the buff who fell to earthThis year for my annual Bowie vigil, I'll be listening to his studio albums in chronological order, from his bday (aka Bowiemas, Jan 8) until however long it takes to listen to 1 album/day, plus Blackstar on the anniversary of him leaving us (Bowienalia, Jan 10). We have 4 Bowie albums still to spotlight on the @1001otheralbums.com blog and I'm not planning on doing parallel posts like I did for Tom Waits week. BUT, if anyone wants to do a guest spotlight, hmu!
The Other Brook@buffyleigh @1001otheralbums.com Since January 8 is also Elvismas maybe you should alternate albums.
@theotherbrook Lol, and now I have the urge to quote some Public Enemy…
@buffyleigh The reply would have to be quoting Chuck D saying that line was about the system that elevated Elvis over Black artists, and that Elvis himself had his respect.
@theotherbrook Ah interesting. Still going to pass.
@buffyleigh Fair enough. For me the Complete Sun Sessions is a great listen but after that he's purely a singles artist. The '67 comeback special is worth watching to see him pushing back against the machine and doing what he wanted to do, but they reined him back in pretty quickly after that.
My dad was exactly one day younger than Elvis and couldn't stand rock and roll. (He had great stories of going to the folk clubs in San Francisco and seeing the Smothers Brothers and the Kingston Trio.) So every year I'd call him on the 8th and wish him Happy Elvis's Birthday.
@theotherbrook Lol, that's lovely. I can't help but have a knee-jerk reaction because only his Christian songs broke through my sheltered childhood, so that's what I still automatically associate him with. Silly I know, but I'm rather allergic to that stuff.
@buffyleigh Oh that is is more than understandable! And of course that's exactly the stuff of his I have the least exposure to and am least likely to ever intentionally listen to. I pretty much skip over Johnny Cash's gospel stuff too.
@theotherbrook It's so weird how those things affect me still. Like, I can recall infomercials that played on the Xian satellite TV station that was on 24hrs in my house of Elvis compilation albums that only had his religious songs. So, ick. Thankfully there was no such infomercials for Cash, and I don't think I even had any knowledge of him until I got out of the church, so I don't even mind his gospel stuff all that much. Brains are complicated.
@buffyleigh Religion only came up in my family situationally. My mom would drag it out for holidays along with the decorations, but we never once in my memory went to church. Most of the Sunday church services I've been to were with my friend's family and they belonged to a dissident Catholic sect that did services in Latin. That was a weird experience for a third grader.
When I was maybe 12 I flat out told Mom I didn't think I believed in God. She turned to Dad and yelled "I raised these kids to have open minds but thanks to you they turned out atheists!"
Anyway, now I'm thinking about how like anyone who deeply loves American-grown music forms I can really get a groove on to some religious music regardless of the lyrical content. (Here I cite "Diseases" by Michigan and Smiley, which is pretty much a litany of the worst beliefs of Rastafarianism but also a banger of a reggae song.) I know Elvis's secular music was heavily influenced by the Black church services he'd go to on his own, but it's the music of his mom's Pentecostal church that he drew on for his gospel records. And that stuff just doesn't fill me with any kind of spirit.
@theotherbrook Pentecostal was the flavor of Xianity I grew up in. Or, as I call it, a cult.
@buffyleigh Ah. You are absolved of any requirement to listen to Elvis. (Although the Sun Sessions might give you a different perspective.)
The older I get, the broader my definition of "cult" gets.