Mix, August 1995

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Elvis is everywhere


Barbara Schultz

The worldwide Kojak Variety broadcast

A woman in my college French literature class completely cracked us up one day by beginning an observation with, "The whole thing about Proust is..." Okay, maybe you had to be there, but the very idea of summing up such a complex author and his work in one "thing..." Well, at the risk of sounding like my unsuspecting classmate, the whole thing about Elvis Costello is not only is he a brilliant songwriter and a soulful singer, but he also brings to his work a great passion for music of all genres. The careful listener can detect, in a selection of his songs — or sometimes in the same song — pop influences from Cole Porter to George Jones, from Howlin' Wolf to Nat King Cole. That's why his work defies category, and why it sings volumes. And that's why Elvis Costello went to Blue Wave Studios in Barbados for 15 days in 1990 with some of his favorite musicians to record covers of some of his favorite songs.

The record is called Kojak Variety and features compositions by Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Ray Noble and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, to name a few. The liner notes Costello penned reveal how he discovered each of the songs — for example, how a Peggy Lee album in his parents' record collection led him to the late, great Little Willie John singing "Leave My Kitten Alone."

The musicians on Kojak also appeared on Costello's Mighty Like a Rose: Jerry Scheff on bass; Pete Thomas and Jim Keltner share drum duties; Larry Knechtel on piano, organ and keyboards; and Marc Ribot and James Burton contribute electric and acoustic guitars. Co-production (with Costello) and engineering credits belong to Kevin Killen, who also worked on Spike and Mighty Like a Rose.

Usually, when Costello releases a new album, he promotes it by touring. But this time, because he has a collection of original songs that he's itching to record with The Attractions this summer, he and his label, Warner Bros., took a different route: one show on May 17 at London's Empire Theatre, broadcast via satellite to radio listeners all around the world. Europeans got the show live. Americans heard a tape-delayed broadcast.

To add a bit of "intimacy" for those who would be listening at home, Warners asked Costello to chat with fans via the Internet for an hour before the U.S. broadcast, as part of the label's interactive talk show, Cyber Talk, which is carried on America Online and Compuserve. Subscribers were also given the opportunity to download sound bytes and artwork from Kojak Variety. And so a Warner Bros. "Multimedia Event" was born. We had the opportunity to talk with Costello a few weeks before the show.


Warner Bros. says you want to talk about multimedia.

What's that?!

Good question. Well, they're promoting this as a multimedia event, in a literal sense.

Yeah, I suppose that's true. We're doing this link-up from England, where we're not exactly re-creating the record because it's different musicians that are playing it, but [with] some of the same musicians: myself, Pete Thomas and the other two Attractions are also involved in the show, but then so that we keep the flavor of this record, we invited Marc Ribot and James Burton to join us in London. They're coming all the way over the Atlantic only so that we can fire the signal off something in space and you can hear it in America. We're playing like 200 shows in one night.

So this is taking the place of a tour?

Not really. Well, the truth is I'm right in the middle of a lot of things. I made this record five years ago, and it's a lot of my favorite songs, but I don't know what more there is to be gained by playing the songs endlessly to people. It's more about this little memory of these songs and the way I feel about them. To do one show is really exciting. but I'm not sure how many of these songs will remain in my repertoire in the long term — unlike songs I've written myself, where I always find there's more ways of playing them over the years, different ways to turn them around and find new things in them.

The record is a very simple mood. A couple of times we could play it, and we might get that feeling again. but if we played it every night, for 200 shows, say, it might not stand up to that kind of investigation. We thought this was a good way of getting it over to a lot of people quickly, and then we can get on and record a new record, and then well probably tour with that one.

So this is an individual case to you. You don't see this type of event taking the place of tours in the future.

I don't think so, no. They can do a lot of things with technology now, but they haven't found a way to broadcast animal magnetism yet, which is a big part of our show. In fact, it's probably the main part. That's really what people come for, the animal magnetism part.

And to make this a more immediate experience, they're putting you online with fans before the show.

Yeah. You see, this Internet business is, um... We've only just caught on with the spinning jenny over here, you know. It's a bit new. The television is still sort of a new thing here. This Internet business, I don't know anything about it. I thought it was something you went out and caught animals in when they first mentioned it.

I know a little bit about computers. I use them just for the very basics of word processing, and I never connect it up to the wall or get on the phone on it. I'm always afraid people are going to sneak in and poison you. The few times I get a chance to watch television. I see these horrifying things about computer fraud, so I tend to stay well away from that, but it sounds like an interesting thing — like visiting an amusement arcade for an evening. And maybe I'll get the bug. I don't know.

Really, my attitude toward all technology has always been [one of] not allowing it to dictate the pace, but at the same time, not allowing yourself to tie your hands through fear of something new that may be a new way or reaching people.

When CD first came out, they sent the tea boy to master most of my records at Columbia, or at least that's what they sounded like to me. It's terrible. It sounded worse than the vinyl. Now, everybody goes back with great care and can make old records sound really good. We have the history of recorded sound on a medium which is easily accessed. Within five years, we'll no doubt have something else that's smaller and more durable and gives you more possibilities, and [the Internet] is just another sort of thing like that, as far as I can see.

I'm just old enough to remember when we first linked up the world with television, and that was very exciting. If you think, it's only just around the corner in the past — this idea that we can see pictures from the other side of the world. We take it for granted now. But really, there's no reason we can't do the same thing with information. And music, to some extent, is information. I don't like it reduced to that, but I'm quite happy to have a little forum about it. You know, this is a nice marriage of the old and new. I mean, this is a new medium. I'm kind of an old guy, and the music we're doing ranges from 1930 to 1970.

The songs we've chosen are songs which some people won't know. I deliberately didn't choose songs that were very familiar to people. I wanted ones that I had a chance of doing my version. And we didn't do them in a terribly sophisticated way. We used a basic studio, we used analog recording, we used things that belong to the era that most of this music came from, but here we are presenting it through a number of multimedia things, whatever that is... multimedii [laughs]... that are right bang up-to-date.

The liner notes you wrote for Kojak Variety tell in wonderful detail where you found the songs. One might say that this would lend itself really well to a multimedia project like a CD-ROM, where somebody could, for instance, double-click on a pickle and hear every previous version of "Strange."

Yeah, but the thing is, the preparation of these things, if you're going to do them well, is quite expensive. And really, the danger is that we just start to generate these things because they're fun to play with. It's so multidimensional, like these new laserdiscs. I don't have one myself, but I've read about them. There's a commentary from the actor or the director, which allows you another insight into the making of something. I'm not so sure that many records have that many nuances to them that they need to be picked apart in quite that way. On a CD-ROM, you can click things and open up a secondary level of information that fills in more background, but I don't want people to get confused that this is somehow a lecture about music. It a rock 'n' roll record.

And it's a tight rope between enjoying the prospect of people discovering some artist that I love through my versions and the straight impulse on my part for them to enjoy my versions. "Yes, and well, thank you very much for that clue to this great music, and now we'll throw your record in the bin and go out and buy the originals." [Laughs] That's not my intent.

I want people to understand that this is done out of love for this music, and I want people to enjoy our versions. And if they're curious to go beyond that, then they can get the information. And as we have this forum or whatever you call it on the Internet on the day of the show, I imagine [the background of the songs] will be some of the sort of questions. And inevitably, there will also be the other kind of questions: "What does this have to do with the rest of your career, and where are you going next?" Things like that.

But anyone who's been to your shows knows that this has everything to do with your career.

But I don't mean in the sense that they think this is a misstep. I just mean they all want to know how it fits in and what importance to place on it. And things like why the record wasn't released immediately after we recorded it. The simple answer to that, really, is that it was always overtaken by new things that I regarded as more urgent.

You know what I wanted to happen? And it's very odd, and Warner Bros. have been very cooperative in this. I wanted the record to come out and just arrive in the shops.

And not promote it?

Absolutely no announcement of it. They could promote it after it was in the shops.

Why?

I wanted it to just sort of arrive and people say, "Hey, this is a mistake. This has been accidentally released: And to some extent, there's a spirit of that in the way it's been presented. You know, that you accidentally happen to be able to hear this concert in London when you really shouldn't be able to. So. we're trying to keep the spirit of accident.

When these songs were recorded, I remember hearing that these were part of the sessions for Mighty Like a Rose, but it sounds like this was a completely separate project.

This is completely separate, yeah. [though] they were recorded in the same year. I was sort of saying goodbye to this band at the time [after making Mighty Like a Rose]. I had been working with these guys like Jerry Scheff and James Burton and Mark Ribot, some of them as long as four years since I'd recorded King of America, and we'd worked on Spike together, and different members of this pool of players had been on the road with me in a couple of different bands — one called The Confederates and one called the Rude Five. And when I thought we wouldn't see another for a couple of years while I was working back with The Attractions, I started to think it was a shame that I didn't have a record in which the spotlight fell more heavily on the individual personalities of the players. I thought there was no better way of capturing it than on neutral ground, on some songs that we could all start at the same point at. These are songs I had particular affection for, and they were all a kind of music [anyone] could understand.

Were the songs for Kojak Variety recorded live for the most part?

Yeah, mostly. I fixed a couple of flat notes here and there, and added vocal groupings, and I multitracked myself, and we might add a second guitar part or a second keyboard, but most of what you hear was cut pretty much together in a very small room and in a very sort of hot, sweaty atmosphere, because it was in Barbados. The air conditioning only worked about half the time, so it gave it sort of a jungle-like atmosphere.

Why did you choose Blue Wave, other than the fabulous location?

It was sort of equidistant from all of the players, and it just happened to be a beautiful island as well. We went surfing in the morning. It's really a surf record.

I don't believe you.

We went surfing in the morning and recorded in the afternoon and evening and then drank some beer and did it again the next day. It was probably one of the most relaxed sessions, because there weren't so many mysteries to the songs, as with new songs when you don't know whether you're going to have to march them up to the top of the hill and march them down again, or whether they're going to come very easily. These songs mostly came extremely easily. It isn't to say we played them in a sloppy, careless way. We just played them the way we heard them.

Were the musicians familiar with all the songs?

No. Not all of them. A couple of them we had played live. I played "Leave My Kitten Alone" with The Attractions. Pete Thomas knew that one. I'd played "Pouring Water on a Drowning Man" with the Confederate lineup, so Jerry and James knew that one, and Keltner knew that one. And "Running Out of Fools" I think we played also. So the others we were learning in the studio. We learned them, and the minute we'd learned them, we recorded them.

Did they learn them by listening to you, or did they hear the original versions?

We played the original versions, and we just said, "Well, what's really good that we can sort of keep?" See, sometimes, if you're not careful, if you abandon all thoughts of the original version, you actually forget about the composition. Even a song that sounds like a very spontaneous event, like Howlin' Wolf and the Willie Dixon song "Hidden Charms," when you actually get down to playing it on the guitar, it's got structure. It's as structured as a Cole Porter song. It uses simple changes, but there's nothing accidental about the way everything occurs, and if you're careless of that structure, the song will lose its charm completely. It will become thoroughly hidden.

So to speak.

You've got to be respectful of that, but not so respectful of the original version that you can't have a bit of fun playing it. It's quite hard to sing "Strange" because it's a very silly song, but it's wonderful, and that's why I left in the false start. I just cracked up, and I thought, well, that's at least a clue to the way we're thinking of this record. Rather than edit out all the rough bits, we left a few of them in this time.

Were there any covers you recorded that didn't get included?

Well, we were only there 15 days. I think we ran down a couple of other titles, but there were no actual outtakes. Everything that we finished — that we actually bothered to get to the next stage of finishing and mixing — went on the record because it all seemed to be of one thing. The others were very rough run-throughs. We did "First I Look at the Purse" by The Contours, and Percy Sledge's song "It Tears Me Up," which I'd played live, but neither of them seemed to just gel in the studio. I had a tape with about 30 different titles on it, the original versions, and these are the ones I really like, and they were the ones that happened to come together quickly, so it was a happy coincidence.


Tags: Kojak VarietyShepherds Bush EmpireLondonThe AttractionsJames BurtonMarc RibotPete ThomasBruce ThomasSteve NieveKojak Variety liner notesMighty Like a RoseSpikeGeorge JonesCole PorterHowlin' WolfNat King ColeBob DylanWillie DixonRay NobleScreamin' Jay HawkinsPeggy LeeLittle Willie JohnLeave My Kitten AloneJerry ScheffJim KeltnerLarry KnechtelKevin KillenWarner Bros.StrangeKing Of AmericaThe ConfederatesThe Rude FivePouring Water On A Drowning ManRunning Out Of FoolsHidden CharmsFirst I Look At The PursePercy SledgeIt Tears Me Up

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Mix, August 1995


Barbara Schultz talks to Elvis Costello about Kojak Variety and the Empire Theatre concert broadcast, Wednesday, May 17, 1995, London, England.

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The broadcast from London, and Burbank


Barbara Schultz

The Kojak Variety concert was broadcast via satellite from Fleetwood Mobile Recording's truck outside the Empire Theatre on Shepherd's Bush Green. Engineer and Fleetwood co-owner Tim Summerhayes did the mixing. "The Empire Theatre used to be owned by the BBC," says Summerhayes. "They used to do their chat shows there. it's recently been refurbished, and it's a fantastic place for live recording."

To prepare for the show, Summerhayes worked closely with Costello's FOH engineer, David Zammit, who provided him with a detailed stage plot and microphone list, and he attended some of the band's rehearsals. "I devise a cue sheet for my own purposes and go through it with the artists and crew so that I know as much as I possibly can what is going to he coming in a bit hot or quiet," Summerhayes says.

The Fleetwood truck, which is equipped with a Raindirk Quantum console, received direct splits from each of the stage mics. BSS mic splitters were used, which Summerhayes says "are very good. If we crosspatch or do anything like that, it will not upset the P.A. system at all." The mic list, chosen by Zammit, was as follows: kick drum, a Beyer M88; on the snare, Shure Beta-57s and an SM57; on toms, Sennheiser MD421s; the hi-hat, a Sennheiser MKH40; the ride cymbal, a Shure Beta-57; and the overheads were AKG C422s. For Steve Nieve's piano, two C460x's and two Crown PZMs were used; his Vox Continental organ is a DI, and his Hammond organ is fed to a Leslie, which is miked with C460x's on high left and right, with an MD409 on low. On the electric guitars, played by Costello, Marc Ribot and James Burton, Zammit used SM57s and MD421s. The acoustic guitars were DIs, as was Bruce Thomas' bass. And last but not least, Shure SM58s were used on Costello's vocals, which were mighty raw for this particular gig, but as his fans will attest, that only adds.

From the splitters, the feed went into the Raindirk, and then to an ISDN encoder supplied by Hilton Sound. "For broadcast, we're sort of limited to headroom; says Summerhayes. "The bandwidth on the ISDN system is standard 15 kHz, which isn't quite up to the standard of CD, but for most broadcast purposes, it's totally adequate and far better than the standard land-line method of transmission. From the output of our desk, I use the Aphex Compellor, which even when it's being hit hard still maintains the musical integrity of the output." The mix was sent live via satellite to European radio stations, and via ISDN lines to the Warner Bros. Burbank, Calif., offices, to be used five hours later in a tape-delayed satellite broadcast. Summerhayes uses an Apogee AD500 analog-to-digital converter for the ISDN transmission, "and from there, it's down the wire to America. It's quite remarkable."

On the receiving end in Burbank was Tucker Williamson, Warner Bros.' artist relations manager. "They send it right to me live," he explains. "We record it on two Sony D2s going at the same time, and if there's a glitch when we send it back out, we can just continue with the other one. At 6:30 p.m. West Coast time, I start testing for the satellite times and give the radio stations test tones for half an hour at five minute intervals. At 6:50, its 'The next tone you hear will be exactly five minutes to show'."

The hour-long broadcast consisted mainly of the songs on Kojak Variety, with a few delightful surprises in the encores: a rocking version of Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used to Do?" plus one of Costello's trademark segues — "Alison" turns into "Tracks of My Tears" turns into "Tears of a Clown" turns into "Clowntime is Over" — and last, the crowd-pleasing "Pump It Up!"

Those of us who turned on our radios (and our tape players) were at once glad and jealous of the howling crowd at the Empire. And, despite his pleasure at bringing his client's music to such a huge audience, Warner Bros.' Williamson is quick to allow that what goes Oil inside the theater is the true core of the event — of the industry as a whole, really. "That visual contact and the smell and the sweat, and everything else that goes along with it — the stinky backstage and the moldy theater — it's the reason we do what we do," says Williamson. "The romance and the adventure of being out there... If this replaces touring, ill quit."


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Elvis Online


Barbara Schultz

There was much more wit than wisdom to be gleaned from Elvis Costello's appearance on Warner Bros.' Cyber Talk show on the Internet. Here are a few highlights extracted from the hundreds of participants who logged on.

What do you and Dave Letterman talk about during commercial breaks?

Worldwide Pants.

Do you hang out with any other celebs regularly?

Only Princess Caroline.

If you ever lost the ability to do music you liked, what else would you do?

Become a lifeguard!


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