Friday Up Early Random Ten and Links (for THE KING)

Oh, hey, look, it's Friday morning already. Cool.

So, first, a couple of links. I had thought of posting a link to this hysterical post of Qui Nguyen's early on, but didn't feel like posting anything. Then, everyone linked to it, so no need.

However, his latest post is also well worth reading, if you don't read Qui's new blog regularly already (and why not?). Not exactly as funny, but a good story, well-told (and a familiar one to me, actually).


"The pure products of America go crazy . . ." - William Carlos Williams, 1923

We just passed the 30th Anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I remember that day - lying on the floor - nine years old - on my stomach in the sunporch at 20 Field Road in Cos Cob - for some reason watching something on WOR channel 9 (there was nothing on that channel for me in the afternoons, so I don't know why I'd be tuned to it) - my great-grandma talking with her friend Alma in the next room - when a chyron crawl went across the bottom of the screen announcing E's death. I remember the exact quality of that 1970's video super and typeface, but I don't remember how it was phrased, except that it mentioned his age. I did feel at the moment that it was important, even though I had no real concept of ELVIS. I owned the Aloha from Hawaii 2-record set for some reason, but it was 1977 and I was 9 and what would I know of The King, right? But I knew that it was important and that I should be sad. I wasn't, but I knew I should be. I didn't know enough to be.

Elvis has become a bigger and bigger force in my life over the last 15 years, and, despite all the crap he put out (and if I believed in a Hell, I'd want Col. Tom Parker there for his senseless mismanagement and near-destruction of a great talent), his greatest moments are untouchable and irreducible (and I'm sure you know many, if not most, of them, but if you've never heard his 1966 version of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" --haunting, quiet, beautiful, and shoved onto side 2 of the soundtrack for Spinout! for chrissakes, surrounded by garbage -- GET IT and LISTEN TO IT).

And this is all actually just getting off the track of my original intention - just pointing a link to screenwriter Todd Alcott's excellent overview of The Elvis Movies.

Elvis was (and is) America. He was grand. He was a pioneer. He was overindulgent. He was nuts. He had no idea of his true greatness and did not value what he was best at. He was the melting pot. His music is not just a simplistic synthesis of "white hillbilly" and "black blues" musics -- he was a sponge, he listened to EVERYTHING, he loved all kinds of music -- it all went into him, and it all came out together, new. His favorite singer was Dean Martin. Favorite Elvis story not in Peter Guralnick's great 2-volume biography of the man (I read this a few years back in, I believe, New York magazine): Elvis was a shabbos goy. A rabbi and his wife lived above Elvis in Memphis when he was growing up, and Elvis earned some money helping them out on the sabbath. He also borrowed their record player often, as he didn't have one of his own, to listen to his records - blues, country, middle-of-the-road pop singers, whatever. He would also, when he was out of new music, listen to the records the rabbi would loan him with the player as well, which were all recordings of cantors. Elvis absorbed EVERYTHING. And it all came together in him. So somewhere in That Voice, with all the blues and country and pop, and the Italian-American crooners he so wanted to be like ("It's Now or Never"), are also some Jewish cantors. Neat, huh?

Sometime I'll get back to working on my play about Elvis Aron Presley and Philip K. Dick (and their dead twins, Jesse Garon and Jane C.), Kindred. It involves a collision of ghosts, aliens, rock 'n' roll, and living in Fortean Times. It had some difficult structural things to solve before moving on. Maybe now I can crack it.

I've posted the above and below videos before, but here they are again - Elvis in 1957 and 1977, a 20 year change that boggles and saddens. I wish someone would post better copies of each to YouTube, but whatever -- there's a longer version of the clip below, from only weeks before his death, HERE, but while it has an uncut intro, it's spoiled by someone deciding to do a "touching" montage during the performance, instead of staying with The King. You don't need a touching montage when you have this face . . .

"The pure products of America go crazy . . ." - William Carlos Williams, 1923


Also, combining links and the Random Ten, today's Random Ten will be enhanced - for me, anyway - by being listened to through a pair of Sennheiser HD 202 headphones, which I ordered after hearing a review by Tom X. Chao at his Peculiar Utterance of the Day. I needed some good headphones, but didn't think there was anything in my price range that would be worth it - Tom's right, these are a steal for the price (they list at $25 - I found them for $18 online). Hooray! No more ear buds or cheap 99-cent store headphones . . .


So, onward -- today's Random Ten from the CollisionWorks iPod of 21,026 songs:


1. "Octopus' Garden (remix)" - The Beatles - Love
2. "Lonelyville" - Combustible Edison - mix disk from my dad
3. "Mr. Jones" - Talking Heads - Sand in the Vaseline
4. "Wild Jam" - Pop Drive Ltd. - Instro-Hipsters a Go-Go! Vol.1
5. "Hold It Part 1" - Bud Grippah - Las Vegas Grind Part Two
6. "I'll Be Gone" - The Coastliners - The Childish Urge That Won't Make You Go Blind
7. "Bury My Body" - The Animals - The Best of The Animals
8. "That's Why I Treat My Baby So Fine" - The Siegel-Schwall Band - ...Where We Walked
9. "Mansions in the Sky" - The Red Rose Girls - The Red Rose Girls
10. "Samba Para Ti" - El Vez - How Great Thou Art


Hmmn. A nice mix of pop leading to rock 'n' roll leading to blues-rock to blues to country and winding up with a clever Elvis impersonator mixing E with Santana and Lou Reed. A good lead-in to actually listening to some E now. And why not?


(good lord! and the next song that came up after the 10 above, before I went and specifically told the iPod to just play Elvis, was the great "Crawfish" from King Creole - one of his few good original movie songs . . . sometimes I think the iPod is sentient, and fucking with me . . .)

World Gone Wrong Be Going Away

Tonight at 8.00 pm and tomorrow at 4.00 pm will probably be your last chances to ever see my play NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed. I've done it twice, two years apart. It's had it's run. Unless someone wants to pay me to bring it back somewhere, someplace (unlikely), it goes into the storage cage, indefinitely.





With AEA showcase rules, I couldn't bring it back for a while anyway, and I have other things to move on to - my own Spell, Kindred, That's What We're Here For (an american pageant revisited), NECROPOLIS 4: Green River, NECROPOLIS 5: ARTisTS, as well as plays by other people - Richard Foreman's Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville and George Bataille's Bathrobe first and foremost in my head.





Martin Denton's review of the 2005 production is HERE, among others. Michael Criscuolo referred to the current production as "spectacular" in his great review of NECROPOLIS 0 and 3 (you've got over a week before those go away forever).

Tickets are $10 and available at the door (cash) or in advance (credit card) HERE. Scroll down for more info on location, etc.


Hope to see some of you.