>>PREVIEW
HELVIS
Saturday, June 3
Palomino
The King is gone, but he’s not forgotten. This is the story of a trend that’s rotten.
Elvis Presley was bigger than life while he was alive. After he died he got even bigger. I’m not talking about the bloating that accompanies decay… well, actually, I kind of am. Helvis, a four-part unholy reincarnation of the latter-day, obese, pill-popping King, has pushed an already huge Elvis post-death mythology to new heights. To quote drummer King Skins, "We’re taking that decrepit, coughing ball and running with it." Fast Forward asked these spiritual sons of Elvis to thoroughly examine the Elvis pop-cultural landscape, ’cuz who better to comment upon the phenomenon than four guys who, in another life, were Elvis.
MOJO NIXON
FFWD: Shuffle-blues weirdo Mojo Nixon’s 1991 album Bodayshus featured the song "Elvis is Everywhere." Do you agree that the lyrics "Elvis is everywhere, Elvis is everything, Elvis is everybody, Elvis is still the King," point to a heavenly deity, not a hellish one?
Drunken Helvis Style (bass): Just because he’s everywhere and in everybody, why do you assume he’s heavenly?
King Skins Nitro (skins): In Alberta, maybe no one’s Elvis. Thing is, where I come from in backwoods Alabama, everybody is Elvis. We’re talkin’ Carl that runs the corner-store to the guy that sold me my truck. They’re all Elvis.
King Sausage (vocals): Elvis is the evil shadow within us all. Mojo Nixon understands that.
ELVIS IMPERSONATORS
FFWD: Elvis impersonation has been huge for years. Why do people all over the world feel the need to dress up and perform as Elvis over, say, the need to dress up and promote non-violence, like Gandhi?
K.S.N.: I haven’t seen Gandhi rip it up.
K.S.: In India there is a pretty serious Gandhi impersonator circuit. It hasn’t bled over into our culture.
FFWD: Do you approve of impersonators?
H.S.: The one real good one in town is Will "Elvis" Reeb. We play with him a lot.
D.H.S.: I don’t really respect them. People that put on Elvis suits usually don’t know how to play.
K.S.: Elvis is now being invoked by any old asshole in a wig. That’s one of the main reasons we’re back here on earth. To get people to refocus on what the entity of Elvis really means.
K.S.N.: Gandhi’s followers don’t have that kind of reverence for the Mother that Elvis did. That comes from good breedin’.
D.H.S.: Like through your nose.
FFWD: Will you work with Elvis impersonators again?
K.S.: Yes, but it’s like the Tragically Hip playing with a Tragically Hip cover band.
D.H.S.: I think Gord Downey’s into that because it’s an easy act to upstage.
ELVIS IMPERSONATOR MOVIES
FFWD: Several films featuring impersonator-based plots have been made in recent years. Which of these do the King’s legacy justice?
· Elvis Gratton (1981) – Documentary short about a French-Canadian Elvis impersonator.
D.H.S.: I like French fries.
H.S.: I like poontang.
· Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) – Horror comedy starring Bruce Campbell as a mummy-fighting senior citizen Elvis.
H.S.: I dunno. Elvis never had sores on his penis like that dude.
FFWD: Helvis is penis-sore free?
H.S.: We dry hump on the road, so there’s no way. That part of the movie was complete fiction.
K.S.: Ho-Tep no-tep. A lot of these movies do the same thing that Elvis impersonators do. They’re trying to capitalize with cheap impersonations. They mock the rebellion Elvis was really about.
· Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) – Action comedy romance starring Nicholas Cage.
K.S.: Tha’s a great movie man! Cage captured the spirit of Elvis.
K.S.N.: He did it better in Wild at Heart. And that came out in the mid-’80s when Elvis culture wasn’t mainstream as it is now.
D.E.S.: One thing about Wild at Heart — we do get a lot of comparisons to Bobby Peru (sleazebag criminal played by Willem Dafoe).
K.S.: If you met Elvis in his later years it’d be as disturbing as watching Wild At Heart. Cage was passionate about Elvis.
FFWD: He married the King’s daughter.
H.S.: He was always asking her about Elvis. "So, what kinda bread did he eat?" "What? We’re in the middle of something here."
D.H.S.: Girls don’t like it when you talk about their dads in bed.
H.S.: "He’s up right now?"
· 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001) – Vegas casino heist flick starring Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner. Coincidentally, Russell portrayed Elvis in the screen bio Elvis: The Movie (1993). He also had a small part in Elvis’s It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963).
K.S.: That’s right. He was in our movie.
K.S.N.: Could it not be that Elvis inhabits Kurt Russell like Lily Tomlin inhabited Steve Martin in All of Me?
H.S.: Uh, no, ’cuz that’s us.
FFWD: Should he be in the band right now?
H.S.: The only way to be in the band is to literally be a part of Elvis's soul. When one of us dies, the others just wait for some other yahoo to approach them and claim they are the soul of the dead member's soul. Do you get it?
D.H.S.: I don’t like it when filmmakers get some big-name celebrity and drop him in some stupid movie. They don’t care about plot, character development, cinematography. What ever happened to the good old days of Jailhouse Rock?
ELVIS SIGHTINGS
FFWD: A phenomenon as dated as spontaneous human combustion?
K.S.: People need to see Elvis. He died before his time. That’s why we’re back.
H.S.: People see Jesus in their fucking toast. Why can’t you see Elvis everywhere?
LISA MARIE PRESLEY
FFWD: She’s Elvis’s genetic legacy. Since you four are her soul-daddies, do you maintain contact with her?
H.S.: When she was touring she caught wind that we wanted to get some time in with her. She cancelled the western Canadian leg. She can’t see her dad in us.
K.S.: She hasn’t accepted the truth of his re-existence in us.
K.S.N.: You’ve got Jews not accepting Christ. Lisa Marie, well, she’s a Jew.
HELVIS: UH… LIVE (CATCH AND RELEASE)
FFWD: How does your new live album fit into Elvis pop-culture?
K.S.: Helvis is picking up where Elvis left off. He left off with mumbling and he was getting into a sleazier trip. We’re coming at it with fresh legs. We’re not hitting the ground running but mumbling. Staggering. We’re playing a lot with what you can do with mumbling. Not being limited to melody and coherence. It’s a new kind of scat that we’re developing. It’s an exciting time for music.
H.S.: We tried as much as possible to minimize the crowd noise. But we realized that the crowd is just such a part of what we’re doing as a band. It’s OK that the noise bled into the mics.
K.S.N.: Blood bled into the mics!
D.H.S.: Yeah, recording live is not easy. You have no idea what it’s like trying to play while people are throwing thousands of pairs of underwear at you. Some of it was even from girls.
H.S.: Its a good lovemaking album.
FFWD: Is that because it’s so long?
H.S.: It’s length plus there’s a couple of rough patches.
FFWD: What comments has it elicited?
K.S.: People say it has virtuosity, synchronicity, synergy. And I think that they’re kinda missing it. It’s kinda like Garbage (editor’s note: both the band and, like, y’know, garbage).
FFWD: Has anyone ever mentioned that Helvis sounds like Elvis in any way?
K.S.: Listening to the music I can hear where you’re getting that. But that says more about you, right? It’s an ink blot thing. You definitely have some kind of Elvis fascination. |
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