Friday, August 17, 2007

Doornail

The TV has been full all week of the 30 year anniversary of Elvissy's death.

I am of the opinion that this cult of personality has become the new religion, with sightings & impersonators everywhere. I have news for the masses.... HE'S DEAD.

He is not a king he was a singer who crossed sanitised Black blues for a white audience & made a lot of people very rich. He opened doors that white America did not know existed, but the truth is he is deader than the deadest dead thing you can think of...like Velvet loon pants or eighties padded shoulders.

I was in the middle of a camp site, suffering a wet week in the English summer, located in the coastal town of Whitby, Yorkshire, when I heard the news. To be honest I was more concerned about what time the local bar opened than I was by his passing.

The thing that spoiled the whole Elvissey trip for me, was the exposure to literally hundreds of pathetic,talentless, losers who robbed people of their will to live by subjecting us to their tuneless renditions of his songs. This usually took place in bars when our resistance was low, due to imbibing large amounts of alcohol. Why if you had ability coupled with talent would you want to try to make money pretending to be a dead person ? You would want to be sucssefull in your own right wouldn't you?

It has also occurred to me that as time passes the impersonations become more cartoon like, everyone wants to be Las Vegas Elvissey, when he was at his most useless. If I had to pretend to be him, I would want to be 1950's Elvissey,at least that version had balls.

OK one last time : HE IS DEAD.

Listening to:

White Stripes
Siouxsie & the banshee's
Kasabian

1 comment:

Michael K. Willis said...

My first exposure to Elvis when I was a boy was through those (mostly) lame movies and I wondered at the time where the whole "king of rock & roll" thing was coming from. I came to appreciate (some of) his music later in life but the cult of personality thing eludes me too.

Love the Living Colour song quoted in the above post...made me pull that CD from the rack and cue it up. Much headbanging ensued :-)