Here’s this week’s round up of music videos that we found during our peregrination through the streets of the Internet.

1. Benjamin Taylor’s “Wicked Way” music video is a winning formula of 15 models singing his song as they morph into one another. Incidentally, he comes from an impressive musical pedigree being that he is the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon.

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Of all the possibilities in front of us when we started making Spectacle, I’m not sure Elvis covering Steely Dan would have been on my most likely list – but it turned out to be one of my favorite musical performances that our host delivered in the series.

The occasion was the opening of this week’s program, which was, loosely, a theme show, that theme being “show biz kids”. Ours is not exactly the tabloid take on fallen child stars – from sitcom fame and fortune to life on the streets as a drug-crazed has-been to rehabilitation and redemption (and the inevitable memoir) – but rather a good excuse to bring together an interesting collection of young musicians who hail from families in or connected to the entertainment business.

Zooey Deschanel’s probably best known to most people as an actress, especially for her role in “Elf” with Will Farrell and more recently “The Happening” and “Yes Man” (with Jim Carrey). But the lovely and talented Zoeey also sings real nice and plays several instruments and in the last couple of years teamed up with the talented (and in his own way lovely) M. Ward. He’s a gifted guitarist, songwriter and producer. In fact, he co-produced an album by one of our other guests this week, Jenny Lewis. Anyway, under the name She+Him, Zoeey and Matt made an album. It’s called “Volume One”. (Also, if I’m not mistaken, he has a new solo album out this very week in America.)

Jenny Lewis is a show biz kid from Las Vegas. Her folks had a lounge act and young Jenny became a child actress, working with everyone from the late Lucille Ball to Shelley Long (look for a dancing and singing Jenny in Ms. Long’s starring vehicle “Troop Beverly Hills”). Jenny gave up the acting thing a while back to focus on music – and a damn good musician and songwriter she is. You might have heard of her band Rilo Kiley – damn good band. And now the Jenny Lewis solo career is blooming. Her most recent album is “Acid Tongue” and it’s highly recommended. As is the raucous duet she does with Elvis, and if you pay attention you’ll see and hear (and I dare say enjoy) it on this week’s Spectacle.

Elvis’s other guest is Jakob Dylan – also born into the business in a way. Dad’s a singer-songwriter of some repute apparently. Jakob’s actually been at it for a while now, and enjoyed his biggest mainstream success with his band the Wallflowers. He kindly offers up a solo acoustic version of one of their biggest hits for us, and he and Elvis duet on a newer song from Jakob’s really fine solo album, “Seeing Things”, released last year. Later on, Jakob and Elvis cover the Clash, and the whole cast assemble for a rollicking take on one of Elvis’s biggest and best hits (though not actually a Costello composition).

It’s all good fun, even if the task of editing all this talent into an hour of television was akin to fitting the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive unit into a phone booth. (Anyone remember phone booths?)

Thanks for watching.

Stephen Warden
Executive Producer/Creator
Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…

“I’m very glad to be doing the job I’m doing, which is playing music in front of people,” Elvis Costello recently said. “Making records—it used to be the thing that made the motor go round. Now I just sort of make a record and let it go.”

In the New World Order of the music business, artists need to be open to new opportunities and different configurations for their work. All of this week’s guests on SPECTACLE, while fitting squarely within the conventional singer-songwriter tradition, have experimented with multiple outlets that fit their music. Jenny Lewis has spent the last few years alternating between her solo work and her band, Rilo Kiley; Jakob Dylan is taking time away from his platinum-selling group, the Wallflowers, to release his first solo project; and She & Him is a collaboration between actress Zooey Deschanel and acclaimed songwriter M. Ward.

Elvis, too, has taken advantage of the radical shifts of the last decade to present his music in a wide variety of arrangements and styles. Since the year 2000, he has released five studio albums—each one wildly different from the others. When I Was Cruel, from 2002, was his first album recorded with the Imposters, and was perceived as his return to rock & roll; it reached Number 20 on the charts, his most recent visit to that rarefied level. The following year, North was a piano-centered, ballad-heavy collection, its unprecedented intimacy generally considered to be inspired by his relationship to his new wife, Diana Krall.

The Delivery Man, released in 2004, was Elvis’s most raw and bluesy effort ever. Recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and featuring guest appearances from Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, it was released on the Americana label Lost Highway Records. In 2006, The River in Reverse was a collaboration with New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint, and drew on the disaster of Hurricane Katrina for much of its emotional power; it made it to Number Two on Billboard’s jazz charts. Last year’s Momofuku is the newest addition to the Costello library: it put him back in the studio with the Imposters, but yet again mixed up any kind of formula by featuring Jenny Lewis on a number of songs.

In the meantime, though, Elvis has produced and sung with numerous other artists, and toured in too many different line-ups to count. “Just last year,” he said in late 2008, “I played MerleFest with bluegrass musicians, then I’m touring with the Police, then I’m playing in Europe with an orchestra, then I’m playing a solo show.” As we have explored in previous weeks of SPECTACLE, just in the last decade, he has also worked in classical, jazz, opera, and country music; appeared in various films and television shows; and overseen the extensive reissue program for his catalogue. And, oh, yeah—he and Krall had twin sons in 2006.

Elvis is supposed to have a new album out in the next few months. Anyone want to guess what it will sound like?

– Alan Light

Alan Light is the former Editor-in-Chief of Spin and Vibe magazines, and a former Senior Writer for Rolling Stone. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, he is the author of “The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys” and a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for excellence in music writing.

Celebrate THE GREEN. Tune in, Turn On and Drop Off your t-shirt for Loomstate Barneys [www.barneys.com].

Recently, Sundance Channel filmed parties that celebrated the Loomstate for Barneys Green t-shirt recycling initiative. Sundance Channel was an integral partner on this program as was Lexus, whose hybrid vehicles embody the importance of sustainability. You can read more about the initiative in this blog post [www.sundancechannel.com].

The two parties were great successes and included performances by She & Him, a band comprised of the talented Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, and also the mesmerizing Kate Nash.

Check out this clip that contains a brief segment of Kate Nash’s performance and a brief ecological message from the artist.

Here is a clip that contains a snippet of the She & Him performance. Make sure to catch a special environmental message from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward towards the end of the clip.