11.30.2019
ELVIS COSTELLO PROMOTES PEACE IN CONCERT
Centerline: Jim Bessman: November 2019
… “the dizzying pictorial manipulations—sort of a digitally achieved post-impressionist cross of Warhol with Van Gogh—was most impactful on Costello’s traditional concert-closer, Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding.” Said by Lowe to have been originally intended as a joke song, Costello long ago made it into a stirring peace anthem; in concert now, he graces it with artwork evoking that of England’s innovative graphic artist Barny Bubbles’ for his third album Armed Forces (the U.S. version of the 1979 release ended with the song), emphatically including the anti-military directive “Don’t Join.”
Other slogans slugged upon the screens included “Don’t Kill,” “Make love…You know the rest,” and “Pay attention—Stop the adoration of the warrior class.” Many were dramatically spread out over the three screens, like “Missing…Presumed…Dead,” and “Kill…Kill…Kill”—which gave way to “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Non-text images included one featuring lightning sundering the U.S. and U.K. flags like swords, and a hammer-and-sickle superimposed upon Old Glory.
But the most powerful pictures, perhaps, were those of young World War I soldiers. One vintage photo happened to show Costello’s grandfather Pat McManus—then a boy bugle player—the other, his grandfather Jim Ablett, who was a prisoner-of-war…”