Elvis Costello - 1980-01-18 London

Elvis Costello And The Attractions
Clarendon Ballroom
London, England
18 January 1980


01. I Stand Accused
02. The Best
03. Accidents Will Happen
04. 5ive Gears In Reverse
05. (I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea
06. Girls Talk
07. Human Touch
08. Lipstick Vogue
09. Green Shirt
10. The Imposter
11. Oliver's Army
12. I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
13. Alison
14. Possession (part)
15. High Fidelity
16. Love For Tender
17. Watching The Detectives
18. You Belong To Me
19. Mystery Dance
20. (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?
21. Pump It Up


Elvis Costello - vocals, guitar
Steve Nieve - keyboards
Bruce Thomas - bass guitar
Pete Thomas - drums


(Secret New Musical Express gig)


Comments by area51GM:

40 years on .................
Every so often there's a little glitch in equipment or personnel that makes for a different gig from Elvis and his bands and this is similar to the Portsmouth show from April 1978 although in this case it's an equipment failure rather than the absence of a bass player that brings the change about. The gig starts normally enough with the sonic bombast of Goon Squad but Elvis then goes into I Stand Accused, played for only the 8th known time and seemingly a little out of sync with the Armed Forces promotional vibe of this tour. He then introduces Oliver's Army as one from the occupied territories but after the bridge, Steve's keyboards go AWOL. Elvis comments on a problem with the keyboards at the end but instead of waiting for a repair, he takes the rhythm section into a song that doesn't suffer too much from the absence of organ and hammers out No Action. Steve's issues are resolved by the end and he manages the last chord of the song although has to quickly hit the swell pedal to bring the volume down! The change made necessary to the setlist seems to allow Elvis the freedom to do what he pleases then and he plays He'll Have To Go (the old Jim Reeves/Nat King Cole/Ry Cooder classic) with the delicate accompaniment of The Attractions bringing the song to life without a hint of parody. Red Shoes follows next making a relatively rare outing for this tour and then Big Tears lifts the pace after Green Shirt with Steve's keyboards restored to their full glory for the former.
However after the instrumental section of Lipstick vogue, I detect a bum note from Steve in the section "Sometimes I almost feel ............." which is quickly remedied. After about 32 seconds of Detectives, there is a gap which I suggest is probably due to a tape flip and there's a further click at 1:55 which defies my efforts to remove it without cutting out the music - so much for Nero and Audacity (;-).
From then on the quality of the recording (which I've taken from the FLAC files on the Elvis Costello wiki) deteriorate and there are a lot of pitch alterations that I've been required to make to try and keep it in tune. Peace, Love And Understanding has masses of flutter and wow and tape speeding up and slowing down and I've done my best to make it as tuneful and smooth as possible whilst You Belong To Me began to speed up towards the end also and required more editing.
Elvis mentions driving across the Pennines listening to Radio One before launching into the last song, Radio, Radio and gets a great cheer from those lucky enough to live near the Peak District in South Yorkshire.
This was one of the U.K. concerts that I struggled to find for many years and eventually Dave from the U.S. bailed me out (again - thanks Dave) but I think the wiki files are probably a bit brighter than my cassette but still needed considerable work over the latter part of the concert. It is a pretty decent audience recording now that it's been tidied and was first upped in 2009 by ColinB, who also provided some wonderful artwork for those who make CD copies.

Original lineage: source: audience recording
Taper and equipment: unknown
Lineage: unknown -- cd received in trade
Thanks to the unknown taper.
Editing lineage: Audacity (fades, re-tracking) > TLH > FLAC 6 (align SB) > Foobar2000 (flac tags).
My lineage: FLAC files from wiki > TLH > wav files > Nero 8 for pitch, speed and volume adjustment > TLH > FLAC