I thought it would be that Phish thing with 70,000 of the unwashed, tie-dyed masses in one place, I thought maybe that festival that DMB is supposed to be doing (or so I was told) - but no, not at all.
Hell on earth is officially defined as:
[Warning: turn down the volume]
It's almost unfair, the jokes write themselves:
"Will the bands stay on the ship for the entire cruise?
Although we can't guarantee that the bands are on the ship for the entire cruise, we have designed a great program around the artists to create an amazing experience."
"Will any band members be attending any shore excursions?
We cannot guarantee that band members will be on the shore excursions but they will certainly be invited.
"Can I meet the band(s)?
There are several ways to meet the bands: 1) by purchasing certain platinum packages, you will be included on a meet & greet with each artist; 2) there will be drawings nightly where winners will get a meet & greet or cocktail party with the bands; 3) the band members will be on the ship and you can always go over and say hello."
"....good music, and bad music."
--Jesse Malin, Maxwell's, 26 July 2004
I watch Jesse onstage, and it has never been so clear to me, as much as it has lately, that what Mark Arm refers to as "The War On Suck-Ass Music" is still raging in our midst, and that we have to win. We just have to.
You can always count on Jesse for a good, old-fashioned, well-placed rant about something that's changed into something *not* for the better - whether it's how NYU destroyed the Palladium and turned it into the Palladium Dormitories, or tonight, about good vs. bad and MTV, and what happened to buying records?
It really is that simple, you know. And yes, things are changing, and even I, luddite that I am, now make the iTunes Store vs. buy the cd deliberation, just like I made the buy the LP vs. buy the cd deliberation back in, say, 1986 - it still boils down to what is good and real and righteous, what makes you FEEL compared to what's produced as "beer and lifestyle music" (thank you, Cliff Poncier, and if I have to explain that reference, I feel sorry for you).
(Actually, I should be making the "L" with my thumb and forefinger that my sister does when I go off on these kinds of tirades.)
So Jesse has this weird crowd, now, I would say 'it was bad enough when all the Ryan fans started showing up' but then again, it's hardly a badge of popularity to be a Ryan Adams fan these days, so, ya know, welcome aboard, and like Jesse said tonight, without Ryan, he'd still be DJ'ing on Monday nights. And then Bruce takes a shine to our Jesse and suddenly the guys next to you at Giants Stadium who would have a conversation about sports during "Lost In The Flood" are showing up at Jesse shows just in case Himself decides to make an appearance.
Anyway, it was weird, and I only mention this because I think the general vibe contributed to some energetic choppiness at the beginning of the set. It was the kind of thing where, for half a second (only half), you start to wonder if it was worth leaving the house on a school night.
But I should have just trusted Jesse to shine on, and he did, of course, brilliantly. He found his groove and despite brand new in-ear monitors causing havoc, there was humor and melody and RAWK. It was a tour opener that felt like the last show of a tour that's been triumphant.
Highlights - I always hate to write a review of a show that's supporting a new release and then gush about the performances of songs from a previous release, but those were the standouts to me tonight. And, actually, you could look at it as a positive - because you *want* to play the new stuff, that's the material that's usually the freshest - so the fact that the older songs are better than they ever were is huge. They've either found (or gone back to, I partially suspect) a more rockin' sound - "Riding On The Subway" just cranked, for example, "Wendy" burned a hole in the stage, "Queen of the Underworld" seemed to bounce along. Of the new album, "Arrested" was the biggest standout to me.
Covers: "Three Martini Lunch" by Graham Parker pissed me off, because it made me want to drag out my GP collection, all of which is on vinyl, and then that sent me wondering about buying CD's (thanks, Jesse); declaring a sing-a-long to an Elvis Costello tune and for a split second I was thinking it would be "Peace, Love and Understanding" (Note to ALL bands: That song has been covered TOO MUCH. Get another song, write another song, do something, but this one is DONE, CLOSED, MOVE ALONG.) only to remember that the EC cover is "Oliver's Army" (and, you know, even at an Elvis show it would be pushing it a little to call it a sing-a-long). An acoustic "Pocahantas" (by Young Neil, of course) is a surprise *beyond* delightful (prefaced by a rap about Marlon Brando). And then, finally, for the very last song, I recognize the melody but can't *quite* place it until the lyrics kick in: a pure pop punk version of "Everybody's Talking".
The band leaves the stage one by one, Jesse's up there with his drummer, wailing away, seeming all the world like he was just getting started and not winding down.
Then I realized: it's show one of the tour - that's exactly what he was doing.
Celebrity spotting: Bob Gruen, wearing a New York Dolls shirt (NOT vintage).
Homecoming (last show of the tour), September 11 at Bowery Ballroom.
Elvis Costello @ The Lincoln Center Festival
I attended two out of the three nights; three seemed excessive, given the different formats of the shows: night one, EC songs with the Metropole Orkest from the Netherlands; night two, with the Imposters (a standard rock show), and night three, the North American premiere of Il Sogno, an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream he wrote for an Italian ballet company.
*pause*
Okay, really, it sounded like a fabulous idea when I bought the tickets.
Truth be told, I would have bought tickets for all three nights had I not been about to enter a transitory phase in my life; I was moving back to NYC and was only arriving about a week before the shows, sans job. But truth also be told, the motivating factor was that buying a ticket to more than one performance entitled me to buy them before they went on sale to the general public.
There. I said it.
Night two with the Imposters, from a 7th row orchestra seat. It ended up being an up-and-down kind of evening, in terms of the audience's position; we stood for the rowdy numbers and sat down for the quiet ones. But that was also a fair assessment of the performance, in my humble opinion. I generally feel like an average Costello performance is equal to any other artist's above-average evening, but I just don't feel like I could give Elvis a solid A for the evening. The setlist was a little too jerky, and the energy coming from the stage was likewise. I realize that the venue is not a rock venue and the audience felt a little different than it usually would, but Elvis is usually good at transcending all of that. I chalk it up to over-work preparing for the non-rock evenings.
The new songs - featured from the upcoming album to be released on (of all places) Lost Highway - were fantastic; deep, dark, vivid, evocative. "Needle Time," my favorite, is an epic on the scale of "I Want You". I was sad he omitted the usual transition/audience singalong into "You Really Got A Hold On Me" during "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" - give Elvis a venue acoustically sound enough and he usually takes full advantage of it. Coming out for the second encore solo, ukelele in hand, for a rich, lovely, performance of "The Scarlet Tide" was nothing short of brilliant, and he should have left it there - the third encore seemed standard and somewhat uninspiring (which the previous encore was anything but).
Saturday night at Avery Fisher Hall, and Il Sogno. I have no classical music background on which to evaluate this, at all; reviews from those who do are far more thoughtful and insightful than anything I could attempt to construct. I can honestly say that it was beautiful, and grand, and in some ways astonishing to view the accomplishment in perspective of the rest of Elvis' career through the years.
Added to the programme about six weeks ago was a short (well, 11-song) set of EC material performed with about half of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (who, of course, performed Il Sogno) as well as Steve Nieve and a bass player whose name escapes me now. "All This Useless Beauty" and "Almost Blue" were favorites, and finally, at the end, Elvis steps away from the mic for an acapella, brilliantly soulful performance of "Couldn't Call It Unexpected". (This was slightly marred by the gentleman next to me who took Elvis' urging to the crowd to sing along 'if you recognize a tune' [referring quite clearly to the refrain at the end of the song] as an invitation to bellow the song along with Elvis; I'm not sure whether it was the silence of the rest of the crowd or his girlfriend's elbow that halted his performance a few lines in, but am deeply grateful whatever the cause, because it was otherwise a heart-stopping, joyful moment, and a fitting close to Elvis' debut at Lincoln Center.
Who knew? Did anyone know he was sick? [See the Billboard obit.]
I'm just glad he got to play with them one more time. And I'm sad as fucking hell that I wasn't there to see it.
My rule is always, always: go see the show. You're rarely upset that you went, but you'll almost always be upset that you didn't go (and if you say you weren't, you're probably lying). But I couldn't do this one. For once, it wasn't work or lameness, either.
I don't know what they'll do now. I imagine it will still go on, but we are almost out of New York Dolls, just like we are almost out of Ramones, and I don't much like the idea of what this planet will be like when this entire generation is gone and we are left with the likes of, say, Guster and Ben Folds and Rufus Wainright (sorry, shirts on the train home tonight, they were at Summerstage I think) and Dave fucking Matthews and Trey Anastasio, all of which are probably fine musicians, but are not interesting or dangerous or exciting or loud or obnoxious or joyous or rebellious, all of which rock and roll is *supposed* to be.
Goddammit.