The Clowns Threw Down Their Tools

Bootlegs are fun for a lot of reasons. There’s the simple visceral reaction of hearing your favorite songs performed live. There’s the intricacies of the actual performance to savor; maybe there’s a new instrumental approach or just a fresh riff that catches your ear. 

And it’s an invaluable way to track the evolution of a great artist, as their style changes, but also the dynamics within a band. 

Bootlegged perhaps most prominently as Brilliant Parade, the September 22, 1994 show at Tokyo’s Kosei Nenkin Hall captures a snapshot of Elvis Costello and the Attractions…well, if not in their prime, then in a later prime, or at least a moment of unexpected reconciliation and music-making.  

The very brief skinny on the Attractions: 

• They were hired in 1977 off a “help wanted” ad in Melody Maker. 

• Until 1986’s King of America, they were not just EC’s chosen backing band; they were his only backing band. 

• They released their own “solo” album in 1980, Mad About the Wrong Boy, featuring compositions by the band members and a guest vocal from EC. 

• Costello effectively “broke up” the band after 1986’s Blood and Chocolate and the subsequent tour. 

• Bassist Bruce Thomas wrote a 1990 book, The Big Wheel, widely regarded as a thinly-veiled autobiographical slam at EC, known in the volume as “the Singer.” 

• Costello’s 1991 song “How to be Dumb” is considered a swipe at Thomas and his book. 

• The Attractions fell together once again during sessions for 1994’s Brutal Youth album, on which half the songs feature the original lineup and the rest feature keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas alongside Nick Lowe on bass. 

• They toured for Brutal Youth throughout the world, which is where we find them in September 1994. 

• They’d go on to record one more album together, 1996’s All This Useless Beauty, and tour behind that album before splitting again. 

• Costello’s primary backing band since 2002 has been the Imposters, which is effectively the Attractions minus Bruce Thomas and with Davey Faragher on bass. 

By this point in their Brutal Youth tour, they’d already done a sweep through the US, Britain, and parts of Europe; after Japan, they’d spend November tearing once again through the UK before wrapping in early December in Dublin. 

Who can say if it was exhaustion, boredom, or a little of both, but the entire night teeters on that thin razor’s edge between loose and sloppy. Near the end of the set, they seem to casually stumble into “This Year’s Girl,” and then deliver a version that ignites behind the pokes and prods of Steve Nieve’s interrogating keyboards. They tackle then-new material from Brutal Youth with occasional gusto. 

Throughout, the mix of the boot itself proves both strange and illuminating. As a direct feed from the soundboard, there is precious little audience ambience…and yet there are clearly long breaks for applause and comments from EC to the audience. It’s like they’re playing to ghosts. 

But the mix does put Bruce Thomas’ bass front and center throughout the show and it may be the real highlight of this particular recording. I’ve often thought that the Attractions are a band who have found brilliance in not really listening to one another. They are a unit, they don’t interfere with each others’ moments, but they are also not really creating a single sound so much as they are creating three incredible complementary sounds that snap together. 

That’s what Bruce Thomas serves up on this particular evening; there’s always something happening with the bass. It’s melodic, funky; busy but in mostly a good way. There are moments when it’s distracting, for sure, but then there are moments when Steve Nieve’s piano is distracting, or when EC himself inserts a guitar lick at perpendicular purpose to what the rest of the band seems to be doing. 

I think it’s probably easier for a sympathetic band to play loose; when a band that’s less inclined to work together tries to do it, it veers from sloppy to inspired. This evening’s entertainment was definitely more of the latter, but there’s enough of the former to remind us why these guys ultimately couldn’t keep up the effort of playing together. The results are terrific, but it sounds exhausting. 

This video is not the show of which I write, but if you use the link above in the third paragraph, you might just find your way to it. If that’s a bit too much work, the show below is from a few months before in July 1994.