Elvis vs Mingus

September 30, 2001

I went to see the odd pairing of Elvis Costello and the Charlie Mingus Orchestra play at Royce Hall the other night. I’m hardly a jazz fanatic, particularly the odd, free noise that is Mingus. Still, the performers put on quite the show and it was well worth going to.

The performance consisted of re-arranged Costello songs, Mingus instrumentals and new hybrid songs where Costello wrote new vocals over original Mingus tunes.

The new jazzy versions of Costello songs worked surprisingly well. “Watching the Detectives” took on some new inflections, and “Almost Blue” took on yet another form (it’s gone from rock to country to jazz and back by now), although I still prefer Chet Baker’s jazz arrangement a bit more.

When the Mingus Orchestra played instrumentals, it was truly something to behold. Mingus has a reputation for being inaccessible, but I thought everything was very listenable. It takes some getting used to, but after a while you can start isolating instruments and bits and start picking out the melodies and such. Fun, fun listening. Everytime someone got to their mid-song solo, there was some real virtuoso playing going on.

I think the least songs were the new hybrid songs. Part of the problem is that the sound mix at Royce was surprisingly off. I had a hard time picking up the vocal over the orchestra, particularly when the entire horn section was going. Losing the vocal means you can’t hear the lyrics, Costello’s greatest asset. This is less of a problem with Costello’s songs, since I have those lyrics memorized. This is pretty much death for the new stuff. Quite pretty, but I couldn’t understand anything that he was singing.

This wasn’t the most successful collaboration I’ve seen, but it did provide for an interesting night. Elvis Costello has a few more performances in line this year, being UCLA’s “Artist in Residence.” I look forward to what comes next. Hopefully a Costello/Nieve performance is in the works.

Posted in From Blown Speakers