Joel Selvin's review in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, reprinted by ROCK
AND RAP CONFIDENTIAL:
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Every so often, once every 10 or 15 years maybe, there's a nightclub
show as special as the Elvis Costello performance Thursday at the
Great American Music Hall. Maybe not even that often.
Costello has such a history with San Francisco, it's not surprising
that he came here to give this one-time-only performance of his entire
first album, with most of the same musicians playing the songs in the
same order as on the record 30 years ago.
"We're turning the record over," he said when he reached "(The Angels
Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes," the song that led off side 2 of his 1977
classic, "My Aim Is True."
Costello, whose ambitious artistic agenda in recent years has cut
across rock, pop, jazz and classical boundaries, doesn't usually
engage in such self-celebration, but he did this for a friend. Austin
de Lone is a highly regarded Mill Valley keyboard player whom Costello
has known since he first came to the States. De Lone's son, Richard,
suffers from Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare, incurable disease that
leaves victims perpetually starving. Revenue from the two sold-out
shows commenced fundraising for the Richard de Lone Special Housing
Project.
Not only did Costello, 53, perform "My Aim Is True" song by song,
making a strong case for the album as one of the great premieres in
rock history, but he followed the 50-minute performance of the album
with another 50 minutes of songs he wrote around the same time, one
unknown gem after another. It was a daring, intimate look deep into
Costello's songwriting notebooks that will undoubtedly never be
repeated.
Backing him onstage were three members of Clover, a long-defunct Marin
County rock group that accompanied Costello on the original recording
sessions and never played with him again. Guitarist John McFee
judiciously decorated the buoyant, chugging sound of the band. The
tightly focused songs allowed for only a couple of brief guitar
breaks, but McFee, who has played with the Doobie Brothers since 1981,
tucked ****mmering little accents around the end of verses throughout
the show. Keyboardist Sean Hopper, who became a founding member of
Huey Lewis and the News after Clover broke up in 1978, joined Clover
bassist John Ciambotti, who worked for a time with Lucinda Williams
and currently is a chiropractor in Southern California.
Pete Thomas of Costello's longtime band the Attractions replaced
Clover drummer Mickey ****ne, although Costello acknowledged ****ne
during the show. Clover's two vocalists were not involved in the "My
Aim Is True" sessions, so the reunion also was absent Nashville
songwriter Alex Call and Huey Lewis, who called himself Huey Louis
when he belonged to Clover.
In between performing the "My Aim Is True" songs, Costello talked
about making the album. "It was never conceived as a record," he said.
"It was a bunch of demos of songs for (British guitarist) Dave Edmunds
to cover."
He remembered spending the night in the crummy London studio where the
record was made and being told to sleep with the lights turned on to
keep the rats away. He said he woke up sometime in the night with the
lights off and "the sound of rustling."
After charging through the "My Aim Is True" tunes, Costello brought
out an acoustic guitar and, explaining he decided to do only songs he
wrote in 1977, played a half dozen that few in the crowd had ever
heard. He admitted to salvaging spare parts from some of these
unpublished early efforts, like "Imagination" or "Blue Minute," for
later songs. Each of the tunes would have fit comfortably on the
album. "I Don't Want to Go Home" had the bluff and bite. "Cheap
Reward" snarled properly.
With the band back behind him, McFee on pedal steel, Costello brought
out the secret country and western flavor of the sessions. "My manager
used to say, 'Journalist coming on the tour bus - hide the George
Jones tapes,' " said Costello, who eventually recorded his song
"Stranger in My House" with Jones.
Costello even sang a Clover song, "Mr. Moon," from the band's 1971
second album, "Forty-Niner." Costello remembered the store in London
where he bought the record.
"The mystique of this area and all the music coming out of it was very
great to me," he said. "One of the groups we mythologized most was
Clover."
It's a tribute to Costello's restless creativity that in only the past
couple of years he has passed through town with four bands. He played
Oakland's Paramount Theatre with the Attractions, giving a textbook
lesson in rock quartet dynamics. He returned to the Paramount with New
Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint and Toussaint's large band. He did
last year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival with a thrown-together
ensemble that included dieselbilly guitarist Bill Kirchen and de Lone,
who also gave a brief opening duo performance Thursday.
It was a rare and open night - as open as the songbooks on the music
stands - another brilliant performance from the redoubtable Mr.
Costello.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nov 14, 10:13=EF=BF=BDam, Slo <Slost...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I saw them last Thursday night, the 2nd show. =EF=BF=BDThis was such a
gre=
at
> gig
> that I'm almost sorry that EC didn't use Clover as his permanent
> backing
> band instead of the Attractions. =EF=BF=BDThey hit this comfortable
groove=
> that the
> Attractions, as good as they were at instrumental invention, were
> incapable
> of. =EF=BF=BDMaybe it comes down to the bass playing as Pete Thomas was
> drumming
> last Thursday.
>
> This was music for the body instead of the neurotic, head music we got
> on TYM
> and on....
Mark L. Falconer-film and video links at
http://hometown.aol.com/mfalc1/links.html
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