For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: Elvis Costello Pumps It Up on Cedar Springs in '78

Joe Prock, courtesy George Gimarc

Elvis Costello on stage at Faces, on Cedar Springs, on January 28, 1978

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I asked George Gimarc this evening: Where oh where was Faces?

"Faces, Faces, Faces," he said, trying to knock lose his memory. And there, amidst his estimable KZEW ad archive, was the precise address: 4001 Cedar Springs, where Zini's Pizzeria is presently located. The joint was billed as "Dallas's own progressive showcase club." George never went though -- he was up in Denton at the time, his radio radio career still burgeoning. That's where he was on January 28, 1978 -- hosting his oldies show, Jukebox Saturday Night, on KDNT.

But George's good buddy Joe Prock was at Faces that night -- the Saturday in early '78 when Elvis Costello and the Attractions came to town, but one month removed from E.C.'s infamous Saturday Night Live blow-up. Elvis was two months away from releasing his second record, This Year's Model, from which some of this monster set list comes. (After all these years, a new favorite version of "Watching the Detectives," performed by a few footsteps away from Unfair Park HQ.) But there are other odds and sods too, among them "Stranger in the House," a B-side, and "Less Than Zero," the first performance of the so-called "Dallas Version," appropriate.

George would have to wait till May 26 of that year to see Costello and the Attractions at the Dallas Convention Center. "It was killer," George recalls, as though it could be anything else. Same goes for this set, which comes complete with a four-song encore featuring Nick Lowe. I know -- too good to be true, almost.

Oh -- and since George couldn't make the Faces gig, Joe gave his buddy some of his concert pictures a few days later. George, who keeps everything, went into the archives tonight and scanned one. Just for us.