"The greatest rock 'n' roll musicians are desperate men. You've got to have something bothering you all the time."—Bruce Springsteen to Elvis Costello, Spectacle: Elvis Costello With Bruce Springsteen, Part 1, January 20, 2010
I had heard about Elvis Costello’s conversation-and-song series for Sundance, Spectacle, but last night was the first time I caught any of it. I came in only on the closing minutes of his first session with The Boss, but if this is anything like the rest of the series, I’m going to run out and buy the first season on DVD.
Though they’re contemporaries, both having risen to fame at the same time in the mid-to-late Seventies, Springsteen and Costello have carved out different styles and paths—the former painfully earnest, slowly burrowing out from Heartland Rock to embrace different musical textures; the latter ironic, perhaps the most wildly eclectic singer-songwriter of the rock era (how many people do you know of that have sung not only rock ‘n’ roll but have also collaborated with country-music artists, opera singers, The Chieftains, and Burt Bacharach?).
Yet, the two obviously formed a mutual admiration society last night, seguing from The Boss recounting the complementary singing styles of Sam and Dave to himself and Elvis performing a duet of the soul duo’s “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down.”
I had heard about Elvis Costello’s conversation-and-song series for Sundance, Spectacle, but last night was the first time I caught any of it. I came in only on the closing minutes of his first session with The Boss, but if this is anything like the rest of the series, I’m going to run out and buy the first season on DVD.
Though they’re contemporaries, both having risen to fame at the same time in the mid-to-late Seventies, Springsteen and Costello have carved out different styles and paths—the former painfully earnest, slowly burrowing out from Heartland Rock to embrace different musical textures; the latter ironic, perhaps the most wildly eclectic singer-songwriter of the rock era (how many people do you know of that have sung not only rock ‘n’ roll but have also collaborated with country-music artists, opera singers, The Chieftains, and Burt Bacharach?).
Yet, the two obviously formed a mutual admiration society last night, seguing from The Boss recounting the complementary singing styles of Sam and Dave to himself and Elvis performing a duet of the soul duo’s “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down.”
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