Elvis Costello Without Abbott Presley

    

    I wanted to write a Taichung Journal piece about the Elvis Costello concert I saw but I didn't know what to write. “We went to see Elvis Costello one-man-show a few nights ago. That man is so full of himself, but it was fun to see him stretch his accomplishments to the breaking point, applauding himself, and at one point saying there was a special guest in the wings; himself,” is all I wrote about it to my friend in the entertainment mecca of New York City.

      There is not much else to say besides the facts: Elvis Costello entered the stage alone, and left alone. There were seven acoustic guitars and a baby grand piano on stage in front of a twenty-foot square flat screen made to look like a ‘60’s TV set. A few of his old MTV videos played when we entered the hall. During the show, photos of his life, his teddy boy grandfather who played on a White Line cruiser, flashed, and his father’s band playing a cheesy version of “If I had a Hammer” which he let run and came back during to start an aborted clap-along. It was all so contrived and well-practiced, including a segment of “home-with-the-family” songs (the 62-year old man has twin nine-year-old kids) by sitting in a chair, wearing a straw hat, swaying one crooked leg, and strumming innocently. 

     The biggest blow-up was “Watching the Detectives” when he looped a reggae beat from his acoustic which he played wickedly over. My wife loved all the paperback detective novel covers that flashed on the screen. 

     The piano rave-ups to other heartfelt songs that the audience didn’t understand (there should have been a LED loop with the lyrics translated, or at least English) sloppy and loud, were 75% attitude with flourishes. His hit “She” from movie Nodding Hill was the only famous thing he’s done in thirty years, got the most applause; his 'remember-me' aberration. The Elvis Costello show was the flashback we all will have in the face of death, though he gets to have one on stage between two typhoons in Taipei. 

      The venue, Taipei National Music Hall, was a foreboding. No tacky souvenir table had he. The glossy, thin program was for  season-ticket holding VIP’s only. Not for regular patrons, like me, paying $135 for the opportunity to see, out of desperation in Taiwan’s vast desert of western pop talent, a trickling oasis. They wouldn’t even give me a bloody program! Why? Because Elvis Costello thinks he belongs to a rarefied cabal of singer-songwriters and has read too many of his own Rolling Stone-Wikipedia biographies. He is not humble to play with a band of other musicians or a crowd of rowdy fans. Oh no, not him. Leave the riffraff for Madonna and The Scorpions. Costello is in the class of Richard Clayderman, who  can at least play a clear note on the keyboard. Linda Ronstadt had a Nelson Riddle Orchestra behind her comeback. Where is Bert Bacharach when you need him?