From: atkinson@computek.net

Hot off the press is an interview with EC by David Okamoto titled "Elvis
Costello Takes Cover" in this morning's (Sunday) _Dallas Morning News_.
The article is fairly lengthy so I'll only be excerpting selected quotes.

On selecting obscure covers instead of famous ones:
"...but say you decided you were going to do _Cryin'_ by Aerosmith. You
could do a great R&B version of that, as I'm sure they had in their 
minds when they wrote it. But you'd have to wait a few years before
everybody didn't have an image of Steven Tyler in leotards in their head
on first hearing."

On the albums approach to the songs:
"All these songs have got stories to tell, and by approaching them
differently, you do draw out something that maybe the writer had in the
back of his mind, or maybe he didn't have it in his mind at all."

On the _Kojak Variety_ musicians:
"Whenever we got together, we got kind of a group sound. Obviously, after
five years, you develop some kind of understanding, and I didn't feel
we had a record of that band with individual members taking a turn in
the spotlight. When you've got James Burton along and you've only 
recorded one guitar solo on him, that's something of an oversight."

On Duran Duran's WTD:
"It sounds like Duran Duran doing _Watching the Detectives_ to me, with
everything that entails."

On Blur's _Oliver's Army_:
"An English group that is very big in England and hasn't yet seemed to
charm anybody in America did a version of _Oliver's Army_ that is great.
I went out of fashion for quite a while in terms of younger bands doing
my material. You'd be hard-pushed to find any younger artists a couple
of years ago who would have admitted to holding one of my records, let
alone recording them. But it seems, as it always does, to be switching
back a little bit now.  There's a few people starting to acknowledge my
existence."

On Bob & Hilary James' _Baby Plays Around_:
"Bob James? No, I don't even know the name. He did the music for _Taxi_?
Oh, I like that song. ...Wow, I'd love to hear that."

On computers:
"I've never actually plugged my computer into the wall. You've got to 
remember, I got out of computers to get into music, so I'm not in a big
hurry to go back."

On the WWW Elvis Costello Home Page:
"There's only so much I would find interesting about anybody, so I find
it hard to imagine that anybody would be interested in that amount of
detail about me. But it's very flattering."

Note: He hasn't actually seen the Web page (having not plugged his
computer into the wall, yet, I guess)

The article also mentions preparations to go into the studio with the
Attractions this summer and record songs he originally wrote for others,
like "I Want to Vanish","You Bowed Down","Hidden Shame" and "The Other
End of the Telescope."

I guess that's all I can fit in for now. Enjoy.

Mitch
atkinson@computek.net