The concerts we love, the ones that stick in our memories, often have little to do with the actual music.

It’s the adventure getting there, the people you were with, the circumstances in your life at that moment that made the music hit in a certain way.

I have a long history with Elvis Costello. He was my third concert (the Victory Theatre in Dayton on St. Patrick’s Day in 1979). He also was my most recent concert (Akron Civic Theatre on Saturday).

In addition to being my third concert, that was the first show I got into for free as “working media,” writing for the teen section of my hometown newspaper. It didn’t start me on this career path, but it definitely greased the runway.

Since then I got to meet Costello once. It was backstage at Nautica in Cleveland on the “Mighty Like a Rose” tour and made possible by former local DJ Tom “Grover” Biery, who went on to work for Warner Bros. He took photographer Bob Jadloski and me backstage with strict instructions that I was his “friend” Andy.

No mention of being a reporter and no reporter questions. I gladly obliged, and since I wasn’t there as a reporter, I got my “Mighty Like a Rose” CD booklet signed.

I saw him at the same venue about a decade later, a concert featuring just Costello and his longtime keyboard player Steve Nieve.

It probably was my favorite Costello performance, but I also associate it with my father’s death, which happened the following day in 1999.

Attending Saturday’s show was sparked by my younger daughter, Alison — yes, she’s named after the Elvis Costello song.

There are kids who would hate being named after a pop culture reference from decades before they were born. Ali loves it. And Alison is a fairly common name, and the song isn’t so ubiquitous that people would assume the source upon meeting her (the one “L” British spelling did mean she had a hard time finding tchotchkes with her correctly spelled name at places like Cedar Point and Sea World). It is not as bad as one of my cousins, who named his daughter Rhiannon.

Ali inherited her father’s love of live music, and she said, “It’s weird I’ve never seen the guy who wrote the song I’m named after,” about two weeks before the Akron show was announced. We bought her tickets for her birthday, not realizing it was the same night as Tim McGraw’s YLIVE concert. Oh well.

As for the show, as much as I love Costello’s music, the first half of Saturday’s concert bordered on a train wreck.

Fans of classically trained singers might disagree, but I love Costello’s voice. His phrasing and delivery is distinctive and evocative.

His skill as an old-school crooner is evident in his collaborations with Burt Bacharach and on songs throughout his catalog. The man can make a track about a labor strike (“Shipbuilding”) sound like a torch song.

But he struggled to find that voice or hit the desired notes early on in “ACK-RON,” as he pronounced it.

There was one song where I think he managed to sing in three different keys within a half dozen notes — starting too high, adjusting too low and quickly settling in somewhere in the general vicinity of the right place.

At other times, he was singing behind the beat, which inspired drummer Pete Thomas to play even faster. Bassist Davey Faragher and guitar player Charlie Sexton, a special guest in The Imposters on this tour, seemed to exchange glances like, “Do we follow Elvis or do we follow the beat?” Nieve was off in his corner surrounded by racks of keyboard and organs and a grand piano doing his own thing.

An acoustic set in the middle of the show seemed to get the entire band in sync, and it flowed much better from that point. Even on a tour devoted primarily, but not exclusively, to the first decade of his career, it wasn’t a rote “greatest hits” show. He changed arrangements and treated his songs as living, evolving art rather than faithfully recreated oldies.

There was a moment of panic as the encore built to a crescendo with a cover of Nick Lowe’s “Heat of the City” followed by “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” “Pump It Up” and “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Is that it? Is he skipping “Alison?”

No, he shifted gears, slowing things down with that ballad from his debut “My Aim Is True” and closing with “I Want You.”

I looked over, and Ali was both smiling and wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

That show goes in the memory bank, train wreck and all.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com