Elvis Costello & the Imposters
Elvis Costello has pumped out records nonstop for 30 years, but the New Wave King showed his age Sunday at the Fillmore Auditorium.
Blame some of it on the sound. The Fillmore has never been one our city’s great acoustical venues, but that night the imbalance was pronounced. Like a shotgun in a gymnasium, the keyboards overpowered everything, including Costello’s noodly guitar work. An extraneous theremin also wafted far above the guitars and drums.
Costello seemed a bit taxed, barely talking between songs and fumbling the breakneck delivery in “Lipstick Vogue” and “Radio Radio.” His vocal timbre was fine, but a grungy take on “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea” and a botched acoustic “Allison” proved his judgment was a bit off. At least the inspired set closer “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love & Understanding” reinforced that Costello writes some of the best rock songs around.|John Wenzel
The Rapture
It could have been a riot on May 4 at the Black Sheep, Colorado Springs’ most prominent rock club.
The bill had New York sax-and-synth rockers the Rapture opening for L.A. blah-hipsters Shiny Toy Guns. And while both bands were well received by the sold-out audience, the Rapture blew S.T.G. out of the club with its dancey, disco-inspired post-punk.
Shiny Toy Guns presented a set of juvenile electro-cheese more focused on image than sound, while the Rapture threw down a tight set of jams that drew equally from “Echoes” and “Pieces of the People We Love.” Of course the outrageously wicked single “House of Jealous Lovers” was a hot jam. But the title track to their latest recording, “Pieces of the People We Love,” takes on a new life in a concert. Live, it’s a thrashy bash with so much cymbals that it’s impossible to not party like it’s 1979.|Ricardo Baca
Greg Proops
The best comics are inspired by the morning’s headlines, which is why Greg Proops was only funny (as opposed to very funny) on Saturday at the 10:30 p.m. show at Comedy Works.
Proops is hilarious, don’t get me wrong. Best known for his think-on-your-feet improv skills employed on TV’s “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?,” he’s a master of timing and spontaneity. And that made it doubly disappointing that some of his comedy was untimely. Proops was a crowd-pleaser, calling our fair state “Coloradia” and nailing all the right local references, especially easy target Tom Tancredo. But when he laid into Monica Lewinsky jokes for his set-closing kiss-off, it felt like it was 1998. |Ricardo Baca
Denver Joe
This local country-rock institution recently moved his weekly residence from Cricket on the Hill to Bender’s Tavern, where he’s drawing larger crowds. He looks like an outlaw cowboy from the ’70s, but on May 2 he was in timeless mode: apparently soused on whiskey and definitely cursing up a storm.
His crack backing band, with longtime members Aunt Lois on bass and the gifted Uncle Dick on slide guitar, opened with charming traditionals like “Yodeler’s Polka.” Joe then stumbled on stage to cover Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, to middling results. “Facts of Life” was not, in fact, the theme from that ’80s sitcom, and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” stalled more times than it started.
But none of that mattered if you had a sense of humor and PBR tallboy. Just don’t get offended if Joe tells you to hit the bricks when you don’t cheer for Earl Scruggs.|John Wenzel
