Blondie and Elvis Costello and the Imposters at The Pearl Concert Theater at the Palms

I've been a fan of both Blondie and Elvis Costello ever since I bought their debut records when they first came out. Although I was lucky enough to see Costello with the Attractions a couple of times back in the day, I never had a chance to see Blondie live. While I am always wary of seeing groups decades past their prime, we gave this one a chance and were generally pleasantly surprised.

We opted for cheap seats - literally the second to the last row - but the theater has fine views from any direction and it is not large enough to totally obscure the group even from the back. The stage and sound are pretty damn good (although the mix was a little bass drum-heavy, but not too bad) and it's a cool place to see reasonably big acts, although I must say that it was literally freezing cold in our section - as in, a winter jacket would not have been out of place. I know that this is a common practice, but it was so bad that I considered leaving early, although I stuck it out (and Melanie, who loves it cold, was comfortable).

In any case, we had heard some disparaging reviews of this tour so our hopes were not too high, but when Blondie opened up with "One Way or Another", we threw away those misconceptions. The group sounded great - Clem Burke is, of course, a consummate rock star, Debbie Harry looked damn good at 74 and while she talked through some parts, her voice overall was superb, and Chris Stein, who sat for most of the set due to health reasons, provided some wild guitar sections. These three originals were augmented with a second guitarist - talented, but a bit too much of an 80's metal guy for my taste - a bassist and, of course, a keyboardist (who came front and center with his Key-tar a couple of times!). As I said, Clem stole the show most of the night as he is one of the best and most visual drummers around, but the group played together well and ran through a pile of hits - "Hanging on the Telephone" (happy that this one was in the set!), "Call Me", "Sunday Girl", "Rapture", "Fade Away and Radiate" (another surprise), "Tide is High" (with a bit of Dee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" added), "Atomic" and, naturally, "Heart of Glass". There were some newer numbers that I didn't recognize (as I haven't been following them in recent decades), including a Spanish-styled number dedicated to the children caged at the border. They returned to a bit of politics when they encored with the James Bond soundtrack tune "From Russia With Love" with the famously doctored presidential seal behind them (I was wondering if they would chance this in Vegas but there only seemed to be one dissenter) and concluding with "Dreaming". The set was a bit too disco-centric for me, but, of course, I realized that those were their biggest hits and they still were highly enjoyable.

For both acts there were three screens behind them showing what I can only assume were customized images (there were two screens to either side of the stage showing the live action) and these were "curated" (sorry Mel!) well throughout the night, fitting in with the songs well.

The change-over took long enough for everyone to stretch their legs and refill their drinks and then Elvis came out and won the crowd over immediately with a smokin' "Pump It Up". His back up band, the Imposters, consists of original Attractions Steve Nieve (keys) and Pete Thomas (drums) - both fantastic musicians - along with "new" bassist Davey Faragher and 2 female back-up singers. He mixed old'n'new numbers, but enough classics to keep the fans happy - "Accidents Will Happen", "Green Shirt", "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea", "Watching the Detectives", "This Year's Girl", "Less Than Zero" and the set closer "Allison" (logically). He did one that he wrote with Burt Bacharach  (that had an added drum machine track, for some reason), as well as some others that I was unfamiliar with, but these didn't drag out the set. Costello was charming and told some brief stories as intros, he let all of the members shine (Nieve was particularly impressive), they drew out some of the songs without getting boring (nothing was exactly like the record, but not different enough to cause any complaints), he brought out the backing singers front'n'center for a couple of tunes and was generally damn entertaining. We weren't sure what he would do for an encore, but they came back and stormed through "Radio, Radio" and the ever-appropriate "What So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding" and a stunning conclusion.

Either the groups have updated their sets recently or the disparaging critics were simply looking for something to bitch about as the entire night was pretty darn terrific. Of course, you can't expect them to be what they were in their prime - 40 freakin' years ago! - but we left super happy with the whole concert.

(Rob Bell hipped me to some titles of Costello's tunes that I didn't know or didn't write down - or, at least, approximations thereof: "Club Land", "A Face in the Crowd", "Unwanted Number", "Sugar is so Bitter", "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down", "High Fidelity", and "Every Day I Write the Book").