elvis presley

Published: Mongrel Magazine, December 2003

Elvis… Is it yourself?

Mission: Trick a Psychic into Contacting Someone Who Never Existed
Purpose: My own amusement
Venue: Georges Street Arcade
Time: 13.57, 13/11/2003
Tools: Concealed microphone
Miscellaneous: Peckish, may need a sandwich later. Read the rest of this entry »

Elvis… is it yourself?

Mission: Trick a Psychic into Contacting Someone Who Never Existed
Purpose: My own amusement
Venue: Georges Street Arcade
Time: 13.57, 13/11/2003
Tools: Concealed microphone
Miscellaneous: Feeling peckish, may get a sandwich later Read the rest of this entry »

Are You Lonesome Tonight? (1969)

Yeah, it’s the laughing version… The back story, from Wikipedia: Read the rest of this entry »

SUSPICIOUS MINDS (1970)

“We’re caught in a trap
I can’t walk out
Because I love you too much baby…”

BLUE MOON REVISITED (SONG FOR ELVIS) (1987)

From the sublime Trinity Session.

ROCK AND ROLL (1999)

THE KING IS DEAD (SLIGHT RETURN)

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Michael Jackson’s demise is that, for all the singer’s peculiarities, his death so exactly echoes the deaths of countless of other troubled, prodigiously talented entertainment icons down through the years (Elvis, Judy Garland, Hank Williams etc. etc.) It has the same basic plot (the gift as the curse) and exactly the same cast of characters (sycophants, leeches, quack doctors.) There will, no doubt, be further revelations about Michael Jackson’s personal life in the coming weeks and months, and it’s safe to assume that it won’t be pretty.

But on a happier note for now, this personal remembrance, written by Deepak Chopra’s (wonderfully monikered) son Gotham Chopra, is among the more interesting tributes to Jackson I’ve come across in the last few days. In it, he talks about planned strip club visits, sacks full of cash and doling out sex advice to a man seventeen years his senior – on the occasion of Jackson’s marriage to Lisa Marie Presley. Read the rest of this entry »

MR BOJANGLES (1968)

It’s almost 3am as I sit down to write. I became an uncle for the first time today, and have just returned from toasting the birth of my niece. No doubt, by the time anyone gets around to reading this, Michael Jackson will already have been eulogized far beyond my meager power to add or detract. If you weren’t a child of the 1980s, it’s impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this man’s outrageous talent captivated a generation. There is no contemporary equivalent. No one even comes close.

As an entertainer, in the modern era, his only peers were Elvis, Sinatra and the Beatles. Read the rest of this entry »