One of the perks of being the music editor of Time Out New York 1996-2000 was getting to interview Elvis Costello! my hero! in person! in a hotel room! in Manhattan! and Burt Bacharach! over the phone! but still! when this fine record was released. I guess it’s kind of adult-contemporary-etc. but I find it has just enough melancholy to make up for any sap. And much, much, much better than, say, anything Burt B was doing in this era with Dionne Warwick (who I also got to interview, and she seemed supremely annoyed at the very existence of Elvis Costello, a clearly inferior singer to herself in her view). I got to attend a big Burt Bacharach covers show around that time, and attend this taping of Sessions at West 54th (if you look closely you will see me and Gaylord sitting in the front row but you might have to get the VHS for that — my hair was kind of Debbie Harry platinum in those days), and I was even on Bravo TV talking about the great Declan MacManus after my interview came out in Time Out NY. I would have published the entire thing on this blog probably if there hadn’t been an air-conditioner in his hotel room that was totally drowning out a lot of our conversation. At the end of the interview, I gave him a copy of Time Out with Liz Phair on the cover (he said she looked like Celine Dion) and a copy of chickfactor #11 with Belle & Sebastian on the cover (EC doesn’t like Scottish music, he told me, and I said he needed to give it another try). That same year I went to the Fez to see Mingus Big Band on Thanksgiving with Connie and Carrie and we were supposed to sit at the same table with Elvis C, but I was too shy.