Elvis Costello & The Imposters Ex Theatre, Roppongi, Tokyo 13 December 2013 Spinning Songbook Show

Costello Japan.jpg

A glance down the set list from the third show in the Tokyo run has to suggest one of three things. Or two, with a proviso for a third. Perhaps we'll get a little additional light cast on these things at the fourth show, when the venue changes to Osaka's Zepp Namba.

It's hard, having seen all three shows, to avoid the conclusion that the Spinning Songbook concept hasn't played out as well as it was supposed to in these parts. With no Wheel action between the end of the first set and the Hammer of Song segment that opened the second encore, that's a fairly obvious conclusion.

Last night, on the other hand, was going out live to air on Japanese Pay TV, so it's just possible the decision was made to keep the rest of the show within what you might call normal parameters rather than bring in the risk factors that come into play where the Wheel and the selection of audience members to spin it are concerned. Don't want to upstage the star of the show, do we?

There was a degree of what might have been with the couple Josephine hauled up on stage for the Hammer of Song. Where just about everybody else, either singly or jointly, had been female, here we had a bloke who looked like a character. Pork pie hat, white coat, Spinning Songbook T-shirt, girlfriend sporting the same shirt. You'd look at him and label him obvious fan with possible oddball tendencies.

After the jokey preliminaries with the girlfriend and the fake hammer, the guy gets the real one, hits the bell and, given his choice from the Wheel, selects the Joker, which equates to a choice of any song on the Wheel.

Which, of course, he’d already qualified for through the Hammer.

The selection turned out to be Every Day I Write the Book, and through the track the two off them end in the Go-Go Cage, encouraged into Philly Soul/Motown moves by Josephine and Dixie de La Fontaine.

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© Ian Hughes 2015