V03-T09 Elvis' House

.....Jello Biafra once wrote a lyric about parasitic Elvis-fetish merchandise being sold in Memphis, (if memory serves me): "His disciples flock to such a fitting shrine, sprawled across from his Graceless mansion; a shopping mall, filled with prayer rugs and Elvis dolls."

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 9

• 05:40 "ELVIS' HOUSE" (Christopher Ewen,Anthony Kaczynski, John R. Rolski, Michael Smith, Perry Tell)
• performed by Figures On A Beach
• original source: LP STANDING ON CEREMONY Sire 9 25596-1 (US) 1987
• and my source: the same

.....If Figures On A Beach are remembered for anything now, it's for being a big chunk of Christopher Ewen's resume before joining/forming Future Bible Heroes. They only released two albums, this being the first, but several singles and EP's over about ten years. The second eponymous album was released in 1989 on vinyl and again the following year on CD. This first album didn't ship on CD until 2008 (after being made downloadable in 2006). That is a shame. Not only does it have the only one of their songs made into a MTV video ("NO STARS", according to their sparse website) but it has this brilliant piece of encroaching paranoia and detachment. In the ten years following Elvis' death (in 1977) there were numerous songs about him, such as Dead Kennedy's "A GROWING BOY NEEDS HIS LUNCH" (quoted above), Frank Zappa's "ELVIS HAS JUST LEFT THE BUILDING" and Mojo Nixon's "ELVIS IS EVERYWHERE". Worth looking out for is the Residents' chilling and heart-wrenching album THE KING AND EYE, in which an Elvis sound-alike tells a demented fairy tale to two children that is clearly based on Elvis' own life, interspersed with songs from his catalog (mostly Lieber and Stoller compositions) that take on radically different meanings in the context of the story without changing a word of the lyrics.

.....With all that Presleyana in the air at the time, it was unavoidable that his home, which he called 'Graceland' would come in for scrutiny. It was the world's only lasting physical manifestation of his personality. There's the Paul Simon song and album and a priceless scene in Spinal Tap which was recalled (intentionally or unintentionally?) in the U2 film "Rattle And Hum". "ELVIS' HOUSE" suggests that while a prison with bars of gold may still be a prison, it doesn't preclude the possibility of it being something worse. If anything, it resembles the Roxy Music song "IN EVERY DREAM HOME A HEARTACHE", in which we lose our soul in increments as we cede control over our lives to our material possessions, and become their possessions.

.....The second half of Volume three starts Monday and we turn our attention from the 'rebel' theme we've been following and instead focus on some of the little things in life.