Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe - Costello Sings Lowe - Nick Sings Elvis, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, 10-1-2010

Here's a really fun concert with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe taking turns performing songs. But there's a surprise twist that I've never seen in any other concert: instead of singing their own songs, they sang the other guy's songs! Meaning Costello exclusively sung songs written by Lowe, and Lowe exclusively sung songs written by Costello. 

I've known about this concert for a long time, but I avoided it due to merely okay sound quality. It comes from an audience boot instead of a soundboard or FM radio broadcast. But it was an unusually good audience boot. Furthermore, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I was able to make some changes to improve the sound quality. The main thing I did was I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program and got rid of the crowd noise during the songs while keeping the crowd noise at the starts and ends of songs. Now, in my opinion, this sounds just as good as most soundboard boots.

This unique format was only possible because Costello and Lowe have been friends and musical associates for a long, long time. Lowe found suggest first, in the early 1970s, as part of the band Brinsley Schwarz. That band was a big influence on Costello as he was starting out. One can see this in this concert, with Costello singing "Don't Lose Your Grip on Love," a relatively obscure Brinsley Schwarz song from 1972. A key early hit for Costello, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," was another Brinsley Schwarz song written by Lowe. Then, when Costello started releasing his own albums, he chose Lowe to be the producer. In fact, Costello's first five albums, from 1977 to 1981, were all produced by Lowe, as well as "Blood and Chocolate" in 1986.

I found a good quote from a Lowe interview, about his early connection to Costello: 

"When I was in Brinsley Schwarz, he used to come and see us all the time. He was always there, looking very intense. Even when he was with other people, he always seemed to he standing apart from them. The first time I actually spoke to him was in a pub in Liverpool. He was at the bar, and I thought, 'Well.., there he is again. I'd better buy him a drink.' Because I was famous then, you see. I was in the Brinsleys, man. We were pub rock legends, earning 175 pounds a night. We were big time. And I went over and he just glared at me. Damned unsettling. You know the way he is. Anyway, after that, whenever I saw him, we'd have a drink. I just thought he was a very intense fan. Then he moved to London and we lost touch. And then we started Stiff [Records] and one day I saw him at the local tube station." That renewed contact led to Costello getting his first record contract in 1977. 

Since those early days, their paths have crossed many times. For instance, they're frequently toured together, with Lowe usually being the opening act due to Costello being the more famous name. In fact, according to an Elvis Costello wiki I found, they toured together in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1986,  1987, 1989, 1991, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2022, and 2023! Lowe has also recorded the Costello songs "Indoor Fireworks" and "Poisoned Rose" on his albums. 

But this concert, which was a special charity benefit event, has been the one and only time they sang each other's songs like this. They actually did two shows that evening, and this is the early show. Apparently no recording has emerged of the late show.

Note that a couple of songs were mainly sung by members of the backing band. One such band member, keyboardist Bob Andrews, was actually a member of Brinsley Schwarz way back in the day.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long. 

01 talk (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
02 Here Comes the Weekend (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
03 When I Write the Book (Elvis Costello)
04 Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head (Nick Lowe)
05 talk (Elvis Costello)
06 Don't Lose Your Grip on Love (Elvis Costello)
07 Mystery Dance (Nick Lowe)
08 talk (Elvis Costello)
09 I Trained Her to Love Me (Elvis Costello)
10 talk (Elvis Costello)
11 Poisoned Rose (Nick Lowe)
12 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Bob Andrews)
13 Oliver's Army (Nick Lowe)
14 I'm a Mess (Elvis Costello)
15 talk (Nick Lowe)
16 Alison (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Elvis Costello)
18 Harry Hippie - Cruel to Be Kind (Elvis Costello)
19 Accidents Will Happen [Instrumental] (Derek Huston with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
20 talk (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
21 Lover Don't Go (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
22 Indoor Fireworks (Nick Lowe)
23 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Elvis Costello)
24 Gonna Love My Baby Now (Nick Lowe)
25 talk (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
26 Monkey to Man (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
27 Heart of the City (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
28 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
29 talk (Elvis Costello)

https://bestfile.io/en/eTTF9VoRCKhqk1K/file

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert. It wasn't labeled as such, but I found another one from the concert that was blurry and not very good, and it showed them wearing the exact same clothes, same guitars, same hat, etc... For all the text, I copied and pasted from a poster for this concert. That includes the yellow text referring to them as "cracking good eggs."

R.E.M. - Oak Mountain Amphitheatre, Pelham, AL, 9-5-1986

Here's another great concert by R.E.M. Like the other one I posted a few days ago, this one only became publicly available in December 2025. The sound quality is excellent.

This concert first became available through Rob, who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog, at:

dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com 

It's an excellent blog, I recommend you check it out. I've included Rob's original notes to the recording. That explains how it was recorded and got into his hands. The bottom line is this is a soundboard. 

The only snag is that six songs are missing. Those include the first four songs: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "1,000,000," and "The One I Love." Also missing are "Just a Touch" and "Femme Fatale" from the middle of the concert. (Specifically, they came after "Little America.")

This was the very first concert of the band's 1986 tour, which supported their recently released album "Lifes Rich Pageant," which had been released two months earlier. As a result, many of the songs were performed in public for the first time: "These Days," "Begin the Begin," "The One I Love," "Cuyahoga," "The Flowers of Guatemala," "I Believe," "Superman," "Strange," and "Lightnin' Hopkins." (Too bad that the first three of those aren't included here.) It's interesting that two of those songs, "The One I Love" and "Lightnin' Hopkins," wouldn't be released until the band's next album, "Document," in 1987.

Rob has this to say about this recording: "It is the finest-sounding 1986 live recording [from the band] now in circulation, and the first concert-length soundboard recording to emerge so far." 

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 Cuyahoga (R.E.M.)
02 talk (R.E.M.)
03 Fall on Me (R.E.M.)
04 Shaking Through (R.E.M.)
05 The Flowers of Guatemala (R.E.M.)
06 Driver 8 (R.E.M.)
07 talk (R.E.M.)
08 I Believe (R.E.M.)
09 talk (R.E.M.)
10 Swan Swan H (R.E.M.)
11 talk (R.E.M.)
12 Can't Get There from Here (R.E.M.)
13 7 Chinese Bros (R.E.M.)
14 talk (R.E.M.)
15 Superman (R.E.M.)
16 talk (R.E.M.)
17 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
18 Little America (R.E.M.)
19 Feeling Gravitys Pull (R.E.M.)
20 Strange (R.E.M.)
21 So. Central Rain [I'm Sorry] (R.E.M.)
22 Auctioneer [Another Engine] (R.E.M.)
23 Lightnin' Hopkins (R.E.M.)
24 Old Man Kensey (R.E.M.)
25 Life and How to Live It (R.E.M.)
26 talk (R.E.M.)
27 Time Was (R.E.M.)
28 Second Guessing (R.E.M.)

https://bestfile.io/en/XI9TOlV8nbNdMRZ/file

The cover of the band's lead singer Michael Stipe is from a concert at the Northern Illinois University Arena in DeKalb, Illinois, on October 26, 1986.