Well, it was pretty damn good. The setting was great - the front lawn of Ottawa City Hall on a sunny July evening behind the stage to the left was DND HQ and to the right Ottawa U. As the concert started around 7:45 pm, the setting sun broke through and the stage was lit up in yellow then orange. We - me, Dougie and Ee-ee, sat in a bleacher at the back behind the 1500 people with their yuppie fold up shoulder slung chairs who came at 5:00 pm and the other 1500 who came at 7:00 pm without the chairs who stood in front of, on top of and beside the seated. I am told by the Ottawa wing of the family that tedious letters will be printed in The Citizen for weeks about the thoughtlessness of both the standing or the seated from the perspective of the other.

Anyway, about three songs in I realized that Elvis Costello is one of the few artists whose expressions I agree with pretty much consistently..and have done so for most of my life. He played mostly songs from 1977 to 1985 as the Imposters, his current back up group, is a recreation of his first band, the Attractions. He was not playing to the crowd to get us going - he was just playing his songs. By the end of the show, however, it was pretty clear he was having a great time. The five songs of the encore were played with the nerdy menace, spit and rage he was known for in 1977 - he was, after all a computer geek before a rock star - which had apparently mellowed with projects such as his album Painted from Memory with Burt Bacharach which included the great song Toledo. When his first record, My Aim is True came out in '77, he was somewhere between the street of The Clash and the art of The Talking Heads. He was there at times again last night, especially during the final two still vital songs, Radio, Radio and What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?. The band also was having fun, the keyboardist even using a theramin as well as the electric organ as a percussive intrument.

You know, I am not stary eyed about such things but it is interesting - if the rumours are true - that Mr. Costello will be wedding a Miss Krall of Nanimo, BC sometime making him somewhat ours. Will he sit on a Canadian Thanksgiving afternoon someday at the in-laws flopped on a sofa too full of Bird watching the Eskimos play the Stampeders asking questions about the fine points of CFL?