Still making a ‘Spectacle’: Elvis Costello is back

When U2 released “Get on Your Boots” earlier this year, more than a few critics derided the first single from their latest album as sounding like a rip-off of Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up.” Tonight, Costello is stealing it back.

The second season of Costello’s “Spectacle” kicks off with a visit from Bono and the Edge, and in addition to talking tunes and trading songs, they mash up the two songs in question.

“For us to just blatantly play them as if they were one [song] was sort of having a bit of sport with that,” says Costello.

The second season also boasts performances by Neko Case, Ray LaMontagne,  a two-part episode with Bruce Springsteen, and one show devoted entirely to Costello himself.

“Elton John, our executive producer, was due to do that show, and then as you know, he was ill,” says Costello of the “Rocket Man”’s bout with a bacterial infection.

So they brought in Mary Louise Parker to interview Costello for the taping.

“We share obviously wildly different vocations and methodology, but she was terrific, and she writes very well about music,” he says. “She writes, I think most interestingly, about her emotional reaction to music rather than some highly theoretical, absolutist, completist mentality, which I have to say men who live alone with a cat do a lot of that.”