Spectacle season 2

[johnfoyle]

The links now say -

'The blog you were looking for was not found.'

Did anyone save the text of this?

[Neil.]

---

[wardo68]

We've known for a while that Elvis is pompous. We love him just the same.

[Ypsilanti]

`

[Neil.]

Oh God, I've no axe to grind over Elvis - I love the man! Just reporting what I read in that blog post. But, on reflection, I don't think it's good me commenting on something that can't be read first hand any more, so I'm removing my post. Sorry if it leaves this thread in nonsensical tatters!

[Otis Westinghouse]

So what did it say?

[Ypsilanti]

Jeez, Neil-- I feel bad. I wasn't trying to start any shit with you. My response probably went too far. I'm going to delete my post as well--as long as the thread is already a little chopped up.

For the record, you're one of my favorite posters on this site--I always look forward to reading what you've written. Your posts, especially those about Elvis' music, are fun to read--thoughtful, interesting. I really hope I didn't piss you off. Very sorry.

[Neil.]

Not at all Ypsilanti - your post made me realise that I was reporting something that had been removed from the original blog because it contained material unintended for public scrutiny. I didn't think you were getting at me at all - just defending our hero! Good on you!

[scielle]

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... o1206.html

Interviewer Costello talks about talking about music
by Ed Masley - Dec. 6, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

As Elvis Costello prepares to launch the second season of "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With . . . " he'd like to make it clear that he has no idea whether this will be his final season of hosting the program.

"Unfortunately, one of the first interviews I did for the launch of this series has gone into print," he says. "And it gives the impression that I'm very negative about the program because I answered quite honestly that I am not vocationally either a journalist or a television presenter. It's something that I've got to do as an aside from, I won't even say the career, but the vocation I have as a musician.

"And next thing you know, you're seeing headlines attached to your name that say I've quit the series. Well, I have a number of meager talents, but one of them is not clairvoyance. I have no way of knowing whether Season 2 will be well-received, much less whether there would ever be a Season 3."

The season premieres Wednesday night on the Sundance Channel with Bono and the Edge as his musical guests.

Question: Now that you've gotten to be an interviewer on the show, do you now judge the people asking you questions differently?

Answer: Well, I've always taken the same approach, I think, to interviews. If I sense that the guy is a pompous ass or an idiot, I'll make stuff up, because it's tedious to be asked to subscribe to someone else's theory if it's one that you just can't agree with. If they've made up the whole story beforehand, there's no real need for you to be there.

Q: Since you have a musician talking to another musician, it could get very technical or very inside-industry stuff. How do you prevent that?

A: Well, I'm not much interested in industry stuff. We don't spend a lot of time talking about stuff like record companies. I think we just all assume that the game is up as we used to know it and we are now living on our wits and what skills we have. . . .

Most times, people appear on television because they've got something to sell. Here, they're talking about the things that they love about music. And if I think it's getting too far away from broad comprehension, I might have to state the bloody obvious, like "Who is Jerome Kern?" Most people will know who Jerome Kern is, but I have to make sure that if somebody doesn't know who he is, I'm reminding them of what songs he did write because not everybody has all those titles at their fingertips.

Q: You have a lot of huge names on the second season, with Bono and Edge and Bruce Springsteen. Was there anyone who turned you down?

A: I don't believe so. I think the balance of the show is pretty good between people who I guess you would call household names, the kind of high-profile names you just mentioned, and people whose work I love and I think will be really a great surprise to those that haven't encountered them before, such as Jesse Winchester. There are people who don't know Ron Sexsmith, unbelievably. I don't know how that can possibly be, given the quality of his work. But so much the better if they stumble upon his voice and songs for the first time on "Spectacle."

[jmm]

Here's to a successful Season Two which then leads to #3!!

[johnfoyle]

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/1 ... 09.article

Elvis Costello, big stars create another 'Spectacle'


December 6, 2009
BY LAURA EMERICK Staff Reporter

Though the acclaimed music series “Spectacle: Elvis Costello with ...” returns Wednesday for a second season, this could be it.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” said rock icon Elvis Costello, who serves as host, interviewer, performer, producer and all-around catalyst for the series, which airs on the Sundance Channel in the States. (After this interview was conducted, Costello told the entertainment news site WENN.com that this season would be his last, because the series takes up too much of his time.)

If that’s the case, Costello will go out with a bang, given the all-star lineup he’s recruited for this season, including U2’s Bono and the Edge for the season opener.

Costello had hoped to bag even more big names, including Aretha Franklin, Madonna and Eminem, but financial constraints caused the show’s run to be cut back to seven episodes (from 13 in the first season). “It’s an economy issue,” he said. “It meant that we had to shoot five shows in four days. It was pretty daunting. The writing and the thinking, well, that last part I dispensed with after a while.”

Whereas season one (which was released as a five-disc set last month on DVD and Blu-ray) featured a variety of styles, from jazz to opera, the focus will narrow to singer-songwriters for season two. “One of the joys of the show, particularly this season, has been to feature people who are not as well-known,” Costello said, citing singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester, whose career went underground when he left for Canada in 1967 to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. “Jesse was a revelation just eight bars in. We had people asking, ‘Who is this guy? Why haven’t I heard of him before?’

“And then there’s John Prine, who’s not that well known in some quarters — not in your part of the world, of course [since Prine hails from suburban Maywood]. That’s crazy; Prine is literally one of the best people out there, I’d put him up there as an all-around writer, not just a songwriter.”

And relevance is the bond that connects Prine, Winchester and American singer-songwriter David Ackles, who received an extensive tribute on the first “Spectacle” episode last season from Costello and series executive producer Elton John. “It’s not the main purpose of the show to revisit beloved or less well known corners of my personal record collection,” Costello said, laughing. “Quite the opposite. But Jesse Winchester is still making great records today. The song that stopped the show was a song from the album he released this year, “Love Filling Station.”

Along with the influential but off-the-mainstream-radar artists will be three “Spectacle” episodes devoted to megastars U2 and Springsteen. One of the highlights of the U2 episode comes when Bono performs the saloon ballad “Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad,” which he wrote in the mid-’90s for Frank Sinatra, who passed on it. “I didn’t press Bono on why Sinatra never recorded it,” Costello said. “It’s easy to theorize songs for people, but they don’t always work out. For instance, I wrote ‘Why Can’t a Man Stand Alone’ for Sam Moore, but he didn’t take it. Now when I think about it, the song has too many words. Sometimes lyrics can get in the way of expression. Now I would have a better handle on it. This reminds me of ‘Almost Blue,’ which I sent to Sinatra in the hopes that he’d record it, but it never reached him.”

For the Springsteen episodes, Costello joins him on several covers, including Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher” (on which Elvis made a guest appearance during the Boss’ concert Nov. 7 at Madison Square Garden. Costello also will serve as guest DJ on Springsteen’s Sirius/XM satellite radio show beginning at 3 p.m. Dec. 11, which will include a replay of that MSG duet).

Costello had hoped to organize an all-Detroit tribute episode for “Spectacle,” but it didn’t pan out. “I was thinking of how great it would be to get Aretha, Diana Ross, Iggy Pop, Madonna and Eminem on one show, but it was a crazy idea. I mean, why would they even want to appear together? But I did get Aretha on the phone. She actually took my call, she answered the phone herself, and it shocked the hell out of me. I dream of what that show might have been, with Aretha sitting at the piano and talking about all the great artists who have influenced her.”

On the theme of what might have been ... “If this is it, I won’t regard it with regret,” Costello said about the fate of the series. “Maybe I’d wish I’d been a better foil to our guests, but on live TV, you have to accept the rough edges, to get the real feeling of the thing. Besides, I don’t see my career as being in television. It’s one of those things I’ve been given the opportunity to do. But in any case, it’s been a great experience.”

[ice nine]

http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfilte ... alanlight/

[sweetest punch]

Preview in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... mccartney/#

[johnfoyle]

Detailed, 'spoiler' account -

http://popdose.com/tv-review-spectacle- ... ello-with/

[charliestumpy]

What a treat here in UK it will be not to have to leave plugged in e.g. Virgin Media V+ and Topfield PVR to record overnight Spectacle Season 2.

Well done to e.g. Costello.com etc for saving power.

I hope however that us 3rd world citizens in UK will be able to listen to some of the 'Costello 1st-timers' via e.g. YouTube/kind e.g. mp3-posters until we can buy Spectacle Season 2 on DVD.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain ... 3209.story

Chat Elvis
Costello talks the talk, rocks the rock on interview show


By Mark Caro

Tribune NEWSPAPERS reporter

December 9, 2009



Elvis Costello was promoting his 1981 album "Trust" when he appeared on "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder" and surprised the host with his not-so-angry-young-man amiability.

"Do you know who the other guest was on that show?" Costello asks on the phone. "Frank Capra."

Wow.

"Yeah, wow," he says. "So that gives you an idea of the kind of world that you were entering going on television then."

That world has changed, and Costello now is on the other end of a very different kind of talk show. The second season of "Spectacle: Elvis Costello with ..." debuts Wednesday at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel with Costello chatting and performing with U2's Bono and The Edge.

As he demonstrated in a 2003 guest-hosting stint on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and the first 13-show season of "Spectacle," not to mention in concert over the years, the 55-year-old singer is a proficient talker and, it turns out, listener. He's able to elicit illuminating anecdotes from guests such as the Police, Elton John (the show's executive producer), Herbie Hancock, James Taylor and opera singer Renee Fleming, and then he straps on his guitar and converses with them musically.

In the second season premiere, he and his band, the Imposters, tackle U2's "Mysterious Ways" and with Bono and The Edge do a mashup of Costello's "Pump It Up" and U2's close cousin "Get on Your Boots."

Costello brought his chatty A-game to a recent conversation. An edited transcript follows:



Q When you were talking to Bono and The Edge, who brought up the similarity between "Get on Your Boots" and "Pump It Up"?

A I thought it would be fun to have a bit of sport with that because people had written to me and all sorts of people had mentioned to me that there was some sort of similarity, and I thought the only way to deal with that was head-on. And we didn't even talk about it, we just played. I just thought it was fun. I wasn't trying to put one over on them or anything.



Q Were you always as collegial with your fellow musicians as you are on the show?

A I don't think so initially. I think initially when you start out, you're a little bit more guarded, you know?



Q With contemporaries such as U2 and the Police, were you all buddies or was there more of a sense of competition back then?

A I don't know about competition. I think we definitely ragged on each other a little bit. That's on record, and Sting mentioned it in the interview. There's always a sense of bewilderment that any group appears with a new sound, and you're doing just fine topping the bill with the sound that you've got, and they come roaring by you playing something that doesn't even sound like songs at first. U2, at their own admission, were not songwriters to begin with. It was like, it's a fantastic sound, but where are the songs, you know? And then you realize that they are songs, but they're just not shaped the way that you're familiar with, so that's an innovation of a kind.



Q Has doing the show added to your understanding of what these other people are doing?

A I think it just really confirms that no matter who you are, there's nobody that's completely without some insecurity or anxiety about what they do. You see the humanity in people when they come into a situation, particularly when they're taken off their certain game or there's common ground.



Q Do you book the guests?



A Well, I had the wish list, and then we go and see. I do call them up myself and write to them or whatever is necessary. I called Aretha (Franklin) and tried to get her on the show. And much to my surprise she picked up, and we had a very genial conversation, which unfortunately didn't conclude with confirmation to do the show. There's always people you wish for, but you can't really complain with the range of people that we had.



Q The New York Times wrote last year that Eminem was lined up.

A I never heard that. But I also read Paul McCartney. You could theorize onward and onward. I think 20 episodes is a very good number to have achieved, and if there should be any more after this, then so be it.

mcaro@tribune.com

[johnfoyle]

http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/12/ ... /index.xml

December the 8th, 2009


Still making a ‘Spectacle’: Elvis Costello is back


When U2 released “Get on Your Boots” earlier this year, more than a few critics derided the first single from their latest album as sounding like a rip-off of Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up.” Tonight, Costello is stealing it back.

The second season of Costello’s “Spectacle” kicks off with a visit from Bono and the Edge, and in addition to talking tunes and trading songs, they mash up the two songs in question.

“For us to just blatantly play them as if they were one [song] was sort of having a bit of sport with that,” says Costello.

The second season also boasts performances by Neko Case, Ray LaMontagne, a two-part episode with Bruce Springsteen, and one show devoted entirely to Costello himself.

“Elton John, our executive producer, was due to do that show, and then as you know, he was ill,” says Costello of the “Rocket Man”’s bout with a bacterial infection.

So they brought in Mary Louise Parker to interview Costello for the taping.

“We share obviously wildly different vocations and methodology, but she was terrific, and she writes very well about music,” he says. “She writes, I think most interestingly, about her emotional reaction to music rather than some highly theoretical, absolutist, completist mentality, which I have to say men who live alone with a cat do a lot of that.”


Mash-up mania

Costello says the members of U2 were good sports about mixing their song with his.

“The credit I would have to give Bono and Edge is that they’re in the middle of a tour,” he says.

“They’re taping ‘Spectacle’ the day of their playing. They come in and spend two hours in rehearsal.”

He also says the Springsteen episode includes a three-part arrangement of his songs and the Boss’.

“We’re not jamming over blues,” Costello says. “We actually put a little time and work into it.”


Spoiler account -

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1B0JLB.DTL

[And No Coffee Table]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... 7715.story

TELEVISION REVIEW
'Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ...' welcomes Bono and the Edge
The Sundance Channel's interview-performance series gets out of the gate fast in its second-season opener.



U2's the Edge, left, and Bono have a sit-down with Elvis Costello on Sundance. (Ken Woroner / Tri-Fi 2 / Chatting Glasses / December 8, 2009)

By Randy Lewis
December 9, 2009

Upping the ante on any TV show that got off to as auspicious a start as the first season of the Sundance Channel's music interview-performance series "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…” is a tall order.

After all, the first episode featured a conversation with Elton John -- not coincidentally, one of the executive producers and a key mover behind the series -- before pairing its deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host with subsequent guests, including Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, Lou Reed, Norah Jones, Rufus Wainwright, Renée Fleming and former President Clinton.

But out of the gate on tonight's second-season opener, Costello does impressively ratchet things up in a wide-ranging session with U2 singer Bono and guitarist the Edge.

Next week's episode is a singer-songwriter round table with Sheryl Crow topping the invite list to help draw viewers in to the charms of Neko Case, Ron Sexsmith and Jesse Winchester.

Even more than the interview with a former U.S. president, the U2 show is the first in which the guest upstages Costello. Walking out from backstage as Costello and the Imposters are playing "Mysterious Ways," Bono eyes the crowd, quickly lifts his arms twice and instantly the audience inside Harlem's Apollo Theater is on its feet.

Bono openly discusses the band's early naiveté, which led it to soak up all it could working with producers such as Steve Lillywhite, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.

"We had no history of musicianship," Bono says. "Remember, we formed a band before we could play. . . . It's kind of comedic. We're looking at all these [more experienced] people, going, 'OK, we'll have that and we'll have that and we'll have that,' like you're walking around with a shopping bag. But somebody else said, 'You also need the talent bit.' And it never dawned on us that we mightn't have any."

The other compelling part of "Spectacle" is when Costello joins his guests on the bandstand in songs chosen not to plug their latest record but to illustrate their art.

The guitar pull show does such a great job showcasing the music of criminally underexposed, Memphis-bred singer-songwriter Winchester that you wish they'd devoted a whole episode to him.

Since his 1970 debut album, Winchester has consistently written and recorded songs of such melodic beauty, lyric gentility and vulnerability as to take your breath away.

On "Spectacle," he serves up "Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding," reducing Case to tears with this meditation on music's ineffable power to channel love across the decades.

It's the kind of moment, Elton John told The Times last year, for which "Spectacle" was created: a forum for monstrously talented musicians who, for whatever reasons, have been overlooked by the masses.

As the second season will demonstrate, it's also about sharing Costello's insider contact with several acts the public has embraced.

Coming later this season: Costello assembles a dream band with Nick Lowe, Allen Toussaint and Levon Helm and a two-part season closer with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

[charliestumpy]

Thankyou very much for conveying.

[Jack of All Parades]

My favorite moment from last night's opening show- the missed opportunity- Sinatra pitched a chance to cover a poignant "Two shots happy, One shot Sad".

[johnfoyle]

Having not seen this ( hopefully a download will await me when I return to Dublin on Sunday) I'm intrigued by this reported comment -

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entert ... 47887.html

(extract)

"You blew our minds," Bono recalls of his first exposure to Costello and the Attractions in an Irish nightclub. "And everybody who was there formed a band."


It would seem, therefore, that Bono and co. were at Elvis' first show in Ireland , at the Stella , Dublin in March 1978. Elsewhere here I wrote about that show -

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... +Rathmines

(extract)


To many of the audience this kind of intensity from a singer must have seemed like something from Mars. The day after the show many of them would have spent their Patrick's night at another 'punk' show at the Project Arts venue. On the bill was a band called The Hype. That weekend they would win a recording session in a talent contest and go on to fame and fortune under a new name, U2. Beside the Stella ad. in the above entertainment page is an ad. for an awards show the following week , promising appearances by the likes of Joe Dolan and Ray Lynam. Ferdia characterises that as the kind of gig that no one at the Stella would have gone to. There was definitely a sense of a new audience defining itself and , for many , Elvis' show set the template.

[And No Coffee Table]

"You blew our minds," Bono recalls of his first exposure to Costello and the Attractions in an Irish nightclub. "And everybody who was there formed a band."


It would seem, therefore, that Bono and co. were at Elvis' first show in Ireland , at the Stella , Dublin in March 1978.

That's the one. They mention that venue specifically. Elvis says it's not that impressive that every member of the audience formed a band, because the Stella only had room for about four groups of people.

[And No Coffee Table]

Last year the show was a co-production between Sundance Channel, CTV, Channel 4, and FremantleMedia. This season only Sundance Channel and CTV appear in the credits. The budget restrictions EC has mentioned may be related to this change.

[scielle]

http://www.merrittnews.net/article/GB/2 ... late=cpart

TORONTO - Elvis Costello is opening the second season of his interview show with a bang or, more accurately, a Bono.

One-half of U2 - Bono and the Edge - will be the first guests when the second season of Costello's show, "Spectacle," launches this Friday (CTV, 10 p.m. ET).

The British-born, Vancouver-based Costello introduces the Dublin band as the "last rock stars" during the show, which he taped at Toronto's storied Masonic Temple.

The band performed album tracks ("Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)") and a lesser-known gem ("Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad") which Bono says he wrote for Frank Sinatra. They then joined in a medley of their recent single "Get On Your Boots" with Costello's classic "Pump It Up."

Costello, meanwhile, adopted the tone of a carnival barker as he closed out a version of "Mysterious Ways" and introduced the rockers - Bono clad in a brown leather jacket and V-neck T-shirt, with translucent wraparound shades obscuring his eyes, Edge with a Western-style button-down shirt and ears tucked under one of his signature toques.

As they chatted, Costello was brought back to the first time he ever heard U2.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions were headlining the Rock on the Tyne festival at International Stadium in Gateshead, England. They were at the "back end up of our pop star moment," and U2 was among a group of bands who took the stage before him.

"They were a rocketship waiting to take off," Costello told The Canadian Press in a recent telephone interview from New York.

And yet, Costello wasn't quite sure what to make of U2, the group having then released only "Boy," with "October" soon to follow. What he knew was that the band's shimmering textures and cascading guitars represented something very new.

"It didn't sound like songs as I knew them and that's usually a good sign, if something's got a different approach," he said.

"People had the same impression of my stuff when I was coming up. It had a degree of structure that people could recognize, but some things didn't sound like songs I'm sure to other people."

It follows, then, that Bono and the Edge cited Costello as one of the band's primary influences, along with Krautrock innovators including Neu! and Kraftwerk.

Bono also reminisced about his formative years, when he caught Costello perform at the Stella Cinema in the Rathmines suburb of Dublin.

"You blew our minds and everybody who was there formed a band," Bono said.

"You should point out that the Stella, in Rathmines, only holds about four groups worth of people, it wasn't like a hugely big place," Costello responded.

For his part, he said he had no idea that his punky early efforts had such an effect on the band.

"That was something of a surprise," Costello said. "I didn't realize. I wouldn't have guessed that."

That mutual respect led to Bono soliciting Costello's help when organizing the Conspiracy of Hope tour for Amnesty International in 1986.

He called up Costello at 3 a.m. and asked him if he would join the tour. Costello said no. He struggles slightly now to explain why.

"I wasn't comfortable with, you know, I didn't really know how to go about getting on that stage," Costello said after considering the question for a moment.

"I don't think it really is to my credit that I couldn't do it, I just felt it wasn't the right thing for me. They have always understood better how to use the large-scale stage to address big subjects. And I maybe felt that my job was something different than that. That was my conviction then and maybe to a lesser degree now.

"I don't hanker after the big stage, or the big, broad statements. It's not like their songs lack subtlety or nuance, but I suppose I write different types of songs than they write."

But Costello's interview show has become something of a prominent stage for the 55-year-old musician.

"Spectacle" averaged 506,000 viewers during its first season on CTV, according to BBM Nielsen numbers provided by the network. That places it among the top 10 best-rated new shows in Canada last season.

His star-studded seven-episode second season will feature New Jersey rock stalwart Bruce Springsteen (whom Costello cites as one of his own influences), Sheryl Crow, Lyle Lovett, Neko Case, Nick Lowe and Canadian Ron Sexsmith.

Costello says he's feeling more comfortable as host now with a full season behind him.

"I don't doubt there's a little more fluency to it," he said, before adding: "Still, I can find fault with anything I do."

And yet, despite the program's success, Costello's not sure how much longer he will continue making it.

"No, not really, no," he said. "I think it's good to go into everything you do as if it's the first or last thing you're going to do."

"You have to take note of the fact that Season 1 was 13 episodes, and Season 2 was seven episodes. So maybe, if there were a Season 3, it would only be three-and-a-half episodes," he adds, slyly.

[ShipBuilder]

I did enjoy the episode- especially the "mash up" of Pump It Up and Get On Your Boots.
The funny bit with the ticket stub showing U2 opening for Elvis as a new band from Dublin.