Even with records as diverse as Get Happy!!, Almost Blue, and Imperial Bedroom preceding it, you could call Spike the beginn ing of Elvis Costello's super-eclectic period. The 1989 disc, here augmented wit h an hour's worth of inspired demos and B-sides, offered everything from the bed rock New Orleans sounds of Al len Toussaint and the Dir ty Dozen Brass Band to clanging rockabilly, Paul McCartney collaborations (including the sparkling po p hit "Veronica"), and a jazz-ballad standard in the making ("Baby Plays Around" ). And that's only the half of it. As Costello relates in new liner notes, he ha d ideas for several records: "I seem to have elected to make all five albums at once." Such a thing could've gone precious way fast, but nerve, imagination, tun es, and a double dose of anger assured that it didn't. A broadside or three on t he state of England and the world also made Spike hardly less bilious tha n This Year's Model. (Try the coldly mournful "Tramp the Dirt Down" or th e skronking, Marc Ribot-a ssisted "Let Him Dangle.") Heard seemingly everywhere in its day, it deserves the fresh listens this reissue will occasion. --Rickey Wright