Classic Roots Choice #23

That didn't take long, did it?

Elvis Costello was on Late Night on Friday. Here, The Roots have an entire life's work of songs to choose from, so what does one do? The walk-on music they chose for Elvis Costello was the theme song from the R. White's Lemonade commercials.

There might be thousands of people everywhere scratching their heads looking to my blog for the answer to the riddle (which I would know) except Elvis just couldn't leave it be and explained it himself in his interview (boooooo! I could have been the only one!).

Elvis' father was a jingle writer and wrote the R. White's Lemonade "Secret Lemonade Drinker" song. On top of it, Elvis' sang back up on the song when he was just a kid. In case you weren't living in Great Britain in the 70's (and I suspect that's the case) it looked like this:



It's always struck me as the height of weirdness. Is this a common problem? He's addicted to lemonade, isn't he? He's gotta do it secretly because he doesn't want his family to know he's got a serious lemonade problem and needs professional help? LOSE THE HABIT, MAN!

Classic Roots Choice #11, 12

#11. Guest: Joseph Gordon-Levitt. His intro music is some bass and drums and the following rant: "Don't miss it. Now through Monday only, a wide array of furniture has been reduced 35% -86% off!" etc. This is a reference to commercials for Levitz Furniture, from Lebanon, PA. Joseph Gordon-Levitt... Levitz.

#12. Guest: Elvis Costello. The Roots play a few bars of "Radio, Radio" and then suddenly stop. Questlove says, "Whoah! Whoah! Whoah! Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm really sorry, there's no need for us to do this tonight." and then they play "Pump It Up". It was done so well that they actually succeeded in fooling Elvis Costello with his own shtick.

This is a reference to the famous incident when Elvis Costello was the musical guest on SNL. A last-minute replacement for the Sex Pistols, he was specifically told to play "Less Than Zero"and not "Radio, Radio" because the latter was seen as critical of the media. Him and his band played a few seconds of "Less Than Zero", but Elvis stopped, gave the "No reason to do this song" line and launched into a loud version of "Radio, Radio". The stunt caused Lorne Michaels (famously not a fan of such ad libbing / blatant disrespect) to ban Costello from SNL for life.

By 1999 however, all was forgiven and for the 25th Anniversary SNL Show, the incident was playfully (and gloriously) relived with a little help from the Beastie Boys.

Bit 'O Trivia: Friday, Elvis Costello and Jimmy Fallon were both on the same show. Not only are they both talk show hosts, but they also can attribute getting their own talk show, in no small measure, to the fact that they both were guest-hosts on the Late Show during the period where David Letterman was out with the Shingles. Eh? Eh? Eh? Ehhh.