumstances at the Hammersmith Apollo, nothing could compare with mood and elation at the Eventim Olympia – a permanent circus building dating from 1905 that was later known at “The Locarno Ballroom” and at which my 92-year old mother, Lillian, confounded all expectations by managing to reprise her attendance for the first time since she was a dancehall patron in the late 1940s.
Any place where the faces of the audience can be seen at the edge of the stage, and yet there is a balcony for seated ticket holders, is bound to have more about it than certain places that shall remain nameless, better suited to a party conference or Politburo meeting.
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Elvis & The Imposters play Eventim Apollo, London, March 13, 2020
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Re: Elvis & The Imposters play Eventim Apollo, London, March 13, 2020
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: Elvis & The Imposters play Eventim Apollo, London, March 13, 2020
I’d love to see a gig in that venue and when this is all over perhaps I shall. Meantime, being a Londoner born and bred, my favourite venue to see EC especially but also other acts is the Shepherds Bush Empire, a short standing stalls means the balconies are near enough the stage to see the whites of any eyes both ways and the atmosphere can be incredible.
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Re: Elvis & The Imposters play Eventim Apollo, London, March 13, 2020
Review by Mark Beaumont, in Classic Rock, issue dated April 28, 2020.
"ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE IMPOSTERS
London Hammersmith Apollo
Crisis? What crisis?
‘Forget about Buddha, Allah, Jesus and Jehovah/ Hurry down doomsday, the bugs are taking over…’ Like a new wave Nostradamus, Elvis Costello has a song for every calamity. He opens one of the last encores the UK will see before its live music shutdown with 1991’s B-movie vision of insect invasion Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over), as close to a pandemic primer as rock’n’roll has produced.
Thanking us for “risking life and limb” to be here, Costello promises to “keep playing till they shut us down”, and dives into the set with a hurtling-towards-the-abyss-urgency. Leaning heavily on 1981’s Trust, he opens with a burst of early favourites that threatens to outpace his voice – he seems dragged along by the bumpers of Accidents Will Happen and (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea but still savours the dynamic drawls of Green Shirt. He’s more comfortable mid-set, letting his tremulous voice fly on sedate, soulful recent songs such as Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter, or previewing his in-the-works musical with the stirring title track A Face In The Crowd. More bridging material from his arch, caustic beard years (’86 to ’94) would have softened the clash between snarl and croon, but it’s a stylistic jolt Costello has pulled off many times, and a closing run involving Pump It Up, Oliver’s Army and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding remains a well-honed pulse pumper. In your face, doomsday. "
MOOT
"ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE IMPOSTERS
London Hammersmith Apollo
Crisis? What crisis?
‘Forget about Buddha, Allah, Jesus and Jehovah/ Hurry down doomsday, the bugs are taking over…’ Like a new wave Nostradamus, Elvis Costello has a song for every calamity. He opens one of the last encores the UK will see before its live music shutdown with 1991’s B-movie vision of insect invasion Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over), as close to a pandemic primer as rock’n’roll has produced.
Thanking us for “risking life and limb” to be here, Costello promises to “keep playing till they shut us down”, and dives into the set with a hurtling-towards-the-abyss-urgency. Leaning heavily on 1981’s Trust, he opens with a burst of early favourites that threatens to outpace his voice – he seems dragged along by the bumpers of Accidents Will Happen and (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea but still savours the dynamic drawls of Green Shirt. He’s more comfortable mid-set, letting his tremulous voice fly on sedate, soulful recent songs such as Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter, or previewing his in-the-works musical with the stirring title track A Face In The Crowd. More bridging material from his arch, caustic beard years (’86 to ’94) would have softened the clash between snarl and croon, but it’s a stylistic jolt Costello has pulled off many times, and a closing run involving Pump It Up, Oliver’s Army and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding remains a well-honed pulse pumper. In your face, doomsday. "
MOOT