Passed by quickly a cd by some band that copied Follow that Dream artwork.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
May 30 - Remaindered book shelf on the way out to the parking lot
Oh the indignities of being a remaindered Elvis book, on the top shelf of the borders remaindered book shelf OUT IN THE PARKING LOT!
may 30 - Gay Cinema Icons Book
Killin' time at Borders, flipped thru a new book with Brokeback Mtn on the cover -- turns out Jailhouse Rock (complete with whipping picture) counts as a gay cinema iconic moment. Can't remember what the book was called but it was something like Frighting the Horses.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
May 29 - Listening to Buble
His intro to Smile mentions Elvis and Sinatra and someone else I think. I'm playing Buble a lot thanks to that annoying PBS pledge drive that it is on every 15 minutes....
May 29 - The Idol version of EW
It's not this issue, but the special American Idol one that of course mentions the Elvis-Celine duet -- a gift that keeps giving....
May 27 - All over CW
In addition to a full page ad for collectables, EP was mentioned several times - can't remember details now, but it was a lot.
May 27 - Newspaper article on "new" country performers
In which it was reported that Tyler Hilton who played Elvis in the Johnny Cash movie is doing a country album.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
May 25 - I try to think about Elvis
They never play country music at the gym, but today it was Patty Loveless's song.
May 25 - Big gaudy Vegas book
I was in book soup looking at the art books and very much enjoyed one on Vegas, with 3 photos of Elvis in his various Vegas incarnations, including the impersonator.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
May 24 - More
ey PopWatchers,
If you read EW's What to Watch, this is gonna be just... like... that. Only longer! And snarkier! And bloggier! As you may have read on Adam's post yesterday, I'm a blog virgin, so be gentle (yet forceful — gotta let me know who's boss). How'd I end up doing the honors tonight? Let's see, Adam and Shirley worked the red carpet, Whitney's on vacation, Dalton's editing the Idol special issue, Mandi's doing the live blog, Michael does everything else for y'all, Annie's stuck in New York, Tim's got a deadline for some non-Idol story (honestly, I didn't know we still did those), and everyone else has a life. So you got me, babe.
Given the Crips/Bloods, Hatfields/McCoys, Rosie/Elisabeth-levels of animus between Blaker Girls (and Boys) and Team Jordin, let's start with something we can probably agree on: Worst. Finale. EVER. Half the performers were seriously pitchy, dawgs. (A lone, fabulously manicured finger is pointing at you, Bette Midler!) The thing had to be sponsored by Geritol (I love me some gray foxes, but Smokey, Gladys, Tony, AND Bette??). And no, that was not an Elvis/Celine hologram-type experience when you saw when Joe Perry strapped to his guitar, playing backup for Sanjaya. That really happened. No, I was there.
May 24 - From Defamer
Unless you've been napping in a sensory deprivation tank buried a mile beneath the earth's surface for the last ten or so hours, by now you know that Jordin Sparks (just 17, as we were reminded every 30 seconds of this past season) is this year's American Idol, a conclusion so foregone that runner-up Blake Lewis put in an application to run the mechanical bull at Saddle Ranch mere minutes after the finalists were announced last week. Indeed, the only real questions left unanswered before the bloated two-hour finale began were: What sexagenarian-and-up singers would call in favors to perform in front of a television audience of tens of millions of teenage girls? (Answer: Tony Bennett, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, a hologram of Fat Elvis, and the ghost of James Brown.) And: What washed-up celebrity would be this year's David Hasselhoff, caught weeping while lost in a transcendent moment in which all melts away but him, the singer who has reached down deep inside him and caressed his very soul, and Idol's all-seeing, audience-scanning cameras? The answer to this query comes after the jump, at precisely 3:44 of Midler's moving performance of that one song she does:
May 23 - Some article from somewhere, can't remember today
Barbra Streisand appears to have misunderstood the phrase "when in Rome." It should not, as it happens, be followed by the words "alienate the whole of your fan base."
As it is, consumer watchdogs in the city have banded together to call for the cancellation of the "People" singer's Rome concert June 15 due to the gig's "absurd and shameful," and excessively high, ticket prices.
The Adusbef and Codacons consumer groups have teamed up to urge both the city of Rome and the Italian Olympic Committee to deny Streisand the use of the Stadio Flaminio to kick off the European leg of her upcoming tour. The Olympic Committee owns and manages the venue.
Ticket prices for the nearly 25,000-seat show, Streisand's first ever in Italy, range from $200 for the nosebleeds, which have long since sold out, up to nearly $1,200 for the choicest seats, of which there are plenty left.
In a joint statement Monday, the groups claimed that the stadium "is public property and cannot be used for immoral deals that are shameful to a civilized country."
Concert organizers have yet to comment on—or justify—the exorbitant ticket prices, though in announcing the concert earlier this month, a spokesman for Streisand told Britain's ITV News that the singer's European tour would be "a momentous occasion that ranks with seeing Sinatra or Elvis. If you think that...you get some sort of context."
Apparently, with a price tag to match—not that everyone is unwilling to pony up for the honor of seeing the "The Way We Were" singer in person.
Streisand's 2006 U.S. tour was the second highest-grossing tour, behind the perpetually-touring Rolling Stones, in North America last year, generating nearly $93 million in sales, with tickets averaging $298 per show.
The Italian job isn't the first time a Babs concert has stirred up controversy.
Last fall, the legendarily liberal singer fell victim to mid-concert hecklers three times, during stops in New York City and Fort Lauderdale. She nabbed headlines when she cursed out one concertgoer, who took vocal issue with an anti-President Bush skit, and again when a Florida "fan" threw a cup of liquid and ice at her while on stage.
On the monthlong leg of her European tour, still scheduled to kick off in Rome, the 65-year-old Funny Girl star will be accompanied by a 58-piece orchestra. Streisand is also due to perform in Austria, France, Ireland and Britain.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
May 18 - Gawker mention
One Ironic Elvis Fan Can Be Wrong
Lord almighty, I feel my temperature rising. These party pictures from The Cobrasnake, Misshapes, and Last Night's Party are burning right through my soul. Alex Blagg's gonna set me on fire. My brain is flaming, I don't know which way to go. It's just a hunk, a hunk of Blue States Lose.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
May 19 - Film book makes obvious reference
I was marathoning thru a book about 100 movies, and stopped to read about the Buddy Holly Story, which naturally mentioned EP in the first paragraph.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
May 15 - Wedding industry book
I was flipping thru this book called something like "The Costs of the American Wedding" and there was of course a reference to being married by an Elvis impersonator.
May 16 - Odd tag
I was searching for something completely unrelated in a database, and "Elvis in Hollywood" came up as the first result.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
May 8 - on the screens
Elvis was one of the images flashing by on one of many tv screens in network control.
May 8 - Something in EW
There was something in this past week's issue of EW, which arrived late on Tuesday and I read it then but can't remember know.
May 11 - Another co-workers cube decoration
Just noticed that a girl who sits by the printer has a photo of young Elvis posted on her cubicle along with current day hunks.
May 10 - Cake in the window
Going to order a mother's day cake, couldn't help but notice the Young Elvis stamp decorated cake in the display window.
.jpeg)
Monday, May 07, 2007
May 6 - Watching Ahmet E. American Masters special on PBS
And of course Elvis was mentioned several times.
Friday, May 04, 2007
May 3 - All over this book
Got this book from the new book section at the library, but really how new could it be if it's an Xmas book -- anyway, Elvis mentioned on the book flap description and twice so far (only 1/4 way in).
May 4 - Monkee news
Tork's new album — Shoe Suede Blues' "Cambria Hotel" (sold at www.cdbaby.com) — features guitarist Richard Mikuls, bassist Arnold Jacks and drummer Jeff Olson. The band's name doesn't reflect Elvis so much as a less fractious era in radio.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
May 3 - Steve Jones loves to sing like Elvis
I missed what the song was, but Steve Jones said the song he played sounded like it could have been an Elvis song and then he started improvise singing so it was an Elvis song about Elvis's life.
May 2 - At the library
In the paperback rack was that Kinky Friedberg book that has Elvis and Coca Cola in the title.
May 1 - LAT article
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-backtracking2may02,0,5255894.story?coll=cl-calendarBACKTRACKING
Where rock’s memory lane is a lonely street
'Writing for the King' shares memories of Elvis
By Robert Hilburn
Special to The Times
May 2, 2007
The first words most people heard Elvis Presley sing in the 1950s were: "Well, since my baby left me / I found a new place to dwell / It's down at the end of lonely street / At heartbreak hotel."
But who did Presley himself first hear singing those opening lines from "Heartbreak Hotel," his first No. 1 hit?
The answer — a radio DJ named Glenn Reeves — and the original acoustic "demo" recording of the song are contained in Ken Sharp's "Elvis Presley: Writing for the King," an enterprising and thoroughly entertaining new book on Presley's music.
"Writing" contains interviews with nearly 150 songwriters whose tunes were recorded by Presley, as well as an accompanying CD that includes 25 song demos sent to Presley by writers or publishers. Those recordings — all believed to be available for the first time — include such hits as "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," "Viva Las Vegas" and "Burning Love." A second CD contains live recordings from Presley's Las Vegas shows.
Sharp's text consists chiefly of first-person accounts by the songwriters of their songs and their dealings with Presley. The demo CD may even be more fascinating, as we hear the skeletal versions of the tunes and how singers tried to imitate Presley's vocal style to demonstrate how right the songs were for him.
Ken Sharp
"Elvis Presley: Writing for the King"
Follow That Dream/Sony/BMG Denmark
The back story: The writing credits on "Heartbreak Hotel" read Mae Boren Axton, Tommy Durden and Elvis Presley, but the demo shows the song was finished by the time Presley heard it. In the text, Axton explains how the song came about and why Presley ended up with writing credit.
Axton met Presley at a concert she promoted in Jacksonville, Fla., in May of 1955, when the charismatic 20-year-old singer was still on Sun Records but showed every sign of being a rock 'n' roll sensation. Axton, mother of folk singer and actor Hoyt Axton, joked about how she would write him a million-seller.
Months later, Durden, who had collaborated with Axton on some songs, spotted a newspaper account of a man who left behind a one-line suicide note: "I walk a lonely street."
Axton thought it was a great image for a song and suggested they put a heartbreak at the end of that lonely street. She and Durden wrote the song in less than a half-hour and asked Reeves to sing it in the anxious, dramatic style of some of Presley's Sun recordings. In return they offered to give Reeves one-third of the royalties, but he didn't think much of the song: "Forget it, I don't want my name on that silly thing!"
But Presley liked "Heartbreak Hotel" so much that he asked Axton to play it again and again. He then recorded it as his first single after switching from Sun to the far more powerful RCA label.
Though songwriters in those days sometimes gave singers a share of the songwriting credit (and royalties) in exchange for the singer recording the song, Axton said she gave Presley a share of the "Heartbreak Hotel" writing credit (and royalties) because she liked him and wanted to help him buy a gift for his parents.
Later, however, writers complained about Presley representatives demanding a share of the publishing royalties before allowing Presley to record their tunes. Presley rebelled against that practice when some writers threatened not to let him have their songs if they had to give up part of their royalties.
"Writing for the King" is filled with the reflections of other writers who connected with Presley, among them the teams of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (whose credits included "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog") and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman ("Viva Las Vegas" and "Little Sister"). Others included Ben Weisman ("Follow That Dream"), Tony Joe White ("Polk Salad Annie"), Mark James ("Suspicious Minds") and Dennis Linde ("Burning Love").
It is amazing to hear how well some of the singers on the demos capture Presley's vocal style, yet he added a sense of purity and power to the recordings that gave the songs an edge.
"When you wrote a song for Elvis Presley, you knew you were going to get a performance plus," Pomus says in the book. "He was one of those few people that when he recorded a song of yours he would do it in the way you envisioned it and then bring something else into it."
"Writing for the King," published in Europe, is available in the U.S. only at Graceland or via www.elvis.com.
Backtracking, a biweekly feature, highlights CD reissues and other historical pop music items
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)