WEDNESDAY NIGHT OT – Elvis, Uncle Tupelo, Elvis

Jeff Tweedy wrote of his first band, Uncle Tupelo, and the meaning of the name, in his 2018 memoir Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), “It was an old, fat Elvis Presley, but a version of him that never became the King. He’s drinking beer, wearing bunny slippers, and sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner. He’s the Elvis who squandered his gifts, never left Tupelo, and just drinks cheap beer in his mobile home every night.”

Stephen Jones, who went on to marry and later divorce that Paula Jones, née Corbin, of Clinton V. Jones  520 U.S. 681 (1997),
plays the ghost of Elvis Presley in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989).

Tweedy claimed the randomly chosen name and subsequent cartoon drawn by a friend was an inspiration to get the hell out of Belleville, IL, and do something with his life. Don't die there. I'm more fond of Uncle Tupelo's Fake Elvis than the real thing. I don't dislike Elvis, but I'm not a fan either. What would Rock even sound like without him? What would his impersonators be doing instead? What would Declan McManus have called himself if Elvis had never been?

Early show poster via wikipedia.

Some Fake Elvises in pop culture:

• "Ike at the Mike" is an alternate history short story by Howard Waldrop (Omni, 1982), in which Dwight D. Eisenhower is a jazz musician and is lamenting his late drummer, "Wild" George S. Patton. Elvis Aaron Presley is a young US senator regretting never having taken his shot at music.

• Purportedly David Bowie wrote "Golden Years" for Elvis to sing and was declined. Bowie of course went ahead and sang it himself in full Presley baritone croon. You can hear Elvis singing it if you squint your ears. Long live the Thin White Duke.

• Val Kilmer in True Romance (1993) as Elvis's ghost encouraging Clarence (Slater) to do some murder. Probably my favorite part of the movie. "I like you, Clarence. Always have. Always will." [gestures the Elvis finger point]

• Sci-Fi author Jack Womack wrote a messed up, nasty alternate history quartet between '87 - '93 (wikipedia says he's written a couple more DryCo titles in the interceding years) in which, among other absurdities, an alternate Elvis is a psychotic sexual predator the dominant US church is attempting to turn into the messianic figure of their religion. There's also a psychopathic agent in Terraplane who gets sent back to the 1930s and is obsessed with finding Robert Johnson, listening to him on his headphones constantly. This has nothing to do with Elvis, but I remember feeling mildly relieved when he died.

• Orion: The Man Who Would Be King is such a bizarre story I thought it was totally made up at first. It's all true. A documentary by the great Jeanie Finlay. No story too small, she captures cultural blips and never forgets her subjects are/were sweaty, flawed human beings ripe for mocking, but she never does. Finlay knows humans are a mess:

• And of course Mystery Train, which you already knew about.

Jun & Mitsuko (Masatoshi Nagase and Yuki Kudoh) argue Carl Perkins or Elvis?

Any Fake Elvis sightings in your recent travels? Any favorites? There have been quite a few in the movies. ANYWAY, that's what I'm thinking about. How about you?