Besides A Groovy Hi-Fi

It’s 1 a.m. on a mid-September Tuesday in Brooklyn, NY. The scene: A sweaty, packed bowling alley-turned-bar-turned-rock club. ?uestlove takes the stage. 

“Good morning,” he says. “Welcome to what we call the manifestation of a dream.”

He kicks into a low-key drum beat and introduces the players. He’s joined by his fellow members of the Roots, longtime creative partners like keyboardist Ray Anger, and finally “the poet,” Elvis Costello. Over a prowling funk accompaniment, EC starts low, almost a mumble: 

Then for the next 90 minutes, that dream does indeed manifest. 

Over the years, Costello has become known for his forays into unexpected collaborations. It always seems to start with a question: “Wait, Elvis Costello and…Burt Bacharach? Allen Toussaint? The Roots?!” 

It doesn’t start with a question for EC or his collaborators. It starts with the answers, the common ground they quickly find between what each of them does so well. 

By the time of this Brooklyn Bowl show, Costello and the Roots had already mapped out their common ground and planted seeds that bore prickly, bittersweet fruit—Wise Up Ghost, an album full of reconstructed deconstructions. Many songs, like “Wake Me Up,” saw Costello disassembling his past lyrics into new Frankensongs over sinuous tracks concocted by the Roots. “Invasion Hit Parade” from 1991’s Mighty Like A Rose became “Refuse to be Saved,” while no less than three different Costello compositions were fused together into “Stick Out Your Tongue.” 

It’s a cut-up mash-up unlike any other that Costello (or really, any other pop artist in memory) has undertaken. More than just a musical collaboration, it’s more like an auto shop full of incredible parts where Costello, ?uestlove and producer Steve Mandel have custom-built sick, lean, vicious tracks that slice through the fog of the past and into new clear black skies of meaning. 

That attitude translates perfectly to a live experience. The Roots’ musicianship is without peer; this was true in 2013, and it’s only grown more true since then. Acting as house band for The Tonight Show demands a level of pure musicality that almost no other gig requires; the types of music they play, the variety of artists they support in a potpourri of genres. 

When performing alongside EC, the Roots strike the perfect balance between delivering what the songs demand and retaining their own identity. They don’t become a fill-in for the Attractions, or subsume Costello’s own sound into their own. These are the Roots alongside EC, equal partners in the finished product, and insightful interpreters when the time comes to support Costello on tunes recorded for earlier albums. 

We also know that ?uestlove and Mandel are students of pop music as well as creators of it. I can only assume their input helped shape the full setlist for this show, where a bunch of the Wise Up Ghost material sits alongside choice deep cuts such as “Shabby Doll,” “Spooky Girlfriend” (so underrated, from 2002’s When I Was Cruel) and a pair of covers, the Specials’ “Ghost Town” and John Lennon’s “I Found Out.” (There’s also the stealth cover tucked within the rave-up version of “Pump It Up,” when EC drifts into Georgie Fame’s “Yeh Yeh” and then seamlessly back into his own tune without missing a beat.) 

I’ll confess, my jaw hit the floor and stayed there the first time I heard this show. Same when I first heard Wise Up Ghost. It’s like finding out Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man eventually become the Avengers—several metric shittons of awesome, all assembled in one spot, saving the world through vicious R&B.

Listen to the entire Elvis Costello and the Roots set from September 2013, featuring guest vocalists Diane Birch and La Marisoul, still archived on the WFUV website.

And watch this clip of the tune “Wise Up Ghost,” professionally recorded, which indicates somewhere there’s a full tape of the show sitting unreleased in a magical vault—come ON people, the record’s 10 years old next year, put this shit OUT.