Gig 057 Elvis Costello & the Attractions


Elvis Costello & the Attractions / Mickey Jupp
Bracknell Leisure Centre
1 April 1978


I didn’t fall big time for Elvis Costello’s first album My Aim is True – it had its moments but the laid-back, easy-rolling Californian vibe provided by Clover wasn’t my thing at all. On the other hand I thought 1978’s This Year’s Model, recorded with the Attractions, was the absolute dog’s bollocks, possibly the best album of an exceptional year, arguably Elvis’s best ever, and still a big favourite today. Hooking up with the Attractions, Elvis had gone from being a purveyor of tastefully groovy country-rock to the frontman of the world’s most verbose garage punk combo, ? and the Mysterians if they’d swallowed a thesaurus, turned down by Nuggets for exceeding the word count. Riding the punk wave, his scattershot rattiness seemed to encompass everything from the National Front to the cosmetics industry. It’s a brilliantly cohesive album, seeming to feature very few overdubs, just an exceptional group at the top of their game who knew how to groove, to hold back or go for the jugular. I couldn’t wait for this gig.


Support was from Mickey Jupp, a pub rock veteran who I knew best for having written Cheque Book, covered by Dr Feelgood on their first album. He and his group played pretty decent if unexceptional r’nb and country influenced tunes, the only one which sticks in the mind being called I’m an Old Rock’n’Roller. ‘Yes you are!’, retorted several young wags in the audience. To be honest I thought he was old too. I checked online, he would have been 34. Hey at least he’s still with us, fair play Mickey.


While Elvis was never conventionally handsome the suit/oversize glasses/Fender Jaguar combo made him look pretty cool, a tetchy, unsmiling presence. The Attractions played with an urgency which suggested the whole thing could explode at any moment, their proficiency allowing them to keep the whole set at boiling point without losing the light and shade which distinguished them from their punk peers. It was a weird one for the mainly young, punk-inclined audience, who didn’t quite know whether to attempt a pogo (no!), shuffle discreetly, or just stand there in slack-jawed awe. I think my response was somewhere between the latter two, there wasn’t really any blueprint for this sort of thing. They played for about an hour, a set largely drawn from This Year’s Model with a couple of unreleased tunes and a few from My Aim is True, culminating with a breakneck version of Mystery Dance. This was a truly blinding gig.


I went with Richard and Stuart, in Richard’s blue mini which he nearly totalled on the way home. It may have been shortly after this that I was involved in a nasty crash which wrote off my moped and very nearly wrote me off too, at the age of 18. An oncoming car had turned into my path, as luck would have it I was thrown clear, a few inches further ahead and I would have gone under it. Fine margins.



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