Tag Archives: Elvis Presley

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Phish &: Aces Full of Kings

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Phish isn’t exactly a sizzling topic on GloNo. I just ran a search and discovered that there are 20 pieces that mention the band, and in some instances a mention is pretty much just that. And while I am indifferent to the band and, overall, its genre, it probably deserves a bit more mention.

(After all, Thin Lizzy has 10 mentions, and while I know that Phish still exists—with essentially two member changes, addition of keyboardist Page McConnell in 1985 and the departure of guitarist Jeff Holdsworth in 1986—despite plenty of time searching (including on what claims to be “The Official Thin Lizzy” website, which has on offer a live album that is the band “at the absolute height of their powers”—recorded in 1977), I can’t figure out whether Thin Lizzy exists in any form, and even when it did, members changed as frequently as Cher did dresses on “The Sonny and Cher Show,” which also appeared in 1977.)

A couple years ago, when John Hodgman was still answering the questions in The New York Times “The Ethicist” column, he was presented with:

My fiancé, Steve, wants me to go to a Phish show—he has been to more than 60—but every time he turns on Phish, it puts me to sleep. I don’t want to pay for an expensive nap. Please order that he stops asking me to go to his hippie festivals.

To which “Judge” Hodgman replied, in part: “before you get married, you should know the law: in heterosexual marriages, every wife owes her husband one Phish show.”

It is not later revealed whether Rachel and Steve were wed or if she became well rested during a lengthy performance.

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Elvis Live(s)

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In 2023 Taylor Swift set a record for being at the top of the Billboard album chart, the Billboard 200, more frequently than any other individual: 68 weeks. Swift has been releasing albums since 2006, when her self-titled disc dropped. Her first album at the top was her second, Fearless (2008), which racked up 11 weeks there, or 16% of her total run (so far; she’s probably added to her dominance by the time you read this).

Swift took the top spot from Elvis, who, with 67 weeks, is the second solo artist on the list.

(Both have a ways to go to be at the overall top of the Billboard 200 cumulative list: the Beatles have marked 132 weeks.)

Elvis’ Billboard 200 numbers are for 10 albums released between 1956 and 2002, with that last date being pretty damn good for a guy who died in 1977, or 12 years before Taylor Swift was born.

In Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, if we use the Syd Field three-act structure from his Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), the Confrontation occurs in a Las Vegas that resembles the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. A dirty bomb apparently went off in Vegas, although it seems as though it was a neutron bomb, given that with the exception of the massive statues that are being reclaimed by the desert, the casino hotels still stand, which gives Rick Deckard, portrayed by Harrison Ford, a place to live, hidden away from the Wallace Corporation. (Apparently he’s been there since the time of the first Blade Runner film, which is set in. . . 2019.)

As Ryan Gosling’s K, in 2049, wanders through the casino that houses Deckard, he goes into a theater, where a glitchy Vegas-era holographic Elvis performs “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” about which Deckard, after engaging in a fist fight with K, says, “I like this song.” Elvis first released the song, which is based on a melody from a French composition of 1784 (“Plaisir d’amour”), in 1961. Deckard is in his 30s in the first film, which means he would have been born in 1989 at the latest or 1980 at the earliest: either way he was born after the 1969 residency at the International that is associated with Elvis and that rhinestone-decorated white jumpsuit.

Evidently, Elvis continued to have resonance maybe in the future (it is not disclosed when Sin City became Empty City, so it based on the setting of the first film in 2019, it could have been anytime between then and 2040, based on the idea that the ruin-like nature would have taken at least nine years to be as manifest as it is). Maybe that future is. . .2024.

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Billions and Billions: Stars & the Strip

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It is sometimes difficult to wrap one’s mind around the kind of money that music is related to today, whether it is from what the labels are reporting (yes, they are still reporting quarterly returns in the billons: for Q3 2023 Universal Music Group reported that its overall recorded music revenues were $2.21 billion, and while that is a large number, Sony did even better in its music business, with a haul of $2.33 billion) or what the streaming services are taking in (although not necessarily making money: in the third quarter of 2023 Spotify reported its first profit in more than a year, with net income of $69.1 million, from 574 million monthly active users (MAUs), and just to give you a sense of how many people that is, if you add the population of the 10 largest cities in the world—Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Beijing, Mumbai, and Osaka—it sums to about 251 million people, or about 44% of the Spotify monthly MAUs).

So let’s narrow this to something more comprehensible. The earnings of the Las Vegas Sphere*, the venue that opened on September 29. It is 366 feet tall and 516 feet at its widest point.

On the exterior there are 580,000-square feet of LEDs. The LEDs are segmented into pucks, of which there are 1.2 million. Each puck includes 48 LED diodes. Can you say “advertising”?  The people at MSG (as in “Madison Square Garden”) Networks and Sphere Entertainment Company can. During its Q1 2024 earnings call (no, this is not something that happens in the future; fiscal years don’t necessary track with calendars as we know them), James Lawerence Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment said that early in September, before the venue was opened, the exterior (which they call the “Exosphere”) promoted NFL Sunday ticket. “This was quickly followed,” he continued, “by other prominent brands, including PlayStation, Meta, Xbox, and Coca-Cola.” Dolan added, “We have a healthy pipeline of advertising commitments for the Exosphere and over the coming months you will see a constant rotation of impactful campaigns from many prominent global brands.” Of course.

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New Lindsay Lou: I Can Help

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Video: Lindsay Lou – “I Can Help” (Billy Swan cover)

From Queen of Time, due September 29 on Kill Rock Stars.

I remember this song playing on the radio of my mom’s car when I was a little boy. It’s not cool. It’s always been goofy. But it made it all the way to #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 18 weeks so somebody clearly liked it. And really, what’s not to like? Billy Swan’s original has that woozy ballpark organ riff that your Aunt Phyllis could probably play for you on that Grinnell in the hallway. Bill Swan had the charming, unfussy voice of a songwriter.

Lindsay Lou, a Michigan gal who relocated to Nashville a while back and recently signed to Kill Rock Stars, doesn’t recreate the organ part, and thankfully she doesn’t do the corny false ending either. She makes it her own and it’s…pretty good, actually. She puts some soul into her vocals. Her version is better than Elvis Presley’s, for sure.

A press release suggests she ingested some hallucinogens and saw “a literal manifestation of the sacred feminine” that led to a “spiritual journey of self-knowledge and healing.” And apparently inspired her to cover a 1974 one-hit wonder. Drugs can be unpredictable. Be careful out there.

Lindsay Lou: web, bandcamp, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

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Dead Man’s Wallet

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The publication that once self-described as “The Capitalist’s Tool,” which eventually had an unfortunate if apt meaning, Forbes, has, like its competitor, Fortune, long been into creating lists. This was something that preceded the clickbait approach of so-called listicles, which are pretty much predicated on short attention spans. In the case of Forbes and Fortune the lists were predicated on numeric data that their readers could use for purposes of comparison and analysis rather than distraction.

Still, times change for all.

One of the things that is tough to overlook about the music industry—and let’s recognize that what is most visible are the industry participants rather than artisans or craftspeople—is that it is hugely measured in the metric of “hits,” which means “sales,” which means “revenue,” which leads to “earnings.”

In the recent Q3 earnings call, for example, for Universal Music Group, during which it was noted that the company had its fifth quarter running of strong earnings (e.g., revenues of $2.68 billion), Sir Lucian Grainge (and know that Grainge wasn’t knighted because of dragons), pointed out that while there are some 100,000 tracks uploaded to streaming services each day, this is really not helpful because it tends to be “low-quality content,” as distinct from 114-million album seller Taylor Swift, about whom he remarked: “You just have to look at the excitement around the world on a brilliant album by a brilliant artist with this week’s Taylor Swift release. That drives consumption, it drives audience and it drives new people to everything to the products, to the platforms, to other music.” And, of course, it drives revenue.

But Swift is still with us, and Forbes has complied a list of the top-earning artists and entertainers who are dead but still minting some serious coin during the past 12 months.

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Elvis in the Metaverse

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Admittedly, this is a little confusing.

On June 1, Authentic Brands Group (ABG) put out a press release.

This is the opening paragraph:

Elvis Presley Enterprises and web3 studio Run it Wild today announced a series of new partners for Elvis On-Chain, the icon’s multi-metaverse NFT project. Ramping up for the genesis launch on June 1, the dream team of partners and collaborators includes leading decentralized gaming virtual worlds The Sandbox and Decentraland, digital creator Voxel Architects, wearables designer, DAPPCRAFT and renowned web3 utility creator Metakey.

The confusion is the clause “the icon’s multi-metaverse NFT project.”

That is, one can only assume that the icon in question is Elvis; Elvis Presley Enterprises, a subset of Authentic Brands Group, is creating more digital Elvis wealth, which will, of course, garner more wealth IRL for the owners of ABG.

Elvis, of course, is dead. Has been (I suppose I should say “Allegedly has been,” because nowadays it seems that facts are only what one wants to make them to be, and while it wasn’t all that long ago that conservatives attacked academics who were ostensibly proponents of post modernism for undermining Superman’s “truth, justice and the American way,” now it is that group who, as we were reminded of by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, are all about denying reality and do so with bear spray, clubs and Viking outfits; somewhere Superman is weeping) since August 1977. If he is still alive, he’s 87, which is probably past the age that one could reasonably work the drive-thru at a burger place in western Michigan or anywhere else for that matter, the massive number available jobs in the food service industry notwithstanding.

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Listen to Frontier Justice 2/19/17

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The Thousand Points Of Light Memorial Waterfall lies dry at the center of the Super 7 Mega Mall food court tetrahedron, and everybody’s got an opinion as to why. Hair triggers, we have them. In this new reality of hot takes and burning questions, it’s fun to clamber onto a roof and shout “BELL BOTTOMS” over and over into the night sky. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion strut their way outta “Frontier Justice” in its college radio days and into this new consciousness, the latest FJ delivery system being Spotify. And speaking of that new consciousness, on this set JSBX drops into the void between Danny Brown‘s stuttering, claustrophobic “Ain’t It Funny” on one side and Lady Gaga‘s “Diamond Heart” on the other. Young, wild Americans, both.

Spotify: Frontier Justice 2/19/17 (35 songs, 2 hr 3 min)

At the top of the set, Norway’s Sigrid makes her debut with “Don’t Kill My Vibe” and M.I.A. returns with the typically martial “P.O.W.A.” Minor Threat and Agent Orange remind us that the establishment was riling up the youth in the early moments of the Me Decade, Patti Smith remains royalty, and “Said It Already” is new, incisive and grooving from young Londoner Ama Lou. Elsewhere, Tommy Genesis oozes volatility and effortless after-hours club cool on “Art,” and Dai Burger wants to be your class president. Did you know Michelle Branch is back? Hopeless Romantic is her first full-length in 13 years; it was written and co-produced with Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, and sounds like it. Angel Olsen released one of 2016’s best records in My Woman — The engrossing, cinematic “Sister” is a highlight — and digging deep into the Spotify Sound Vaults reveals classic material in a new light: Elvis Presley brings both vulnerability and bluesy swing to an alternate take of “Heartbreak Hotel,” and The Supremes are full of funky soul on “Bad Weather,” the 1973 nugget produced and written by Stevie Wonder.

There’s some Ratt along the way, because after all, what goes around comes around (and they’ll tell you why), L.A. Witch is back with cool new stuff for Suicide Squeeze, RTJ remind us to stay hungry and pissed, and Eminem is no less than unhinged on “No Favors,” one of the many standouts on Big Sean‘s terrific new record I Decided.

Making playlists isn’t protest. It’s not political action. But it can be a soundtrack for both dancing and dissent, and do its best to uphold the art of discourse, which in these polarizing times is increasingly under attack. And if you want to completely check out, there’s always room on Goat‘s delightfully weird magic carpet. Here, “Try My Robe.”

JTL

You can also try an Apple Music playlist. Let me know if this works. -ed.

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Articles

Yes, People Still Buy Discs. Millions of Them.

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In March 1958 Elvis’ Golden Records album was released.

“Heartbreak Hotel.”

“Love Me Tender.”

“Don’t Be Cruel.”

“All Shook Up.”

Those and other tracks are on the disc.

And it, itself, became a Gold Record in 1961. (It eventually racked up status as 6X Platinum, which sounds like a score on a pinball machine.)

But let’s face it: this first volume of complied Gold Records has a horribly weak name.

When volume two was released in November 1959 it was unimaginatively titled Elvis’ Gold Records—Volume Two, but it gained a name that is arguably one of the best album titles of all time: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.  (What’s amusing about volume two is that the cuts it contains are not the audio icons that many of those on volume one have become, so those 50,000,000 fans were not quite as right as the ones the year earlier.)

Elvis comes to mind because of Garth Brooks.

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The world’s worst Elvis impersonator: Kate Moss

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Video: Elvis Presley – “The Wonder You” (with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)

This is preposterous. It’s ludicrous on several levels. First of all, why are they adding “lush new arrangements” by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to Elvis recordings? The original single version, recorded live in Las Vegas, was good enough to spend 12 weeks on the charts in 1970 and peak at #9. Why add a new orchestral accompaniment? It sounds fine, but completely unnecessary.

And why cast Kate Moss to lip sync and roll around on a couch and a piano? What demographic are they marketing this toward? It just seems misguided and weird.

Sure, Kate Moss is cool and pretty. I’ve harbored a crush on her since I first saw her Calvin Klein ads in 1992 when I was in college. Years later I was amused by the outrage when video emerged of her huffing blow in the studio with Pete Doherty and Mick Jones while they were recording the Babyshambles debut. I guess it’s kind of cool that a 42 year old lady can still be seen a sex symbol…or something.

But really, what’s the point? I know there is a legion of geriatric diehards and collectors who buy everything with Elvis’ name on it, and this is actually the second collection of Royal Philharmonic overdubs. The first one, If I Can Dream, was apparently successful enough to warrant a sequel. I suppose we can all be thankful that at least this new volume doesn’t contain a “duet” with Michael Bublé.

I love Elvis. And I truly believe that anybody who claims to care about music should own the Sun sessions and the 1969 American Sound recordings (Elvis at Sun and Suspicious Minds are good collections). And if you like “The Wonder of You” by all means check out Elvis on Stage, where the original version appears; it’s a very fun recording of Elvis at his vocal peak backed up by a great band led by James Burton.

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Complete Elvis Presley Masters Box Set

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Complete Elvis Presley Masters

This is so hardcore. So remember earlier this year when we wrote about how they had gone back and worked on audiophile-quality remasters of all 711 of the master recordings Elvis Presley released in his lifetime, but the only place you could purchase them all together was via a corny collection from the Franklin Mint? Back then I whined, “it would be great if they could release a nice, chronologically sequenced box with good liner notes.” Well, my wish was somebody’s command because that’s exactly what they’re releasing: The Complete Elvis Presley Masters Collection Limited Edition.

The first run is limited to 1,000 copies and includes 30 discs (including all 711 master recordings plus 103 additional rare recordings — see complete tracklist below), a 240-page hardbound book, individually numbered display case, and an individually numbered certificate of authenticity. It ships on or before October 19, 2010. It costs $749 plus tax and $14.99 shipping. That’s steep, even for thirty CDs. But oh man, what a collection! Hopefully, a more reasonably priced second run will be released after the first run sells out…

Update: Some sharp-eyed fans on the Steve Hoffman forums have noticed that the collection is missing the song “Let’s Forget About the Stars,” recorded for the Charro soundtrack and issued on Let’s Be Friends in 1970. Oops!

Update #2: ElvisNews.com counters: Despite a typo on the official Sony Website and the Sony Press Release, we can now officially state that the 30 cd box set THE COMPLETE MASTERS is indeed… complete, including “Let’s Forget About The Stars” and “Big Boots”.

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