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DURHAM — "Yeah," said Elvis Costello, laughing, near the end of his Duke University performance Tuesday night, "there's a few people down at the front taking bets on who I am."
Maybe so. Because over two hours and 10 minutes of music, Costello kept changing identities.
First he was a playful Costello, telling stories and jokes, talking to an on-stage television (playing Frank Sinatra) and whirling a plastic umbrella imprinted with a world map.
For part of the time he was Costello, the intensely brilliant musician, dropping into songs from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead, singing in a near-whisper on his own "Green Shirt," tearing himself open on the devastating "I Want You" from his latest album, Blood & Chocolate.
Then he was Doctor Napoleon Dynamite, parading around in red cap and gown, exhorting his fans to "go forth and GROOVE" and hawking his songs like a carnival barker. He pulled fans two by two from the Cameron Indoor Stadium crowd of about 5,000, drawing them on stage to spin his 12-foot "Spectacular Spinning Songbook" and pick songs for the last hour of the show. He coaxed a few into a go-go dancing cage and thumped away on his guitar while they wriggled happily. He snatched a cigarette out of one young woman's hand and scolded her, drawing an approving roar from his audience.
Whatever anyone expected from Costello, it's certain they got it. Along with many things no one would have expected.
Like the Grateful Dead songs. Longtime fans might have wanted to pinch themselves when Costello, the king of post-punk rock, sang one whole song ("Ship of Fools") and a verse from another ("It Must Have Been the Roses") by the California champions of laid-back folksy rock. And there was no sarcasm to his delivery of these songs — he read them beautifully.
But he did precede the Dead songs by reading a "poem" called "The Day the Grateful Dead Got Busted," which set a new standard for blank verse.
Fans also heard some old Costello songs, "Alison" and "Pump It Up" among them. After 10 years, Costello might rightfully be tired of doing them. But he cheerfully coaxed his spinning request wheel to stop on these two perennial favorites and played them with quite a bit of zest.
Costello's show was really two shows. For the first hour or more, he stood with his acoustic guitar and sang songs from his 1986 albums King of America and Blood & Chocolate and a few of his earlier records, stretching his scratchy baritone up and down the scale. He also moved several times from his own songs into those of other bands: the Kinks' "So Tired" in the middle of "Brilliant Mistake," for instance. He sang John Lennon, Van Morrison, Frank Sinatra.
Then he did a couple of encores, the second one a duet on "Peace, Love and Understanding" with its writer, Nick Lowe. Lowe had opened the show with a fine 35-minute set of his own songs, played on acoustic guitar, highlighted by the '50s-ish "Heart" from his Rockpile days.
After the second encore, when some thought the show was over, crew members set the stage for the "Spinning Songbook" part of the performance. It was more than an hour later when Costello finally said good night.
What was fun about the performance, with all its gimmicks, was that Costello showed a genuine affection for his fans and a good deal of pleasure in playing for them. After 10 years, the guy who used to be rock's angriest young man seems to one of its most enthusiastic performers.
For Napoleon Dynamite or Elvis Costello or whoever he is, this rock 'n' roll business seems to be a lot of fun.
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