Advanced Elvis Course
I subscribe to Powell's Review A Day, and this is the review of the day. Advanced Elvis Course? Awesome title.
It has been thirty-two years since Elvis Presley died at age 42, a bloated victim of prescription pills and Nutter Butters...
Obviously, the reviewer is channelling Lord Thingy.
Elvis Presley is such an icon because of the many interpretations to which he has been subject. He is so entangled in history and myth that he has become virtually unknowable. On one hand, he was a pioneering rock and roll singer; on the other, he was a gifted gospel singer and by all accounts a believer. He was a symbol of sin to his contemporaries for the way he shook his hips when singing, but today's hip-hop artists regularly grab their crotches while they perform much more suggestive songs than he ever imagined. He began his career as a rebel stirring up America's youth, but he ended it as a Las Vegas lounge singer, crooning for the middle-aged masses. In short, Elvis is largely a blank screen onto which legions of fans, music critics and academicians have projected their beliefs.
And Lord Thingy's dislike is not of Elvis, but of music. Or maybe of people who like Elvis.)
It sounds like this book will cover some of the same ground covered in Greil Marcus's Dead Elvis. (Another title which Lord Thingy must have thought up.) Except in poetry form. And the author got to visit Graceland.
I will have to buy it, and pick up an extra copy for Lord Thingy so that he can enjoy it too!
