True Springsteen & The E Street Band, Perth Friday 27 January 2017

There are times when I wonder how people like the dude from backstreets.com does it.

Actually, when I stop to ponder the question, I'm pretty sure how he manages to come up with the quantity of purple prose you'll find here.

It's just that he seems to be able to do it night after night, tour by tour.

It's probably down to practice and access, both to people behind the scenes and the statistical minutiae of performances over the last 45 years.

Hughesy, of course, doesn't have access to either and is left, not quite grasping at straws, trying to wrestle impressions and half realised hypothesis into something readable.

In that task, talking to the neighbours helps. This time the gentleman on my left and his partner were in for the first Bruce show and, it seemed, not entirely sure what they were in for.

That was the way it looked in the preconcert conversation, though one suspects Mrs Next Door had more than a passing acquaintance with much of the material.

Actually, a glance down the set list reveals a number of numbers you'd expect people who listened to the radio through the 70s and 80s to be familiar with.

Cover Me, Glory Days, Hungry Heart, The River, I'm Goin’ Down, Because the Night, Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark and Bobby Jean all fit into that category.

They are songs you would have expected to get a guernsey when it comes to setlist selection.

But here are the play counts from Hughesy’s nine Springsteen shows to date: Two, Four, Five, Three, Two, Three, Nine, Nine and Five.

So, two of them have turned up every night, as you'd expect them to, since they are probably Bruce's biggest hits Down Under.

But the odd glance aside suggested Mrs Next Door wasn't unfamiliar with most of what emerged in the set list. Maybe she had access to all the albums but hadn't managed to get to a show before this one.

In hindsight, I should have asked where they were from.

And at the end of the show, when I asked for an impression Mr Next Door indicated an understanding some people’s need to attend multiple shows.

Memory, of course, is an unreliable conveyance but I was pretty sure I had it right when I turned to the neighbour at the end of Hungry Heart and pointed out that everything between the opening New York Serenade and his crowd traditionally sings the the first verse favourite wasn't on the playlist last time.

If I was the sort of person to check these things on-the-fly I would've realised but tonight's show delivered my first Radio Nowhere, and, later in the piece, my first Drive All Night.

That was interesting since both of them were, I thought, likely candidates to turn up somewhere along the line. It just took them nine shows to do it.

Unlike the dude from backstreets.com, I do not have access to the statistical resources that allow him to report that Drive All Night was making its southern hemisphere or to remark that three night runs in the one city are a relatively rare occurrence.

Which raises an interesting point. A look at the set list from both nights suggests a clear separation between the main set and the encore.

Didn't happen.

Both nights, the house lights went up at the end of the main set (in this case during Badlands or Land of Hope and Dreams) and stayed on for the duration.

The impression I got from my neighbour on Wednesday was that the general admission pit in Perth doesn't quite have the energy level you find elsewhere. He would have been down there if he'd been able to pick up two tickets before they sold out, so I assume he knows what he speaks.

He and his wife will be in general admission in Melbourne on Saturday.

And throughout the two nights, there was a decided lack of intensity in the applause between numbers. By and large, it rarely roared and generally faded fairly quickly.

Under those circumstances, one suspects a band who have left the stage might have had difficulty coming back, so the treat everything as one long set probably makes sense.

But then, if the crowd is relatively reserved, why the three night run in Perth?

There are, I suspect, two obvious answers.

First, because it's Perth, and touring acts tend to stick to the east coast. It's hard, after all, to justify the expense of shipping an international act and everything that comes with them back and forth across the Nullarbor. So they either play Perth on the way into Australia, or the way out.

Stands to reason, doesn't it?

Second, because it's Bruce, who has demonstrated the ability to sell out a venue the size of the Perth Arena at least once, probably twice, and in this case (and last time, if I recall correctly) three times.

Last time, Adelaide also got two shows, and the second show in Melbourne was announced so late in the piece that I almost missed getting a ticket.

And, when I did, it was very close to the back row up in the nosebleeds.

What questions about second and third shows, on calls and levels of enthusiasm are secondary considerations. We are, after all, there for the music, and Bruce has failed to disappoint on any of the nine nights I’ve seen him so far.

At the same time, I don't recall having been struck by the intensity of the performance as the band ruled through Night and Saint, and even Cover Me arrive with far more passion than one might have expected for what I've always regarded as a fairly nondescript mid-tempo radio-friendly rocker.

Radio Nowhere fairly burned with intensity, and if the four song salvo wasn't prompted by some niggle or irritant, it certainly got the energy level up to where it needed to be.

And that's where it stayed for the duration.

New York City Serenade (with strings)
Night
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Cover Me
Radio Nowhere
Glory Days
Hungry Heart
The River
Youngstown
Murder Incorporated
Johnny 99
Ramrod
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Death to My Hometown
Drive All Night
I'm Goin' Down
Because the Night
The Rising
Badlands
Land of Hope and Dreams
* * *
Backstreets
Born to Run
Seven Nights to Rock
Dancing in the Dark 
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Shout
Bobby Jean 

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Perth 25 January 2017

Lying in bed, after around six hours’ sleep and an early morning delve into the Internet to seek out the set list, for some reason I could not help thinking of one of the innumerable cat related memes out there in cyberspace.

You've probably seen the one with the blow by blow run through a cat's day, side-by-side with a similar exercise detailing the dog's reaction to the successive events in his daily routine. 

The cat delivers a misanthropic commentary delivered from the regulation aloof point of view, laced with snarky comments and statements about the inherent injustice in the feline-human balance of power.

In contrast, each new event on the doggy day is greeted with capital letters, an abundance of exclamation marks, and a vocabulary largely comprised of wow, my favourite, and the best thing ever.

Now, I'm not drawing any comparisons between the other however many thousand fans who packed into the Perth Arena last night and the canine fraternity. 

These remarks are an attempt to figure out, in retrospect, why my reaction when the bloke next door asked what I thought was along the lines of I think it was the best show I've seen.

That's strange, because my previous show, in Brisbane at the end of the2014 tour, has, in some circles, been described as the greatest Springsteen show ever. 

On the surface in last night's performance, there was nothing unusual that stood out. 

Nothing that could even vaguely be tagged unexpected. 

Apart from a little slip half way through Mary's Place where The Boss forgot the words, sang the wrong verse, and admitted he had stuffed things up. 

It didn't affect the performance, though, and the actual slip was so slight that the average fan, caught up in the moment may well have missed it if Bruce didn't point it out.

And, on the way out of the arena I couldn't help thinking that he'd run a tad under the three hour mark rather than landed in the territory between three hours and three and three quarters.

THe only thing that even vaguely resembled a surprise came after Roy Bittan’s piano flourishes kicked off New York Serenade. 

The stage lights came up to reveal a string section, but that would not have been a surprise if I had delved into descriptions of Sundays show, which featured the same opener and probably included and identical string section.

The other thing that was clearly obvious from the get go was that this tour features a well trimmed, hard-core E Street band. 

No Tom Morello. 

No backup choir and percussionist. 

The four or five piece sports section is gone, and Jake Clemons handles all those duties on his lonesome ownsome.

But who knows? 

Some of those missing elements from the last two tours could be cooling that their heels stateside, waiting to fly out to join the tour’s east coast component.

Or, alternatively, Bruce has made the package affordable for the Australian promoter by reducing the cost of accommodating of transporting the expended E Street Almost Orchestra.

Interestingly, this nine piece version rocked just as hard, and possibly harder, then the 16 or 17 piece outfits from the previous tours.

Equally interesting is the fact that in between Hughesy’s initial quest for last night’s setlist and this point of his review, this note appeared on backstreets.com.

Night 2 of 3 in Perth may have been shorter, under three hours, but a vastly different set: 16 songs not played opening night including "Wrecking Ball," "My City of Ruins," "Murder Incorporated," and "Death to My Hometown.”

Readers seeking an abundance of purple prose and a plethora of photographs are pointed towards the source of that quotation. 

Once the reviewer has delivered on his “more to come” there will be a far more detailed account than anything you will find here.

So, some impressions from a quick run through the set list. 

First, after reports of explicit political statements on Sunday, last night Bruce said practically nothing. He delivered the standard food bank appeal in an identical almost word for word version that had Western Australia instead of the other state or city identifiers I've heard elsewhere.

Second, it seemed the whole set list was preordained. 

Three or four songs in, I was about to remark to my right-hand neighbour that signs requesting songs were conspicuous by the absence. A few turned up later in the piece, but they were vastly outnumbered by requests for dance space on the stage beside various E Streeters.

Third, there was no sign, not even an inkling, of Waiting on a Sunny Day and the show was much better for it. While the sight of some kid living out his or her inner rock star goes down well with the crowd, it also sucks the momentum built up through the rest of the show right out of the reader. 

Bruce and the band inevitably and invariably restore it, of course, but last night they didn't have to.

Fourth, My Love Will Not Let You Down, which I have not experienced in concert before, absolutely rocked. As did Mary's Place, the other addition to Hughesy’s Springsteen Song Matrix.

Fifth, as Bruce and the band stormed through the songs that deal with the factors that brought about the Trump ascendancy (particularly Death to my Hometown) they did so with a fire that rendered further political commentary basically unnecessary. 

Atlantic City may not have sat under that “political songs” banner before, but last night it definitely seemed to. Actually, it was probably there all along without anyone noticing until the landscape changed.

And that, I think, is that for the first of nine shows on my version of Summer ’17 Down Under.

The setlist:

New York City Serenade (with strings)

Prove It All Night

My Love Will Not Let You Down

Two Hearts

Wrecking Ball

Out in the Street

Hungry Heart

My City of Ruins

Mary's Place

Atlantic City

Johnny 99

Murder Incorporated

Death to My Hometown

The River

Downbound Train

I'm on Fire

Because the Night

The Rising

Badlands

Thunder Road

* * *

Jungleland

Born to Run

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

Shout

Rosalita

Steve Nieve Plays Elvis Costello, Melbourne Recital Centre 19 September 2014

Judging by the number of vacant seats in Melbourne's Recital Centre on Friday night Steve Nieve Plays Elvis Costello is a difficult concept to sell. Not for this long-term Costello fan, of course. Not, for that matter for Hughesy's brother, who probably wouldn't recognise a Costello song if it came up and bit him in the leg. But he was impressed. So was I.

But, judging by the number of empty seats in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, we must be talking a very tiny niche market. Or something else that would draw off punters. Or inadequate or ill-directed publicity. Maybe they'd all stayed home to watch the AFL semi-final between Sydney and North Melbourne. Or something.

Steve's keyboard work has, over the years, been one of the main ingredients in the Costello sound, And the "Joanna" segment, when the Spinning Songbook picked it out, has been a regular highlight of those musical extravaganzas. "Joanna" invariably signals a spell on the grand piano, which is what we were looking at here (predictably, a Steinway). The segment usually includes She, which didn't seem to appear here, Shot With His Own Gun, which did and provided one of a number of highlights, and God Give Me Strength.

As one of my all-time favourite Costello numbers, you'd reckon Hughesy would have picked up on it if it was played on the night, but Steve did a rather good job of camouflaging some of the selections. The Astute Reader will no doubt pick up on that by the unidentified numbers in the set list.

Some of the selections listed only appear because Steve identified them by name and narrative.

Or maybe that's it. Maybe there's no market, or no interest, in reworkings of Costello material into grand piano extemporisations. Anyone looking for a by the numbers reproduction of the Costello catalogue would have been extremely disappointed. But from the opening strains of Muriel on Main Beach through to the end of Beyond Belief we got a good hour and a half of pianistic pyrotechnics. It was a performance that underlined the fact that the former Royal College of Music could probably have gone on to a fair career as a concert pianist.

There's a bit more to it than that. According to one of the monologues that interspersed the musical selections Steve always wanted to be in a rock band, though the news that their eighteen-year-old son had become an Attraction apparently reduced his parents to tears. He was also the choir master or organist at the local church, and familiarity with the draw bars on a Hammond organ allegedly helped get him the keyboard job ahead of the competition.

But, in the end, it all comes down to what was played, and the performance had Hughesy kicking himself at having skipped Brisbane and Sydney. Perth was probably a bridge or Nullarbor too far, but repeated exposure might have allowed me to fill in some of those question marks in the set list.

In summary, an excellent performance by a master of his art. More please, though one notes the extreme unlikeliness of a repeat performance in Melbourne.

Among the links below, on the other hand, there's a mention of an official release of recordings from the Australian tour (and possibly elsewhere. I'll be buying...


Set list:
Muriel on Main Beach
Shipbuilding
The Birds Will Still Be singing
???
Accidents Will Happen
???
Country Darkness
The Loved Ones
Confident Again
The Long Honeymoon
Shot With His Own Gun
Alison (request)
Welcome to the Voice
Oliver's Army
Beyond Belief (request)

Encore:
Five note improvisation (C,F,A, B flat, F)
Five note EC themed improvisation (D, D, F, E, C)

Links:
The Attraction Of Steve Nieve
Melbourne Fringe review: Steve Nieve Plays Elvis Costello
Performing Arts Hub

Wilko Johnson & Roger Daltrey "Going Back Home" (4.5*)

Ask the average listener for the names of the most influential English rock acts of the early sixties and they'll probably rattle off three names: The Shadows (with or without Cliff Richard), The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I'd like to respectfully submit a fourth. Johnny Kidd & The Pirates.

The Argumentative Reader might, of course, be inclined to dispute that last suggestion. That's in his/her nature, and the key element in the counter argument would probably be along the lines of limited commercial success, pointing to a single #1 hit in Shakin' All Over and a relatively slim discography (a mere sixteen singles listed in the Wikipedia entry here) between 1959 and 1965.

But let's look at those other candidates for a moment.

The Shadows were, admittedly, huge at the time, and prompted any number of would-be Hank Marvins to take up the guitar. You can, for example, cite the early Neil Young in The Squires and early recordings like Aurora and The Sultan.

But once you get past the actual era you tend not to hear too much that's obviously Shads-influenced. Or I don't, anyway.

In a commercial sense The Beatles turned the conventional wisdom of the early sixties on its ear, set the stage for much of what followed and lead the way through the sixties as far as combining an evolving experimentation in writing and recording with commercial success. We will never see their like again because we'll never see those times (and their antecedents) again.

But, over time, that leading the way fades into widespread, albeit very significant, background influence.

And The Rolling Stones were, at least at the start of things, The Anti-Beatles. I'd concede their ongoing legacies as the outrageous showmanship we've come to associate with rock stars (not that they were the first in that department) and a significant influence to the continuing genre I've tagged teenage noise, that glorious racket you loved as a kid because it got right up the nose of (and was incomprehensible to) everyone older than your age group peers.

So, why Johnny Kidd & The Pirates?

Simple. For a start, singer out the front, guitar bass drums behind. Not two guitarists, none of this lead and rhythm bit. One guitarist. Follow that template and you've got, among a multitude of others, The Who and the early Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart out front (who were, of course, the prototype for Led Zeppelin). You can add any number of similar outfits after that, but the most significant in this regard are, of course, Dr. Feelgood.

According to legend The Who were a two guitar outfit up until the time they opened for Kidd & The Pirates (Townshend: They were a truly tight band, achieving a powerhouse sound with just lead and bass guitars and drums. We decided to go the same way, Roger allowing me to take over on lead guitar so he could concentrate entirely on singing. That's lifted straight from his autobiography, where he goes on to describe Pirates' guitarist Mickey Green's influence on Townshend's emerging technique).

Remove the singer and give one of the remaining trio the vocal duties and you've got the classic power trio. Start with Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience and you can note any number of examples along the way, including The Jam, right up to Silverchair and beyond.

Start listing those who started out in one of those vocal/guitar/bass/drums quartets or a power trio and moved on elsewhere and you've got a whole extra stream of influenced artists.

And, of course, you've got what we're looking at here with the singer from one of the most obvious successors to Johnny Kidd & The Pirates in front of a power trio lead by one of their most significant torch bearers.

Given the backstory, of course, I was always going to buy this.

The January 2013 announcement that Wilko Johnson had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer was one of the things that set me off to re-investigate the Dr. Feelgood back catalogue last year. That exercise rekindled a long-standing affection for the Canvey Island quartet that had me picking up a copy of Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple's 2009 Dr. Feelgood doco, and learning of this collaboration in the process.

Going Back Home dates back to a chance encounter at the 2010 awards ceremony where Johnson and Daltrey found themselves seated next to each other and bonding over a mutual admiration for Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. A collaboration was apparently mooted at the time, but seems to have been one of those things that would be tackled at some point in the future. The cancer diagnosis delivered a sense of urgency. With Johnson well enough to press ahead with the project when The Who finished a world tour the album was recorded in a week in November 2013 at Yellow Fish studio at Uckfield in East Sussex, near Daltrey's home.

Behind the guitar and vocals, Johnson's touring band of Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy and drummer Dylan Howe were aided and abetted by Mick Talbot on piano and Hammond organ and Steve Weston's harmonica

The selection of material was a pretty straightforward exercise, with Daltrey happy to have a go at singing whatever Johnson threw at him, and Wilko obliging with a selection of ten Johnson originals covering the Feelgood era and his subsequent solo career as well as a cover of Bob Dylan's Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

From the start of Going Back Home, the song Johnson co-wrote with Pirates' guitarist Mick Green for the Feelgoods' Malpractice it's familiar ground with Johnson's trademark choppy riffs intersecting with the Daltrey growl in a meat and potatoes exercise in prime British R&B. Ice on the Motorway and I Keep It to Myself  follow before a glorious reading of Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? Subtle it ain't but, boy does it rock!

Turned 21 drops things back a notch, but things gradually kick back up through  Keep On Loving You, Some Kind of Hero, Sneaking Suspicion, Keep It Out of Sight and Everybody's Carrying a Gun before things wind up in an entirely appropriate manner with Johnson's ode to the Canvey Island oil refinery (All Through the City).

With eleven tracks on an album that nudges the scales at just under thirty-four and a half minutes there might be some inclined to quibble about length, but for mine it's just about right. You really don't want this stuff delivered in massive doses, keep it short and sharp, a series of short arm jabs rather than a lengthy pummelling.

You might, if you're inclined to be picky, take issue with the recording too. It's a crystal-clear rendering of Johnson's stabbed chords. Muddy might have been better, but this is a high-definition portrait, entirely appropriate when you're talking what amounts to an epitaph.

It's also entirely appropriate that the album appears on Chess, the former home of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. One suspects the only thing that could have enhanced a magnificently worthy collaboration would have been to record it in Chicago. On the other hand, while 2120 South Michigan is still there and, apparently, still operational, you can't beat the convenience of operating close to home in an environment where you're not working with the ghosts of blues men past looking over your shoulder. In the end, given the circumstances, it's all about convenience, and the only thing that matters, in the end, is what is delivered.

On that basis Going Back Home is a fitting way to wind up a remarkable career, a project that underlines the remarkable and often forgotten legacy of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates who were, after all, the inspiration behind The Who, Dr. Feelgood and so many others.

Aaron Neville/Dr John & The Nite Trippers, State Theatre Sydney 24 April 2014

It's mighty close to fifty years since New Orleans session musician and songwriterMac Rebennack relocated to Los Angeles, where he subsequently reinvented himself as Dr. John the Night Tripper. The departure came as the result of substance-related issues with New Orleans District Attorney Big Jim Garrison, who'd set out on a moralistic crusade to clean up the Crescent City and there was a significant musical diaspora that had coagulated around Harold Batiste in Los Angeles.

That new persona was largely an avenue to create an earner to support his fellow exiles, most of whom have passed on, and when you dig back over the man's biography there's a definite feeling that he's lucky to still be among us, and coming up towards age 74 a degree of frailty should come as no surprise.

And, for the first part of an hour-and-a-bit set that frailty seemed fairly evident. The figure who appeared after an enthusiastic introduction shuffled to the keyboards and ran through a couple of fairly obvious suspects (Iko Iko and Didn't He Ramble) before venturing onto the recent discography for a couple of numbers that gradually picked things up. Goodnight Irene, however, rocked quite magnificently, and things definitely took off with a moody reading of Walk on Gilded Splinters.

You didn't quite get the mists rising off the bayou, and the ornate architecture didn't actually start sprouting Spanish moss, but both phenomena weren't far away.

And having kicked things in towards overdrive the vibe continued through In the Right Place, Let the Good Times Roll and Big Chief before Such a Night brought the Doctor's set to an appropriate finish. Took a while to get going, sure, but from midway through things were just fine, and I, for one, was grateful to have been there for it. Walk on Gilded Splinters was just magnificent, one of the very best things I've seen or heard in a long time.

It's also close to fifty years since Aaron Neville's Tell It Like It Is delivered a hit that was, effectively, his bread and butter until the Neville Brothers shot to prominence. The passage of time, one might expect, would have taken its toll on that distinctive vocal tone, and while he's just a tad lower these days the melisma and vibrato are still there.

But it's a voice that needs breathing space, which it gets with the fraternal outfit where the four Neville Brothers share things around in the vocal department. Here, with brother Charles sharing a bit of the spotlight with some moody saxophone and a rather decent bunch of instrumentalists around him there was room for a breather or two, and he actually got to leave the stage during an impressive run through an instrumental that might not have been Caravan, but if it wasn't it was an almost identical twin.

A glance down the set list will reveal an interesting selection from  what has become a reasonably extensive back catalogue, covering most of the obvious bases, very much the Aaron Neville set I'd have wanted to see if I was seeing him once, though I would have liked something else from My True Story in there.

Excellent band, front man in pretty good voice, slightly one paced, perhaps, but that's what he does, and he does it rather well.

Having been to the same venue for Elvis Costello & The Imposters the night before there was an interesting contrast in the demographics. The Dr. John/Aaron Neville crowd was noticeably older, and significantly less cross-generational and given the selections of material probably unlikely to change. One suspects that, should the opportunity to see either of them again in an hour and a bit setting neither set list is going to change all that much, which explains a conclusion that I'm not likely to see either of them again.

One wouldn't anticipate either of them making their way to Townsville or Mackay, and while they're both likely to be back in the country for Bluesfest, opportunities to catch them will depend on what else is going on around whatever times they're playing Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne. Given the excuse to be in any of those centres around the time they're playing the possibility is there but it's not as if I'm tempted to see them at every opportunity because I know there's likely to be something very interesting on the set list each night.

Dr John & The Nite Trippers, State Theatre Sydney 24 April 2014
Intro: The Doctor Is In
Iko Iko > Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me
Didn't He Ramble
Kingdom Of Izzness
Getaway > Guitar (St James Infirmary)
Revolution
I'm the Big Shot
Cotton fields > Goodnight Irene
Walk on Gilded Splinters
In the Right Place
Let the Good Times Roll
Big Chief
Such a Night

Aaron Neville, State Theatre Sydney 24 April 2014
Instrumental intro: Besame Mucho
Stand By Me > Cupid > There Goes My Baby > Chain Gang > Stand By Me
Bird on the Wire > Free as a Bird
Summertime
Everybody Plays the Fool
I Don't Know Much
Don't Go, Please Stay
Ain't No Sunshine
Fever
This Magic Moment
Instrumental: Caravan?
Three Little Birds > Stir It Up
Slow Down
Drift Away
A Change is Gonna Come
Down By the Riverside
Tell It Like It Is
Amazing Grace

Elvis Costello & The Imposters State Theatre Sydney 23 April 2014

At the risk of sounding like some been there, done that, got the t-shirt, wrote the book, waiting to star in the movie type, I have to say that the most interesting aspect of the fifth Costello and The Imposters concert I've caught since early December came before and after the actual concert.

That says more about Hughesy and the circumstances in which I live than it does about Costello but it says a fair bit about the man as well as quite a lot about the way popular music has morphed over the past fifty years.

All of which is interesting, at least from where I'm sitting.

Actually, sitting is a key factor in the experience this time around, since Elvis had a significant section of the crowd up, out of their seats and down in front of the stage very early in the piece. It was fairly obvious he was playing to, and feeding off the enthusiasm of, those right under his nose, which might affect your perception if you were one of those disinclined to stand who happened to have a seat towards the front of the stalls.

That was me, more or less, but the occupants of the seats at the end of Row L had headed for the front so it was easy enough to move to the side for an uninterrupted view of proceedings.

So you might have been underwhelmed if you weren't down towards the front, and you may well have been underwhelmed by a show that was slightly shorter (twenty-five numbers, as opposed to thirty-plus from the recent Spinning Songbook shows in Japan) than others you've experienced, or by a set list that was light on for a few of the usual suspects that seemed to be automatic inclusions in the Spinning Songbook roster, or by what you might see as a relative dearth of obscurities, or...

But you pays your money and you takes your chance, as the saying goes, and while what you'll get isn't always totally, like stellar, man, you won't get a performance that's phoned in, either. It all comes down to the interaction between expectation and on the night, doesn't it?

Cast an eye down the set list and you'll note a significant (five out of twenty-five) presence of Wise Up Ghost material, which might interact with some of those absences noted previously, but it is the current album, even if it isn't the current album by this band. What is interesting, as it has been since the first of the Spinning Songbook shows in Japan is how well those songs work with The Imposters rather than The Roots. Despite the fuss about Wise Up Ghost it wasn't quite the departure from previous form that some people painted it to be. I'll point The Dubious Reader towards When I Was Cruel and Cruel Smile and rest my case.

No, a good two hours, an interesting set list that didn't seem to hold too many surprises and a performance that was as committed as he almost invariably is. That almost invariably is based on eight experiences, none of which went anywhere near obviously phoned in.

And you expect a bit of variation when you're looking at an act that isn't pre-programmed.  Compare a Costello show, any Costello show, to, say Leonard Cohen, who I've seen deliver close to the exact same show live (three years apart, and substantially the same as the Live in London DVD) and you know you're going to get variation. The question is how much is delivered, and how much you expect.

Consulting my Costello show song matrix (eight shows, 116 items) there were a couple of songs I hadn't encountered live before (Watch Your Step, Stations of the Cross, Blame it On Cain) as well as the heartfelt Jesse Winchester tribute (Quiet About It, Payday) and another seven that I'd only encountered twice, so I walked out a very contented punter, thank you very much.

But when it comes to looking back on the evening the rendezvous with The Pope of Pop and the early-twenties Popelet Twins will figure large in the memories. I've run across Popey before each of the three shows I've caught in Sydney, and a couple of pre-show beers at The Marble Bar isn't quite a ritual but could definitely head that way.

They've changed the backstage access arrangements at the State Theatre, which has effectively put the kibosh on Costello stalking activities and affected the post-show discussion, but what we had, with Hughesy, Popey and Papal offspring gathered around a table in what my learned colleague has described as sort of like the Vatican in pub form was an interesting mix of musical generations.

I go back to the halcyon days of the mid- to late-sixties. Popey doesn't quite go back that far but had older siblings with similar musical interests who did (from what I can gather) and seems to have been fairly thorough in giving his offspring an interesting musical experience along the way. They were eight or nine when they got their first dose of live Elvis, and obviously don't mind fronting up for more.

I don't get to hang out with too many folks with similar musical interests, and when I do they tend to be people from more or less the same generation, so the presence of a couple of well-informed and appreciative youngsters is bound to be something memorable.

Particularly if they're sufficiently well-informed (or polite enough, take your pick) to agree that an Easybeats/Purple Hearts tour of North Queensland would have been an interesting experience and one you'd regret having missed.

It contrasted nicely with the demographic profile at the Dr John/Aaron Neville show the following night, where a youngish couple who might have been in their mid-twenties walking down the aisle towards their seats would have reduced the average age in the audience by about half a day.

All of which explains that first paragraph, dunnit?

Accidents Will Happen
Brilliant Mistake
Possession
45
Everyday I Write the Book
Watch Your Step
Stations of the Cross
Ascension Day
Viceroys Row
Suit of Lights
Good Year for the Roses
Blame it On Cain
Come the Meantimes
Watching the Detectives
Walk Us Uptown
I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea
I Want You

Encore:
Quiet About It
Payday
Shipbuilding
Cinco Minutos Con Vos
Oliver's Army
Sugar Won't Work
Alison
What's So Funny About Peace, Love & Understanding

Harry Manx "Om Suite Ohm" (4*)

A glance at the titles in the discography will suggest a certain preoccupation that’s reflected in descriptions of Manx as a Mysticssippi blues man though it probably wouldn’t spring to mind as you run through the African groove that drives Further Shore (co-written with African inspired Byron Bay based colleague Yeshe) and started life as an instrumental before Manx came up with the words. Take a listen to the words, however, and you’re right in that philosophical mode though it takes a while for the Indian tonalities Clayton Doley’s Hammond B3 drives things along.

The enhanced instrumentation continues through Way Out Back’s dreamy didjeridoo-driven excursion through the ancient Australian landscape, with lyrics spoken by Gunjurra Waitairie as Manx’s ethereal slide evokes the vastness of the Nullarbor and that B3 fills in underneath.

His take on Coltrane’s A Love Supreme emphasises the jazzman’s connection to Indian music (the main theme to the piece is taken from a traditional South Indian folk tune, or dhun). While Manx doesn’t attempt the whole four-part suite, using the mantra in Acknowledgement as the basis for his exploration of the piece works well as a slide exercise that ties the blues tradition to classical Indian ragas.

That exploration that continues through The Blues Dharma and All Fall Down as Manx lets the Eastern influences gradually rise to predominance. The same atmosphere continues through Saya, the atmospheric The Moon Rose Up and Carry My Tears, written for a friend who had passed on, reprised from his  from  his 2011 Strictly Whatever collaboration with Kevin Breit.

Reuben's Train is another return to something from earlier in his career. It appeared on Manx’s debut album (Dog My Cat) while Stay Tuned winds things up in a suitably subtle, understated manner.

There'a nothing particularly new hereabouts, no revelations or jaw-dropping moments but a few tweaks and quiet additions to Manx's sonic palette (the use of violins and other members of the string family is a first) add subtle light and shade to Manx's quiet virtuosity. While it won't jump out of the speakers and demand attention there's plenty on offer for the discerning listener, and repeated listens will deliver rewards.