Elvis Costello - The Monkey Speaks His Mind Tour, Riverside Theatre, Milwaukee Apr 18 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music The Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1 by The Prodigy From $11 Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 The Bottom Line In which the author leaves exhausted. The curtains dressing the bare-bones stage glowed an intense violet, into which the band had disappeared in silhouette. A hot golden light flooded over him so that he appeared not as a man, but as a collection of sinister shadows; an eerie quiet enveloped the room, as, over little more than the occasional blade of sound from his guitar, he sang with a stalker’s conviction: I want you. It’s one of the creepiest songs in Elvis Costello’s massive body of work, and his shiver-inducing delivery of it was the culmination of his thirty-plus song, two-and-half-hour set at the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, as part of his The Monkey Speaks His Mind Tour in support of his fabulous latest disc The Delivery Man. On this overcast night next to the Milwaukee River, Costello and his band, the Imposters (including long-time Costello compatriots Steve Nieve on keyboards and Pete Thomas on drums, along with Cracker bassist Davey Faragher), ripped through a gritty, and at times, oppressively loud set drawn from a cluster of his darkest albums. People who know Costello's back catalogue know that Costello is as much musicologist as he is musician (his pre-show tapes included jazz, hip-hop, rock, and bluegrass), and he tends to compose compartmentally. His albums can be grouped into little clusters based on lyrical themes, musical influences or genres; and on his current tour, Costello is focusing on his more southern flavored country and blues albums - all in keeping with the sounds of The Delivery Man. In addition to playing nearly half of the new album, Costello dug into lesser known songs from underappreciated recent albums like Brutal Youth (1994) and When I Was Cruel (2002), acknowleged classic records like Blood and Chocolate (1986) and My Aim is True (1977), and a sprinkling of miscellaneous early hits. - - - - - Seated as I was in the "usher" seats - ie. the last row (LL) on the floor, next to an aisle, next to one of the main doors (though, being no usher, I actually did pay nearly 60 dollars for my ticket) - I had a good vantage point from which to observe, not only the concert itself, but also the many comings and goings of my fellow concertgoers. At one point, about a half dozen songs into the set, a guy on his way to his third soft pretzel and Miller Lite of the night shouted excitedly to me as he exited: "What a show, huh?" "What?" I asked. "What a SHOW, huh?" I gave him a half-hearted thumbs-up, but as I re-focused back on the swampy groove the band had cooked up for "Bedlam", a quiet discomfort settled over me. Maybe it was the seats, though it's often said that there's not a bad seat in the Riverside. Maybe I was inadvertently channeling the awkwardness of the middle-aged couple in front of me, two former yuppies apparently unfamiliar with any of Costello's work beyond "Allison" but fiercely determined to convince each other that they were having a really really good time, each echoing the queer gyrations of the other with amplifications of their own... queer gyrations. Whatever it was, the what-a-show guy had catalyzed an ugly feeling, a creeping sense of dissatisfaction regarding the evening's performance. Is this it? It's an awful feeling to have, especially when you've got one of the world's great rock combos on stage in front of you led by one of the greatest living songwriters of our time; especially when the band looks like they're having such a good time; especially when they're pulling out terrific "deep cuts" like "Uncomplicated" and "Our Little Angel" from twenty-year-old albums, songs you always wanted to hear live, but thought you'd never get the chance to. The people up front looked like they were having a blast; but, a mere thirty rows behind them, I felt strangely removed from their energy. And the band's. Put simply, I was feeling let down by the show. At least the first half of it. And, admittedly, part of that letdown may have had to do with the venue. Though I love the Riverside Theatre - located in the shadow of the city's magnificent old-versus-new skyscrapers - and have seen numerous concerts and theatrical productions there (including Howard Jones, Tori Amos, Evita, Anita Baker), it's ill-suited to rock performances, and especially early on, the sound for this show was muddy and ugly, with Nieve's jazzy doodles often either getting totally obliterated (especially on "Country Darkness", which should have been a showcase for him, but which found Costello doubling the piano lines on the guitar), or coming off shrill. It's hard to tell how much of this was intentional; after all, the mix often matched the rhythm-heavy production of The Delivery Man; and it did get better later on in the show. But beyond mere acoustics, it seems that the Imposters' just-the-basics, rough-and-heavy approach would have packed a greater punch in more intimate, less elegant surroundings. The band was releasing an enormous amount of vibe: Thomas wailing on his drumset like a pissed-off teenager, Steve Nieve wholly in touch with his Inner Booker T. (not to mention his Inner Bill Black, Rod Argent, and Ray Manzarek), and just the idea that with the exception of Faragher, these guys have a history together dating back to my days on the pre-school playground. This was a boozy-style, dusty roadhouse show trying to pass as an uppercrust Saturday evening entertainment. It seemed so potentially exciting, but it felt so remote. Still, even if the general vibe of the show often left me cold, the band generally sounded terrific, especially on newer material like "Needle Time" and "Either Side of the Same Town", both of which pierced through the otherwise disturbing distance of the show to land squarely in my gut. Less consistent were the popular favorites. Oldies like "Welcome to the Working Week" and "Radio Radio" sounded rushed and perfunctory; "Tonight the Bottle Left Me Down" felt like a cheesy cruise ship number and "Clubland" was just plain boring. On the other hand - and this is was a turning point in the show - the dark reggae of "Watching the Detectives" emerged from the grungy sneer of "When I Was Cruel No. 2", like some terrible monster emerging from the primordial slime. And from there, the show took on a frenzied pace, with the band delivering one roof-shaking crowd-pleaser after another including a pogo-til-ya-puke take on "Pump It Up". But Costello was best at his sparest, and if he couldn't always project the rockin' energy of the fast-and-loud songs to the back of the theatre, he most certainly could command an alarmingly pervasive silence (a greater feat, I should say) from the crowd, as he did with the aforementioned "I Want You". He closed the night with a painfully heartfelt rendition of "Scarlet Tide", even stepping away from the microphone for entire verse of it - the balls on him! - just a guy and his guitar in a lonely spotlight. The sheer audacity of it was thrilling - but there was something indescribably beautiful about the smallness of it, the way you could feel every body in the building straining to hear it. And then the collective release when he returned to the shelter of electrical amplification. There were lots of great little moments like this - the Smokey Robinson call-and-response interlude during "Deep Dark Truth Mirror", the interpolation of the other Elvis's "Suspicious Minds" as a moving coda to "Allison", the near-a cappella, gospel-inflected opening verse of "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" which reconnected the song to the Sam & Dave original - but, all too often, I found myself... Well, that's just it: I found myself. At no point was I in any danger of falling into the aisle or biffing someone in the face with a flailing limb. At no point did I ever reach that live-show nirvana, that strange place where pasts and futures are swallowed whole by a glorious, all-consuming present. At no point did the door adjacent to my seat cease to feel like a temptation or an annoyance. This was merely a fine show, and while I sometimes leave a concert feeling exhausted from sustained euphoria, this night I left with an exhaustion of an entirely different sort: that of trying to hard to get blown away by something that just wasn't blowing me away. Elvis Costello and the Imposters' The Monkey Speaks His Mind concert was merely a fine show. It breaks my heart to write that. - - - - - SETLIST: Welcome to the Working Week Uncomplicated Clown Strike Radio Radio Country Darkness Bedlam Needle Time Rocking Horse Road Shabby Doll In Another Room (I Don't Want to Go To) Chelsea Clubland Our Little Angel Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down Deep Dark Truthful Mirror/You Really Got a Hold On Me Kinder Murder When I Was Cruel No. 2 Watching the Detectives The Delivery Man Monkey to Man Allison/Suspicious Minds Mystery Dance Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Either Side of the Same Town I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down High Fidelity Pump It Up Love That Burns (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? Heart of the City Beyond Belief Lipstick Vogue I Want You Scarlet Tide

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