Elvis Costello, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 14 July 2014

Elvis Costello played a two and a half hour concert at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall with a set that ran the entire span of his career, from Poison Moon (the first song of his he ever heard on the radio - he had to turn the lights off in the house while he listened because he was so embarrassed) to three new songs he has yet to record, including one of more than 40 he has recently written with Burt Bacarach.

In between he gave the not quite sold out auditorium (Q. What have the people of Manchester got to do that's more important than seeing Elvis in concert?) a run down of his hits from Alison to Veronica that reminded everyone present just how many times he has graced the top 40 in a career spanning more than 35 years.

Bob Geldof once complained how difficult he found it to write songs whilst Costello seemed able to write three before breakfast, a point underlined when Elvis announced that he was going to play a song he hated and which he'd written in ten minutes as a joke, but which had gone on to become a hit ('but not a big one').  Everyday I Write The Book was greeted suitably warmly by the audience.

As well as the hits, there was some gristle for fans to chew on, including album tracks such as B Movie, Beyond Belief and Mouth Almighty and the rarely played Dr Luther's Assistant.  Highlights were New Amsterdam spliced with a chunk of Lennon's You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and Jimmie Standing In The Rain, which Costello finishes unmiked and standing at the lip of the stage, his voice booming out into the auditorium.

With his fedora, waistcoat and smart suit Costello looks every inch the vaudevillian entertainer that his 2013 Spinning Songbook gigs cast him as.  Had he been born a hundred years ago he would have been on the cruise ships like his grandfather before him.  As it is, he's here now - a walking human juke box who can respond to an audience shout out for My Three Sons or The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes without breaking stride - and we are lucky to have him.

My top five gigs of 2013

A bit previous, as Arfur Daley would say, since we're only in October but here we go:

5.  The Wedding Present, Lille, 13 October 2013

This was a small club gig and there was no mosh pit (it would never happen back home in Blighty) but the Pressies knocked out a tidy 90 minute set with David Gedge throwing the shapes and dragging from his guitar the feedback that seasoned followers of the band have come to expect.  The reputation of the band as jingly jangly indie heroes doesn't pay heed to the monstrous amounts of distortion that they've been producing for 20 odd years, the kind of noise you'd expect to hear at a ....

4.  Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Newcastle, 10 June 2013

concert.  Apparently people were walking out of this and other gigs on Young's 2013 European tour.  More fool them, I say.  Old Neil was on top form, and if you came expecting peace, love, incense sticks and an acoustic ramble through Neil's gentler back catalogue then you really should have listened to his last album, Psychedelic Pill, before buying your tickets.  Or listened to any Crazy Horse album from the last 40 plus years, really.

3.  Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Manchester, 14 June 2013

My ears could still have been ringing from the Neil Young & Crazy Horse concert of four days before, but the sonic assault with which Elvis targeted his audience towards the end of his set was like a short circuit on a human juke box with seven (count 'em) of his early gems fired off one after the other. Throw in Elvis as the Master of Ceremonies wisecracking and gladhanding his audience and you had the Royal Variety Show, thankfully without the Royals.  The audience were slightly less engaged at....

2.   The Wedding Present, Lille, 13 October 2013 (matinee)

but what this gig lacked in atmosphere it made up for in sheer charm with the band playing a seven song 25 minute set with turned down amplifiers and toned down lyrics for an audience of pre school kids and their parents.  I've seen the Pressies over 20 times now, but this gig will live in the memory a long time.  And talking of kids with their parents....

1. The Rolling Stones, Hyde Park, 6 July 2013

The sun was beating down, the son was with me and happy to melt in the heat for a few hours so that we had a good spot when the band came on, and the Stones showed how they earned their reputation as the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world by dipping into their treasure chest of hits and putting on the kind of event that few (ok, no one) can match when it comes to entertaining a big, inter-generational crowd.  My gig of the year (so far!).

Elvis Costello and the Imposters, Blackpool Opera House, 13 June 2013 and Manchester Apollo, 14 June 2013

Elvis Costello brought his Spinning Songbook tour to the North West with performances in Blackpool and Manchester.

A measure of the powers of Costello and his backing band the Imposters is that they played over 25 songs each night and yet fewer than a dozen songs were performed on both.  The reason? The spinning songbook chooses much of the set.

The spinning songbook is a large and garishly coloured wheel divided into small slices on which are scribed various Costello favourites and which sits stage left. Stage right is a small bar and an energetic and spangly costumed go-go dancer.

This is not your average rock gig.  After an opening salvo from the band, Costello swaps his fedora for a top hat and assumes the persona of Napoleon Dynamite (Lord Napoleon in Manchester) inviting members of the audience up on stage to spin the wheel. He cracks the jokes while they see whether a song title or a theme such as Love (giving the band some leeway to choose what they might perform) is where the wheel stops. So we get Riot Act as the fourth number in Blackpool and Tokyo Storm Warning in Manchester.

But the wheel doesn't make all the choices. In Blackpool a young woman brought on stage says that her favourite song isn't displayed and  Elvis, guessing her musical tastes based on her age, cracks that they can't play a Rhianna song, 'well, only one or two'.  But she wants Gram Parsons' How Much I Lied and, whilst it might not have been rehearsed beforehand, the band duly oblige. In Manchester, a 50 year old celebrating his birthday not only gets  Happy Birthday  sung by the audience and Costello but his request for Battered Old Bird, another song not on the wheel and not rehearsed.

The Blackpool highlight is the anti Thatcher song Tramp The Dirt Down, delivered with passion as Costello links recollections of his father's death to that of the late prime minister. His musician father used to play the working men's clubs 'when there were still working men in the north'.  The collective lump in the throat of the audience was a moment of raw emotion.

In Manchester, the stand out section of the show was a rip roaring run through the back catalogue with Oliver's Army, I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea, Pump It Up, The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes, Mystery Dance, Radio Radio and What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding fired off one after another in a breathtaking encore that left the audience baying for more.

The Spinning Songbook tour is evidence that one of Britain's finest songwriters and performers is on top of his game. Whether it's romantically serenading the audience with Charles Aznavour's She or political understatement with Shipbuilding, Costello and his band provide two and a half hours of solid entertainment. Long may the spinning songbook continue to spin.

Is It Worth It? Radio 2 Documentary, 25 June 2012

Is it worth it?, the Radio 2 documentary about Clive Langer and Elvis Costello's glorious song Shipbuilding, had the feel of a programme idea both conceived and recorded down the pub.  Presenter Annie Nightingale sounds slightly the worse for wear throughout, and the show switched clumsily between discussing the song and talking about the Falklands conflict without ever really knitting Shipbuilding into the fabric of the times in the way that the producers presumably intended.

From the outset, it felt like they had an hour to fill and too little interview material to fill it, with Costello, Langer and Robert Wyatt, who recorded the first version of Shipbuilding, speaking eloquently but not at great length about the song's genesis.

After talking about how the song was first written and then offered to Robert Wyatt, the show is suddenly filled with reminiscences from Falklands veterans spliced with snippets of news broadcasts from the time - interesting stuff but not tied into people's awareness of the song.  Half an hour passes by before it tacks back into musical territory with Costello explaining how he signed up jazz trumpeter Chet Baker to play on his own version of the song and had to negotiate upwards Baker's fee for recording the session.

The documentary is worth hearing just for the chance to listen to Hue and Cry's tortuous version of Shipbuilding.  Had they rather than Wyatt been offered the song by Costello and Clive Langer, the likelihood is that it would not have become so revered and the subject of a Radio 2 documentary thirty years later.

Although worth a listen on iPlayer for Costello's reminiscences, this hour long documentary needed serious editing to get it down to 30 minutes.  Radio 4 does this kind of thing so much better.

Elvis Costello - Manchester Apollo - 12 May 2012

Like a fine wine Elvis Costello justs get better with age. That's the only sensible conclusion anyone who witnessed his two and a half hour show at the Manchester Apollo could reach. Bringing his Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour to town after an extended 2011 US tour, Costello (as his alter ego Napoleon Dynamite) arrived with his backing band the Imposters, a big wheel containing a selection of 40 songs or song themes and a go-go dancer in black fishnet stockings and red PVC high heeled boots.  Add to that an encyclopaedic musical knowledge, a full house of Costello fans and a chart history stretching back 35 years, and the audience were in for a treat. From the opening bars of Hope You're Happy Now through to Pump It Up, Costello roamed through his back catalogue via Cilla Black and Charles Aznavour's She, and even managed to throw in a version of the Rolling Stones' Out Of Time.  The big difference between this and most shows you'll pay good money to see is that the set list hadn't been typed out and gaffer taped to the mic stand beforehand. Instead audience members were invited up on stage by Costello's gorgeous female assistant to spin the wheel, with the point at which it stopped determining which songs the band tackled.  "Where it stops nobody knows", said Costello, but the wheel picked out hit after hit from Alison to Oliver's Army. With an ethusiastic and energy that would put entertainers half his age to shame (to call him a mere musician or singer/songwriter would be to understate the role he undertakes each night as emcee cum ringmaster in curating the show), Costello prowls the stage like a cross between Jerry Springer and a black panther, wisecracking as he goes and descending into the audience to sing some of the numbers, even appearing in the balcony. At one point, Costello span the wheel himself and artificially stopped it in order to land on the theme 'Joanna' ("well if you can't cheat in Manchester, where can you?") enabling keyboard impresario Steve Naive to launch into a couple of songs.  A personal highlight was a joyous Talking In The Dark, but in a set of this length there were several high points. Anyone returning to Costello's career after 35 years will be surprised to see the angry young man of My Aim Is True having mellowed into a vaudevillian entertainer who so obviously enjoys entertaining his audience.  But it didn't seem incongruous that he could play Tramp The Dirt Down (which envisages the day that a former prime minister is finally buried) and yet have his audience leave at the end of the evening to Morecambe & Wise's Bring Me Sunshine.  This was rock'n'roll as wholesome family entertainment with something for everyone.  Long may the Spectacular Spinning Songbook continue to revolve.