There's a new interview on the MSN site by Alan Light, who writes on the Spectacle site. Some interesting statements about the live reissues, and the possibility of playing entire albums in concert!
http://entertainment.ca.mns.com/music/f ... d=23188019
"I'm often told that my work isn't emotional, that it's an intellectual exercise, jumping from style to style for its own sake," says Elvis Costello. "But of course it all comes from emotion, so maybe it's something lacking in the listener to not hear that. It really isn't some big jigsaw puzzle that needs to be explained. It's too much effort to do these things just for effect."
The boundless variety of Costello's music (his most recent album was this summer's bluegrass-inflected "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane") might leave some listeners confused (his full body of work is part of an ongoing, massive reissue series, recently appended by a retrospective series of live albums collectively billed as "The Costello Show"). But his eclectic tastes have served him well as he has embarked on a second career, as the host of the music talk show "Spectacle" on the Sundance Channel. The acclaimed first season featured guests ranging from the Police to Smokey Robinson to President Bill Clinton (the 13 shows were just released as a five-DVD box set).
A new season recently returned to the airwaves, with some high-wattage guests on the first episode: Bono and the Edge, taped during a night off from U2's current record-smashing tour. This season's shows include veteran stars like Sheryl Crow, Levon Helm and Lyle Lovett, along with such emerging talents as Neko Case and Ray LaMontagne. For one installment, Costello serves as the show's guest, interviewed by actress Mary-Louise Parker (who filled in for an ailing Elton John, one of the executive producers of "Spectacle"). The season concludes with two episodes drawn from a marathon conversation with Bruce Springsteen, taped at Harlem's Apollo Theater.
Once again, each show is structured around performances by Costello and the show's guests, appearing in various combinations, backed by his longtime band, the Imposters. The host maintains that all the talking and rehearsing blew his voice out a bit. "I just had to accept the fact that my musical contribution is less important," he says. "I've got to be able to hold my own in the collaborations, but it's really about the performances from the guests."
In a telephone conversation, Costello described his fluid approach to "Spectacle," claiming (in a familiar theme) that the ability to change the show each time was its greatest strength. Besides, he said, even when you try to map out a music program, things seldom work out as intended.
"For the show I did with Mary-Louise, we agreed on which songs I would play with the band, and that we would take the best of those," he says. "In the long run, the strongest things were the more intimate moments, those seemed to fit best, and we ended up just bookending the show with the rock 'n' roll. So you can make a musical plan, but then that will change, too."
MSN Music: What has surprised you the most about doing the show?
Elvis Costello: I don't know that I had any expectations. I just thought it would be interesting to talk to these people in this way. The only experiences I had were from conversations with television executives and producers, and from my brief experience hosting ["Late Night With David Letterman"], which is an utterly different kind of show.
So we just kind of started in; we didn't know if there would be some kind of routine or format that we'd have to adhere to. But we found that, where it was possible, we got better results by letting things go a bit longer, in order to put people at ease, settle into a conversation, digress for a bit. There does seem to be a degree of comfort that people had in talking to someone engaged in a similar line of work, so I suppose that was a bit of a pleasant surprise. People seemed to like it, even when I thought it was a bit stiff.
Is it more or less work for you than you anticipated?
We generally agree in advance to feature certain songs, so that we can rehearse them. Also, I write the show, so there's quite a bit of preparation for each one. Even for people whose work I knew well, I thought it was a bit presumptuous to assume that there was nothing in their work that I might have missed, so I really do go back and listen.
I suppose you could call it research, though I just call it listening to music!
Was there anything that you learned from the first season that you came back and applied to this batch of shows?
Every show had a different approach. We felt fine about bending and adjusting a lot of the usual governing factors of television. There's always a big obsession about "tone"; that's something you hear a lot if you hang around television producers. But we thought that the tone, and even the format, should really yield to the guest. Some of the shows were more concentrated conversations, some were more based on performance than on soul-searching, some are really brief introductions to performers.
On one show, we actually constructed a group. We started with the Imposters, then we added Richard Thompson, so I moved to playing rhythm. Then Allen Toussaint joined, then Nick Lowe on bass, and we assembled them all to play as a band. There wasn't any big theory to it, other than what we share musically. It was tremendous fun, very joyful. That took about two hours to film, as opposed to the nearly four hours I spent onstage with Bruce Springsteen. That conversation involved lots of diversions; at one point, we started talking about "A Black and White Night," the Roy Orbison show we did together [in 1987], and that certainly wasn't in the script. So then, OK, let's play "Pretty Woman."
This season, you landed the two greatest talkers in rock 'n' roll with Springsteen and Bono. How would you compare them as interview subjects?
Well, with U2, we had a bit of a different setup. Bono and I talking would have been the "Thrilla in Manila," if it were just the two of us going at it. But fortunately we had the greatest straight man since Stan Laurel with us in the Edge, and I thought he came across with just as much interest as Bono. I really loved some of his little asides, unspoken things and expressions.
I really did appreciate that they came, that they gave what little bit of time off they had, and also their willingness to arrange some of their songs on the fly. Those songs are such big productions, and we just have a little stage, with nowhere to hide, playing with a rhythm section they've never played with before. I saw them the next night at the Rogers Centre in front of 40,000 people, and it really is quite a bit different than the 700 or so we had in the audience.
Have you found anything from the show turning up in your own music? Any of the songs you worked up, or ideas that you discussed?
There hasn't really been time for it. This season, I went down to Australia after we finished taping and I played a show in Canberra and found myself suddenly going into "Brilliant Disguise" and also "Black Ladder," the [Patti Scialfa] song that Bruce and I did, though I'm not sure if that one made the final cut for the show.
But it hasn't left an impact in terms of writing songs or anything more lasting. The lessons have more to do with looking at what's inside this material. Some people don't want to depart from the text that much or really dig down, but you can only go where they're comfortable. It's not my job to interrogate them.
As you revisit your catalog for these various reissues, have you thought about playing some of the old albums live in full, like your friends Bruce Springsteen and Lucinda Williams have done?
Well, as for the reissues, I'm nominally involved, in that my name is on them, but I really have nothing to do with it. And my honest opinion is that, with these live albums, they've gotten off on the wrong foot. They're doing too many records from the same time period and the same repertoire. But it costs too much to produce them, so if they can release something that's just lying around gathering dust, that's what they will do.
I was asked to play five of my albums next spring; it didn't come to fruition, but it is something I likely will revisit. I did "My Aim Is True" once, as a piece for a charity event, and it was really enjoyable. There are a couple of the records that could be really fun to do. I couldn't recreate them with the same personnel; not everyone who played on some of my records is even still alive. But I think it's about the approach and the aesthetic, for want of a better word. I'm not a great sentimentalist, but I do think that the future of the past is playing that music in concert.