London Guardian, September 20, 2013: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> Elvis Costello and the Roots | <center><h3> Elvis Costello and the Roots </h3></center> | ||
<center>''' "There's no such thing as too funky" </center> | |||
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<center> Caspar Llewellyn Smith </center> | <center> Caspar Llewellyn Smith </center> | ||
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'''The English songwriter and Questlove of the Roots are an | '''The English songwriter and Questlove of the Roots are an unlikely musical pairing, but their new album combines rock and hip-hop to dreamy and groove-filled effect | ||
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It is a humid mid-September morning in New York City that will later produce thunderstorms of biblical force, but neither Elvis Costello nor his sparring partner Ahmir Thompson are dressed for the weather. In fact, while on first sight this coupling might strike you as odd, the pair of them are dressed remarkably similarly: Costello in black jeans and a grey jacket and waistcoat, Questlove, as the latter is more commonly known, pairing his black jeans with a grey cardigan. There's an easy familiarity between them, despite their 17-year age gap and despite Quest's fear of freaking out Costello the first few times they met. | It is a humid mid-September morning in New York City that will later produce thunderstorms of biblical force, but neither Elvis Costello nor his sparring partner Ahmir Thompson are dressed for the weather. In fact, while on first sight this coupling might strike you as odd, the pair of them are dressed remarkably similarly: Costello in black jeans and a grey jacket and waistcoat, Questlove, as the latter is more commonly known, pairing his black jeans with a grey cardigan. There's an easy familiarity between them, despite their 17-year age gap and despite Quest's fear of freaking out Costello the first few times they met. | ||
"Often in the past I've had mixed results with meeting my heroes," he says, describing a tendency to lay on the fanboy element to a bunny-boiler extent. "I know from my own experience that it's better just to engage people with | "Often in the past I've had mixed results with meeting my heroes," he says, describing a tendency to lay on the fanboy element to a bunny-boiler extent. "I know from my own experience that it's better just to engage people with normalcy…" | ||
"David Cross" – the US comedian – "was talking to me about exactly this [[Concert 2013-09-16 New York|last night]]," Costello interrupts. "It's a story he tells in his act, how he met me when he was 18. I'm trying to figure out roughly how old is he, how far back into me being a bastard is this?" (Seeing Costello so jovial today, it's a stretch to remember that this is the singer who once replied to a masseuse who told him: "You're all wound up, relax" with the admonition: "It's my job to get wound up".) | "David Cross" – the US comedian – "was talking to me about exactly this [[Concert 2013-09-16 New York|last night]]," Costello interrupts. "It's a story he tells in his act, how he met me when he was 18. I'm trying to figure out roughly how old is he, how far back into me being a bastard is this?" (Seeing Costello so jovial today, it's a stretch to remember that this is the singer who once replied to a masseuse who told him: "You're all wound up, relax" with the admonition: "It's my job to get wound up".) | ||
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In 2009, Costello was a guest on the show., in order to promote his own music-based TV talkshow, ''[[Spectacle]]'', but was between records – or more accurately, was "wondering if making records was still a suitable occupation for me. I love writing songs and recording but ... am I being selfish in terms of my life with my young family?" (With his third wife, Diana Krall, he has young twin sons.) Lacking a new song, he left it to the Roots to pick a song to perform with him on ''Fallon''; as well as "[[Watching The Detectives|Watching the Detectives]]," Questlove and Roots producer [[Steven Mandel]] – secret "Elvis freaks" – dug out a real obscurity. "It was '[[High Fidelity]],'" Costello recalls, "but not the [1980] single version; it came from a bootleg that we put out on some reissue. We thought we were David Bowie doing ''Station to Station'' when I wrote it, but I couldn't carry that off with the Attractions because we didn't have [guitarist] Carlos Alomar or Eno – we just had Nick Lowe, a lot of blue pills and vodka, so we played it really fast. But the bootleg version did have, that one time, this Chic-influenced funk thing going on – and the Roots went back to that." | In 2009, Costello was a guest on the show., in order to promote his own music-based TV talkshow, ''[[Spectacle]]'', but was between records – or more accurately, was "wondering if making records was still a suitable occupation for me. I love writing songs and recording but ... am I being selfish in terms of my life with my young family?" (With his third wife, Diana Krall, he has young twin sons.) Lacking a new song, he left it to the Roots to pick a song to perform with him on ''Fallon''; as well as "[[Watching The Detectives|Watching the Detectives]]," Questlove and Roots producer [[Steven Mandel]] – secret "Elvis freaks" – dug out a real obscurity. "It was '[[High Fidelity]],'" Costello recalls, "but not the [1980] single version; it came from a bootleg that we put out on some reissue. We thought we were David Bowie doing ''Station to Station'' when I wrote it, but I couldn't carry that off with the Attractions because we didn't have [guitarist] Carlos Alomar or Eno – we just had Nick Lowe, a lot of blue pills and vodka, so we played it really fast. But the bootleg version did have, that one time, this Chic-influenced funk thing going on – and the Roots went back to that." | ||
It wasn't just that: when Costello appeared on stage for the | It wasn't just that: when Costello appeared on stage for the performance on ''Fallon'', Questlove picked as his walk-on music a jingle known to generations of Britons and fans with "a PhD in Elvis-ology" alike: "[[Secret Lemonade Drinker]]," the song that made the famous ad for R White's Lemonade, performed by Costello's father, the showband singer [[Ross MacManus]], with backing vocals from McManus Jr. "The only funnier thing than that was when Bob Dylan played my dad's ska record from the 60s on his Theme Time radio show," Costello adds, lapsing into a passable Dylan impression. | ||
Like Costello, Questlove has a musical heritage – his father was Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews & the Hearts, a 50s doo-wop group. "I know a lot of singers who have fathers who were ministers or pastors or deacons. We call them 'PKs', for preacher kids, and I often see them bonding. But I'd never bonded with a fellow 'BK': a backstage kid," the drummer says. "I thought I was the only one. But no, Elvis and I have the same sort of upbringings." | Like Costello, Questlove has a musical heritage – his father was Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews & the Hearts, a 50s doo-wop group. "I know a lot of singers who have fathers who were ministers or pastors or deacons. We call them 'PKs', for preacher kids, and I often see them bonding. But I'd never bonded with a fellow 'BK': a backstage kid," the drummer says. "I thought I was the only one. But no, Elvis and I have the same sort of upbringings." | ||
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''Wise Up Ghost'' is out now. Blue Note records paid for Caspar Llewellyn Smith's trip to New York. | '''''Wise Up Ghost'' is out now.''' Blue Note records paid for Caspar Llewellyn Smith's trip to New York. | ||
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Latest revision as of 01:30, 28 December 2020
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