One night in Paris

Here, you may enjoy St. Vincent singing a song in the Paris apartment of Steve Nieve, Elvis Costello’s extraordinary keyboard man. You may also enjoy the stunning black and white film that accompanies the music. I stumbled on this video in a serendipitous way. I was looking for something by Costello from 1996, particularly footage from a concert of his we went to at the Fillmore in San Francisco. It was just Elvis and Steve Nieve, and they did some terrific duet arrangements of songs from the brand new “All This Useless Beauty” (along with a profound “Ship of Fools”). Well, it would have been quite the find, because video back then would have been on tape, and someone would have to have lovingly converted it to digital — which is known to happen sometimes. Plus they tended to prohibited cameras in concerts in those days, believe it or not. The thing is, my wife and I remember that concert so vividly (because it was so phenomenal!) that I wanted to find a clip of it as part of our 20th anniversary week. This was a nice surprise in place of that. Just Annie Clark on her guitar and Steve Nieve (the main Attraction) on piano. Simple can be so sublime.

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