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Elvis is King!
It turns out that my casual comparison to the Grateful Dead, above, was not so far off. This tour he played a sort of standard opening set, then came back for a long and rambling second set (though Tater considered it to be multiple encores, I think it was just a fragmented second set). He was onstage for nearly three hours, tearing it up. And he did perform a devastating rendition of "I Want You."
But I thought the real show-stopper was a nightmarish concerto version of "Watching the Detectives." He use a lot of strange waa-waa effects (that same guitar sounded so utterly different when he played it with Burt) and Steve seemed to be grabbing handfuls of piano keys and flinging them back down. It was like a Tim Burton film compressed into ten loud minutes.
Well, OK, there was another show-stopper, his nod to Burt, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." He sang it very sweetly, just like Dionne Warwick -- a great tension breaker after his own more bitterly detailed songs on essentially the same topic.
And Tater is sooooo right about the Sinatra feel, except again, I find it kind of inverse. I think Sinatra got increasingly cynical with age, while Elvis these days is more rueful than angry. "When I Used to Be Cruel" was a lovely expression of that mood, one that had me actually in tears.
I counted up that this was my sixth time of seeing him. It's gotten to be like visiting an old friend from out of town. Last night he was on such a roll, reminding me of things that seemed important when we were younger, and realigning my interpretations of feelings I had long since filed away. And he played, and played, and played -- too long, really, to make a coherent show, but too enthusiastic about his point of view to quit before he was done.
I'm glad we closed the place down.
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