Suspicious Minds: David vs. David

Battle of the Elvisy poster-boys

Election time is approaching and airbrushed true blue Dave Cameron is starting to adorn billboards across the nation. You can tell he’s bad news from the fact that, given some sideburns and a quiff, he’s a bit more Gary Glitter than Elvis. The so nicely augmented billboard in question is in Hereford.  

And is it just me or is David Beckham just a little Elvisy in his Sport Relief beneficence? Let him adorn your chest by ordering here: http://shop.sportrelief.com/, or visit your local Sainsbury's or TK Maxx.

Made me wonder if Becks has consciously been Elvisy. I couldn’t find any evidence, but some folk out west have photoshopped him up nice and rock-n-rolly. No Gary Glitter there. Big Dave C's team could learn something.

Thanks: Gavin Moss

Pictures: Hereford Times, Sport Relief, http://www.freakingnews.com/David-Beckham-Elvis-Impersonator-Pictures-32143.asp

 

Elvis's 75th at the Jailhouse, Ace Café

The Ace Café was born and not made. In 1938, this archetypical motor café was built on the North Circular at the Stonebridge Park gyratory – where the North Circular meets the Harrow Road and the LMS railway. A pitstop for the new arterial road network that was transforming Britain. It was rebuilt in 1949 after the original building was bomb-damaged. Look at it, it’s a beautiful: utilitarian brick, 20^th-century transport trim, ocean-liner decorative, P&O smooth. It’s still full of hope for the future.  Its popularity as a 24-hour stop for bikers gained it a certain reputation for leather and 100mph. During the 1950s, it became a hit with leather-clad rockers showing off their wheels. It put on the rising stars of the time, of rock‘n’roll and racing. It closed in 1969, the North Circular was rerouted and the Ace became a tyre fitting shop, before Mark Wilsmore, a former frequenter of the old Ace, put into action a grand plan to restore it to its former glory. The plan worked and in the early 21^st century, the café was rebuilt from the inside out, retaining its 1949 shell, and restoring its interior – long since partitioned, concreted, and generally un-aced. The new design even featured ‘the jailhouse’, a space for live bands and their dancing fans.

The Ace Café had been a place where the cult of the teenager had flourished; where hip young things dressed like Marlon Brando (a hero of Elvis’) and listened to the new sounds that were so shocking their parents. It’s since kept that rockin’ alive. Where else should Elvis celebrate his 75^th? It was a freezing night, the snow had turned to ice and I gave up the notion of driving. Creeping round from Stonebridge Park station from the North Circular onto the old North Circular meant avoiding black ice. I met Elvisiate Clare, already propping up the long service counter where the black and white checkered staff were jumpin’ like catfish in a bowl. The clientele were fabulous: the same leather-clad rockers who had lived their teenage years belting up and down while the coin dropped in the jukebox, but mixed up with immaculately turned-out, ridiculously cool, tremendously good-looking hepcats, sportin’ fine 50s gear. DJ Bill Guntrip played Elvis’s early records and already the dancefloor was rocking.

At 10.30, a raffle took place. Clare suggested I might want to look at my ticket – something I wasn’t doing given that I didn’t know where I’d put it, and the last time I won anything was circa 1982 when I won a chicken for my dad. Eventually I found it and bizarrely, ticket number 121 (me and Elvis, we’re like that) was indeed the winner. Clare screamed and Jailhouse me went up to the Jailhouse to claim my prize. I rather incredibly have two tickets to see Elvis in Concert in February. I’m taking Clare of course.

The band, The Memphis Flashers, featuring Darrel Higham on guitar, were brilliant. Elvis, without the impersonator. Higham doesn’t try to be Elvis but he has a great voice, great energy, and is an excellent front man. Instead of getting into Elvis via a series of karaoke kindergartens, he looks and sounds like he’s made of rock’n’roll. He was occasionally joined by the very lovely leopard-printed, psychobilly quiffed, rock’n’roll voiced, Imelda May, and once or twice by members of the congregation such as one of the aforementioned (Johnny Cashesque) hepcats who grizzled out a corking Folsom Prison Blues while his companions jived away. Darrel and the Flashers were entirely about rock’n’roll and rockabilly, with proper early Elvis down to a T and the odd interloper – Johnny Burnette’s Train Kept A’ Rollin’ (a personal favourite) and Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire (least said, soonest mended) – thrown in to delight (or confuse). When the crowd called for Jailhouse Rock, Darrel sighed, Are you trying to kill me?, but got on with the job and pulled it off rather well. Jailhouse Rock is hard to pull off you know. It’s why so many ETAs stick to the late Elvis – after his voice was ruined.

Well. What a night. What a place. Super fun, super friendly. I shall definitely be returning when I’m hipper and hepper and altogether more of a cat. I advise you to do the same, especially if you have a classic sporty motor and are sporting a fine quiff (like I was).  17^th April for the Eddie Cochran tribute anyone?

Thanks: Elvisiate Clare (huge thanks), Mark Wilsmore & the Ace Cafe, Michael The Lift, James The Hair

Pictures: Pen77, http://www.ace-cafe-london.com/History.aspx, Clare

Happy Birthday to You: the King at 75

At around 4.30am on January 8^th 1935 Gladys Presley gave birth to Elvis Aron Presley, around a half hour after his stillborn brother, Jesse Garon, in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elvis is 75 today, Friday 8^th January 2010. At Graceland, Priscilla and Lisa Marie will be making the annual birthday declaration and cutting his birthday cake on the lawn. It's Elvis Presley Day in Memphis, and the Estate is hosting a four-day bash there which you can follow online.

Across Britain Elvis fans will be making their own celebrations: from Middlesbrough's own Niall Southall, to a bring your own party in Glamorgan with Kurt Tallon, to Blackpool's major Elvis contest. In London, the Charlotte Street Blues Bar has hired Ian Coulson as ETA for the weekend, while one of the burgeoning underground supperclubs is hosting an Elvis’s Birthday Special with a menu derived from Elvis's Southern favourites cooked by his Graceland cook. The supperclub cook quotes David Adler, author of The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley: "Coincidentally, Elvis's favorite word of endorsement was 'burnt'. 'That's burnt, man' he would say, which could indicate either a good steak or a good performance". I’ve already got started on Elvis's birthday with a similar but less advanced personal tribute with friends Cat and Chris. An apocryphal story has Elvis living off fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches for seven days so I assembled the ingredients – sliced white bread, smooth peanut butter, ripe bananas – and the delicacy was washed down with El’s favourite drink – Pepsi Cola. Although Elvis didn’t drink much, we added a tot of Jack Daniels for the toast. At least it's from Tennessee. All I can say is those seven days must have been desperate times for Elvis. Banana vom, as my friends have christened elements of this sandwich, is not nice. The bite-sized chunks make it more palatable. I'll be continuing celebrations at the Ace Cafe on the North Circular.

If you're in the US, those nice Elvis fans at the Independent (who did a magazine special last Saturday on people making a living from Elvis - hopefully to be revisited anon) have collected a few little Elvis activities for you to do this weekend, including what promises to be an awesome spectacle in Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil's compilation of Elvis toons and aerial daring Viva ELVIS which opens this weekend.

Happy Birthday Elvis, I love you, says Suzi Quatro at the end of her Radio 2 broadcast, part of the BBC's Elvis (radio and TV) Season. In Suzi Quatro's Elvis, Suzi visits Tupelo and audibly moved by Elvis’s humble beginnings, explores his Southern life, its sites, its people and Elvis's rise to fame, at the same time acknowledging her own debt to the King and putting right her 35-year-old regret at not accepting an invitation from Elvis himself (she didn't feel worthy). She ends with her new tribute single to the King, Singing With Angels.

Finally, Elvis as a living mega-star: Elvis Fantasay is one techno-geek's collection of Elvis assemblages that conjure a live Elvis into a 21^st-century mega-stadium. The marvelous birthday greeting from the crowd is seriously special. Imagine this at Anfield: http://www.youtube.com/user/elvisfantasay2010. Watch that space for a forthcoming interview with the King - his first in over 32 years.

Finally, finally, hear it here from the King himself. 

Thanks: ChrisCat (for the birthday party), Stan, and Dan.

Pictures:  Graceland lawn webcam

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-4732-Celebrity-Travel-Examiner~y2009m8d14-Elvis-Presleys-birthplace-in-Tupelo-Mississippi-now-a-hot-tourist-attraction
Pen77

From a Jack to a King: Jailhouse Elvis heard in Jaxx Caff

6th January: Perhaps in honour of Elvis' 75th birthday on Friday, Kenton and Cathy chat over the background music in Jaxx Caff. Jailhouse Rock in Borchester!

The Archers is Britain's longest running soap. Daily on BBC Radio 4, farming folk converge and bore the pants off half the population while the others can't turn them off.