CostelloNews.com

Last night at the seventy-six year old Florida Theatre in Jacksonville, Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve delivered a concert with historic proportions. The two-hour show was a fantastic mix of hits and recent material, albeit somewhat predictable. Shot From His Own Gun was clearly the highlight for me.

Elvis' voice sounded a bit rough at first but smoothed out nicely. I found out after the show that he was quite sick. This surprised me because he seemed to be in good spirits. I commend him for not canceling the gig and hope that he recovers quickly, especially since he has shows the next 3 nights.

The crowd was fairly appreciative but I would have liked to have seen more standing ovations. I noticed that people near the outer edges of the first 10 rows or were much more inclined to stand after the songs . That might be due to the misleading seating distribution for the pre-release. Fortunately, I double checked the seat numbers and knew I would be dead center. I was in Elvis heaven as he looked at us quite often and I was simply numbed when he sang from the front of the stage.

At the start of the second encore, Elvis led into Pump it Up and a girl began dancing up front. A security guy asked her to leave which she did for about 10 seconds. When he asked again, Elvis came to the front of the stage and told him to leave her alone. Well, as we know, that’s the signal for everyone to line the front of the stage for the final few songs, and that’s exactly what we did.

Probably the most awkward moment was at the start of Almost Blue. Unfortunately, Elvis had to sing about the first 20 seconds accompanied by what I thought was feedback from the guitar monitor. Elvis seemed to smile in disgust, if that’s possible. He worked right through it though and everything was fine. At the end of the song, a strong stare to the sound man off stage confirmed his anger.

I really cannot express all the emotions that I experienced last night. For all of you going to upcoming shows, you certainly are in for a treat. This is pretty close to the actual set-list, if not exact. Sorry, I don't remember "You Turned To Me" and am not sure where it goes.