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| Newcastle University Courier
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A Butt And Costello
Elvis Costello / The Pogues
F.M.
City Hall
25 October
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The Pogues (formerly “Pogue Mahone” until the BBC discovered that translated from the Gaelic the monicker became ‘Kiss my botty’ and subsequently abandoned airplay) would be well advised to trot back to the Irish peat bogs and take up peat digging. It would certainly be a more worthwhile career than their current musical one. I had expected better things from this punked up Irish folk band but the excitement of their vinyl creations was lacking in this performance.
And so it was that the packed bar eventually found its way to the seats to take in an enormous 2½ hour (over)dose of Elvis Costello.
‘Shipbuilding?’ I hear you ask. Hardly. Character building more like for those who actually lasted the full length of the show. The set was a tripartite affair, the first bit consisting of mostly less known album filler tracks the second section featuring solo Costello which again wasn’t particularly inspiring (but he was all on his own so we were forced to cheer as loud as possible weren’t we?) and the last piece eventually getting round to some straighter deliveries of more widely heard stuff such as ‘I Can’t Stand Up’ and ‘Everyday I Write The Book’.
To an avid Costello fan the show was probably excellent but to me the apparently never ending churn out of unknown tunes seemed to be something of a giant piss take and these suspicions were partly confirmed by the ever witty El toward the end when he announced that, “We like you so much we’re going to do the whole show again”. You guessed it. The place erupted in ‘spontaneous and unexpected applause.”
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Clipping.
Page scan.
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