Elvis Costello

Hello, Brendan.

How are you doing?

Well, a real mixture of well-known tunes and a few that have come up shining from the pile.

You know, that's always the thing to be able to spring a surprise or two, a song people never imagined they would hear us play.

Or maybe I put aside not realizing, hey, that's a better song than I thought it was, you know, and suddenly we're playing it and it turned into something.

So by the time we get to the Ivy Gardens, we will have shuffled all of the pieces around and thrown it all up in the air like confetti.

You point out that three of the people... Probably a little bit, probably, certainly closer to the microphone than I was at the Stella Cinema in Rathmines, where I got such an electrical belt off the microphone that I sang the whole show from about two feet away from the microphone to get electrocuted.

I don't know.

Yeah, well, you know, you notice there's not four of us.

You know, there's...

Yeah, I keep reminding Pete Thomas, who's like... I never stop telling him he's three weeks older than me.

He's got the same amount of years in one of my bands as Harry Carney had with Hugh Gallington.

You know, it's rare for people to play together for so long.

Completely uninterrupted.

But both Pete and Steve have appeared on...

all but one or two records each of everything I've recorded.

I've never really thought about it like that, to be really honest.

I'm about the least nostalgic person you'll ever meet.

I have absolutely no desire to go back

and actually revisit the actual time or circumstances of writing these songs.