http://www.elviscostello.info/setlists/050419.php
2005-04-19: Ann Arbor, MI, Michigan Theatre
Elvis Costello with the Imposters
- Michael Duttge
Welcome To The Working Week
Uncomplicated
Clown Strike
Radio Radio
Country Darkness
Bedlam
Needle Time
Rocking Horse Road
King Horse
The Judgement
(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
Clubland - with I Feel Pretty
Good Year For The Roses
Our Little Angel
Kinder Murder
Nothing Clings Like Ivy
Watching The Detectives
The Delivery Man
Monkey To Man
Don't Lose Your Grip On Love - with Elvis standing in left isle with mic stand
Alison/Suspicious Minds - with Elvis standing in left isle with mic stand
Mystery Dance
Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used To Do)?
Either Side Of The Same Town
Pump It Up
Lipstick Vogue
Deep Dark Truthful Mirror/You Really Got A Hold On Me
(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?
The Scarlet Tide
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/aane ... 841800.xml
Elvis Costello goes full throttle
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
BY WILL STEWART
News Special Writer
It took Elvis Costello exactly one note to get an anxious Michigan Theater audience on its feet Tuesday, as he fairly ran to the microphone to deliver the opening couplet and power chord to "Welcome to the Working Week."
By the end of a solid, two-hour concert that explored near-hits, shoulda-beens, sing-alongs and a most righteous collection of cover tunes, that same audience was seemingly more drained than the singer himself, having run the gamut of raw-nerved emotions that is Costello's songbook.
That Costello, through sheer talent and restless artistry, has climbed to near the top of any list of living songwriters, is no longer at issue. That his new and otherwise overlooked songs are every bit as compelling as the radio-friendly rave-ups sees to that point.
What really cements any such claim is that Costello can draw from so many such songs - tunes so perfectly crafted that they should come with their own cases - without ignoring or shortchanging his A-list material.
So you get "Pump It Up," with all of its carnival organ and overt sexuality, sandwiched into a medley with the subtle, stately "Either Side of the Same Town" and the soul nugget "You've Really Got a Hold On Me." You get the George Jones tearjerker "A Good Year for the Roses" segueing into the chunky white reggae of "Watching the Detectives."
What you don't get is a lot of rote stager patter or introductions. Costello clearly wanted to play rather than talk Tuesday night; thus, he made every minute of his one-set, no-encore performance count.
Despite its nostalgic, rocked-out start, Tuesday's show didn't really hit cruising speed until several songs in, when longtime bandmates - and former Attractions - drummer Pete Thomas and keyboardist Steve Nieve simultaneously launched into "Radio Radio," which the band rendered in a note-perfect rendition that left Costello gasping to keep up.
In fact, Costello's phrasing has become so languid that his vocals frequently stray so far behind the beat that they almost end up in the previous chorus. It's an odd trick that's surprisingly effective, particularly on torchy numbers like the new "Country Doctors" and Nick Lowe's gorgeous "Don't Lose Your Grip On Love," which, like the staple "Alison," was rendered acoustically with Costello serenading from the orchestra pit.
The technique loses its effectiveness on faster tunes like "I Don't want to Go to Chelsea" and "Mystery Dance." Here, it just sounded like he couldn't catch up the band.
Costello and the Imposters - bassist Davey Faragher rounds out the revamped and renamed core of the Attractions - struck the perfect balance in "Lipstick Vogue," one of the singer's most clever and insistent tunes, on which Thomas, Faragher and Nieve worked as a perfect unit, turning the beat inside out halfway through and clearly enjoying playing off of one another.
In Thomas, Costello has a human metronome; in Nieve, a musical partner in crime, with whom he can fracture melodies and elongate phrases without having to worry about losing the thread. Faragher, newer than his bandmates but hardly a stranger to Costello's touring outfit, was rock steady on bass and provided able vocal harmonies.
By the last chords of the acoustic "The Scarlet Tide," Costello was playing acoustic guitar and singing off mic, his raspy voice filling the silent auditorium with a final breath of the final tune and letting his audience finally catch its own.
© 2005 Ann Arbor News.
Ann Arbor setlist/ review
"Country Doctors", in which Elvis sings the praises of the kind of avuncular GPs who still perform house calls.
http://www.forwardtoyesterday.com -- Where "hopelessly dated" is a compliment!
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LessThanZero
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http://www.gloriousnoise.com/arch/001632_costello.php
Elvis Costello: This Could Be the Last Time
By Stephen Macaulay,
April 27, 2005
Elvis Costello & the Imposters
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, April 19, 2005
I don't care if I ever see Elvis Costello in concert again.
No, not because of some huffiness, but because the performance that he and the Imposters put on at a sold-out Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor was so good that it is the kind of thing that can stand as a defining one. Having seen Costello several times through the years, I must admit that I wasn't particularly interested in attending this concert. In recent years, either solo or with the band, it almost seemed as if he was always experimenting more than performing. This, one might argue, is what has made the body of work during the past 30 or so years so vital and relevant. But whereas you can listen to a disc and skip it or repeat it, shows are real-time events, and even though the price Costello commands is nowhere near some of the lesser luminaries on tour who demand astronomical sums, the commitment to attend a concert—financial and otherwise—for me overcomes, by and large, the desire to walk out. As good a song as "Allison" may be, how many more times do you need to hear it performed live? In my case, it seems, at least once more (with the other Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" layered in before the final repetitions of the ironic phrase, "My aim is true.")
The band came to play and so they did, with focus, purpose and anarchic precision. From the opening pummeling of "Radio, Radio" to an acoustically centered "The Scarlet Tide," which Costello wrote for the film version of Cold Mountain (a rendition including Costello standing way from the mike, to the edge of stage left, singing out with a voice unmodulated by anything but talent and ability) that completed the show more than two hours later, the orchestration of songs that the quartet threw off like so many sparks was impressive in breadth and scope.
This was straight-ahead rock and roll, with a respectful nod to the most famous quartet in the genre's history: an unaffected cover of The Beatles' (by way of the Miracles) "You Really Got a Hold On Me": Costello and the Imposters, in effect have earned the right (although they're not, comparatively speaking, going to fill stadia) to honestly play that music (even though it was near the end of the frenetic show, when one could imagine that the band was more than ready to chuck it in, even keyboardist extraordinaire Steve Nieve leaned into a microphone that had thentofore only been used for instrumental purposes and joined in on the chorus: this is evidently music that the band grew up with and the spirit was infectious).
The band has elevated its not inconsiderable skills in the year or so since I last saw it perform. Nieve goes from classical sounds to country with nary a pause; he works with his instruments almost as though they are "instruments" in a scientific sense: an adjustment here, a tweak there, and voila! Life. Pete Thomas was able to keep the beat up for so many up-tempo numbers that it is a wonder he didn't fall off his stool about halfway through in a sweat-drenched stupor. No, the beat went on. Bass player and backup vocalist Davey Farargher deserves high praise for his vocal abilities. What Costello lacks in range and timbre, Faragher unobtrusively provides. And, finally, Costello himself. This time he wasn't learning in public things he can do with his guitar. He wasn't the vaudevillian showman, keeping up a winsome patter. No, he played and sang and did them well. Perhaps his ongoing association with people in the jazz world, where your chops count more than your shtick, has had an effect.
So, if I never see them again, fine. This is a memory that I prefer not to have marred by something less exquisite.
Stephen Macaulay has covered previous Elvis Costello shows for Glorious Noise back in 2002 and 2003.
Elvis Costello: This Could Be the Last Time
By Stephen Macaulay,
April 27, 2005
Elvis Costello & the Imposters
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, April 19, 2005
I don't care if I ever see Elvis Costello in concert again.
No, not because of some huffiness, but because the performance that he and the Imposters put on at a sold-out Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor was so good that it is the kind of thing that can stand as a defining one. Having seen Costello several times through the years, I must admit that I wasn't particularly interested in attending this concert. In recent years, either solo or with the band, it almost seemed as if he was always experimenting more than performing. This, one might argue, is what has made the body of work during the past 30 or so years so vital and relevant. But whereas you can listen to a disc and skip it or repeat it, shows are real-time events, and even though the price Costello commands is nowhere near some of the lesser luminaries on tour who demand astronomical sums, the commitment to attend a concert—financial and otherwise—for me overcomes, by and large, the desire to walk out. As good a song as "Allison" may be, how many more times do you need to hear it performed live? In my case, it seems, at least once more (with the other Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" layered in before the final repetitions of the ironic phrase, "My aim is true.")
The band came to play and so they did, with focus, purpose and anarchic precision. From the opening pummeling of "Radio, Radio" to an acoustically centered "The Scarlet Tide," which Costello wrote for the film version of Cold Mountain (a rendition including Costello standing way from the mike, to the edge of stage left, singing out with a voice unmodulated by anything but talent and ability) that completed the show more than two hours later, the orchestration of songs that the quartet threw off like so many sparks was impressive in breadth and scope.
This was straight-ahead rock and roll, with a respectful nod to the most famous quartet in the genre's history: an unaffected cover of The Beatles' (by way of the Miracles) "You Really Got a Hold On Me": Costello and the Imposters, in effect have earned the right (although they're not, comparatively speaking, going to fill stadia) to honestly play that music (even though it was near the end of the frenetic show, when one could imagine that the band was more than ready to chuck it in, even keyboardist extraordinaire Steve Nieve leaned into a microphone that had thentofore only been used for instrumental purposes and joined in on the chorus: this is evidently music that the band grew up with and the spirit was infectious).
The band has elevated its not inconsiderable skills in the year or so since I last saw it perform. Nieve goes from classical sounds to country with nary a pause; he works with his instruments almost as though they are "instruments" in a scientific sense: an adjustment here, a tweak there, and voila! Life. Pete Thomas was able to keep the beat up for so many up-tempo numbers that it is a wonder he didn't fall off his stool about halfway through in a sweat-drenched stupor. No, the beat went on. Bass player and backup vocalist Davey Farargher deserves high praise for his vocal abilities. What Costello lacks in range and timbre, Faragher unobtrusively provides. And, finally, Costello himself. This time he wasn't learning in public things he can do with his guitar. He wasn't the vaudevillian showman, keeping up a winsome patter. No, he played and sang and did them well. Perhaps his ongoing association with people in the jazz world, where your chops count more than your shtick, has had an effect.
So, if I never see them again, fine. This is a memory that I prefer not to have marred by something less exquisite.
Stephen Macaulay has covered previous Elvis Costello shows for Glorious Noise back in 2002 and 2003.