Today’s the day

I like music. I like music almost as much as I like film. I used to love music way more than I do now, but that changed somewhere along the line.

But I can pinpoint the exact day that I first became interested in music beyond listening to theme tunes of kids' TV shows.

It was 16 August 1977, 30 years ago today. I'm sure you don't need to ask how it is that I can be so accurate with such a seemingly arbitrary moment in my life story. I'm sure you all know that when something happens that is as momentous as Elvis dying, it can have an influence on the mind of a 7-year-old boy.

It was on the radio, I seem to remember. I also seem to recall the doorstep of my house and telling my then-28-year-old mum that "her boyfriend" had died. (This was a mistake on my part, since "her boyfriend" was Alvin Stardust, but Elvis and Alvin sound the same to a music-ignorant 7-year-old, I guess.)

Then there was the realization that my dad, who had quite recently turned 30, had a bunch of Elvis records. Well, naturally, my younger brother and I had to listen to hear what all the fuss was about. There were singles, albums, and EPs for our aural pleasure, but mostly the early stuff. Indeed I don't recall there being any movie soundtracks in his collection, apart from an EP from the film King Creole. The only later records were perhaps the "Suspicious Minds" single and the hugely exciting Elvis NBC-TV Special album.

I remember my dad saying something weird one time when I was listening to that latter album: "No one sounds more like Elvis than Elvis does on that record." I didn't really get it at the time, but it's something that's become even truer through the past three decades. With all the pretenders to Elvis's crown, and despite all the shit that the man himself had been through with crappy films and bad management, when he got on that stage in 1968 to record what everyone expected to be a paltry showcase of a has-been, something magical happened. It's not for nothing that that performance has ever since been known as "The '68 Comeback Special".

Elvis was back, and he was sounding more like Elvis -- the real Elvis of the early days -- than he ever had before. And more like Elvis than anyone who had tried to usurp him in the meantime. He was The King, and suddenly a new generation of kids brought up on The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Vietnam war were getting a glimpse of his greatness.

Elvis said it best

In the film G.I. Blues, Elvis sang a song called "Didja Ever?" In it, he asked:

Didja ever have one of those days, boys?
Didja ever have one of those days
When nothing goes right
From morning to night?
Didja ever have one of those days?

Well, it looks like I'm having one of those days right now, Elv, ol' mate.

So far, essentially, today has cost me £531 (that's US$1,064 or Can$1,193 or €779 or Aus$1,276). Now that, my friends, is a whole hunk o' cheese.

First, I turned on my e-mail to see that Paypal, cunts that they are, in their infinite fucking wisdom, have decided to reimburse one of the people I sold some tattoo magazines to on eBay. Why? I don't know... I sent the mags to a confirmed address SIX WEEKS AGO, and she left me positive feedback, so I know the mags got to her. And now she's requested -- and been given -- a full refund. So I'm out of pocket to the tune of £19, and I no longer have the goods either. What the fuck?

Second, I get my Visa bill. Yes, the one I had paid in advance yesterday. And I see I've been charged £12 for missing a payment. A discussion with my Visa card provider ended in me discovering I will not get the £12 reimbursed, despite the fact the bill never came to me last month. It also ended with me advising the girl that, therefore, I would like to cancel my account, asking her why her company treated its customers like cunts (freezing my credit card because I missed a payment of £5 despite the fact that I pay it off in full every month), and telling her to fuck off when she gave me her shitty standard excuses.

Third, a job that I have lined up, which is proving to be a complete ball-ache: I've negotiated them taking a part of it back, but of course that means my fee gets reduced by £500.

Okay, so the last one is fair enough, I suppose...

... But if the proverbial fool and his money are easily parted, I guess I must be the prize fucking sucker right now.

The cult of the ever-youthful dead pop star

One of my earliest childhood memories -- and certainly my first real brush with popular culture -- is the death of Elvis. Of course, I knew not who he was really, although I do recall telling my mum that her boyfriend was dead. Seems I was wrong, though, and it was Alvin Stardust who she had a thing for.

Regardless, the notion of dead pop star as icon and cult was born, for me, there and then, and I lapped up Elvis's music via my dad's record collection. Sadly, my brother and I probably ruined many highly collectable discs in the process.

Other dead icons preceded Elvis of course: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix to name but a few. I have nothing much to add. I despise The Doors and Morrison. Joplin, whatever. Hendrix, yeah he's all right...

A couple of years later I discovered Buddy Holly. This one had been in his grave a while longer, of course. But so devoted was I, that I soon acquired everything I could. The great thing about picking up on a dead artist was that the output was finite. (Or so it seemed in those days.)

It wasn't long before I turned to punk and the Sex Pistols. Oh, look, one of them's dead. I'm sensing a disturbing pattern here... Although it goes without saying that, as this list progresses, Sid Vicious will be seen as the odd one out, being as he was an untalented loser and all.

The 1980s passed without a real notable pop-star death for me, with the exception early on in that decade of John Lennon, and so we move on to the '90s.

In 1991, the Manic Street Preachers landed in my lap with a bang. It felt good to get in at ground level with a new band. Good look, good music (although I thought my band was better at first).

And then came Nirvana. And within a couple of years here was my first first-hand taste of rock martyr, suicide, or whatever you want to call it. Here was an artist who had meant something to me while he was alive, only to have him do himself in. I was used to having dead heroes, but this was my first dead hero that I knew when he was alive.

And then, about a year after Cobain's death, Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers disappears. He'd been clinically depressed for ages. Is he dead? We still don't know. Officially, though, he is, as a result of being missing for so long -- 11 years and counting. So he's kind of my own second dead idol.

I guess Tupac doesn't really count, since my interest in his music really began with his death in 1996. Going to back to my roots, picking up the pieces after the fact. Despite my voracious appetite for his material, the supply soon outstripped my demand, and I had to stop buying his records once it became clear that substandard work was being released. Shame to do that to his memory.

And then, most recently, Elliott Smith, just a few short years ago, who took his own life with several knife wounds to the chest. Umm, yeah, that sounds feasible. He was more Wife's guy than mine, but we did see him perform live and he was undoubtedly a major talent, desperately underapprecieted in his US homeland.

Invariably these deaths all occurred at a young age, too. Of those cited, Elvis made it to 42 -- hardly a ripe old age; Elliott got to 34. Nobody else even made it to 30. Live fast, die young, leave a good-lookin' corpse.

Where does all that leave us?

Beyond a doubt, I am, on a certain level, a victim of the cult of the dead pop star. A performer's passing makes me want to at least check out their oeuvre and see what all the fuss is about.

But it's also true, as evidenced above, that I am drawn to the music of these lost, suicidal souls way before they go the way of all things.

What does that mean?

Is it inevitable that those artists -- poets, performers, men of the people, who put themsleves out there, stripped bare for all to see -- are ultimately doomed to an early grave? Is too much passion a short cut to the hereafter? And is there any truth in my belief that the first of these tortured storytellers -- indeed, the reason for our obsession with the dead pop star -- was Jesus Christ himself?

A day of commemoration

It's 29 years today since Elvis died. Twenty-nine years! Gosh, I still remember finding out early in the morning. I wasn't an Elvis fan at the time, but my dad was -- a big one.

Elvis's death marked the beginning of my interest in him, just as it was for my brother, who remains a huge fan to this day. I diversified perhaps a little more, and within three years (1980, at the age of 10) I was into the Pistols (a little late, I know, since they'd already disbanded long before then), which was the start of a different musical journey.

Still, Elvis holds a special place in my heart, and I still play his music from time to time, but very rarely anything recorded after those first two or three years, 1954 to 1957. Occasionally the '68 Comeback Special -- a return to glory.

Elvis was the catalyst for all that came after in "popular music". And people can bang on all they like about how he simply stole black music. Maybe he did; but very few others were. That is innovation, my friend. And they can talk till they're blue in the face about how he wrote very few of his own songs and that he sold out and whatever else. All true, perhaps. But at the outset, in 1954, when he drove a truck and had long greasy hair and wore mascara, he was as subversive a motherfucker as you were likely to meet.

As Quentin Tarantino put it, in the mouth of True Romance's Clarence Worley: "In Jailhouse Rock he's everything rockabilly's about. I mean, he is rockabilly: mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie, he couldn't give a fuck about anything except rockin' and rollin', livin' fast, dyin' young, and leaving a good-looking corpse."

And after all the pretenders and would-be usurpers, when all is said and done, there's still only one king.

Rest in peace, big guy. 'Nuff said.

Syd Barrett

I'm sort of banned from talking on this subject at home. Wife thinks I'm hating on him. It's not that.

I'm sorry he's died; it's a shame when anyone dies, especially quite so young. I just don't like Pink Floyd. Never have; likely never will.

But all the press is saying "death of an icon". But Elvis is an icon; Monroe, Dean, Hendrix. Overused images, yes; the commercial faces of pop and film, undoubtedly; but isn't that what an icon is? Coca-Cola. Something that is so familiar that almost everyone in the world will recognize it.

Syd Barrett, RIP, is not an icon, surely. Am I wrong? And, really, I'm not hating. It's just, I am so anti-Floyd, anti-Zeppelin, that I perhaps cannot be objective on this topic...

Elvis vs. Metallica

So I finally got around to listening to the free CD full of Elvis cover versions that was mounted on the front of this month's Mojo [yuck!] magazine.

Well, let this be a lesson to us all: it was free because it was shite. I got about halfway through before Wife demanded it be turned off so she could listen to something she wanted while cooking. Fair-enough call, and I was only too happy to oblige. I would have turned it off myself were it not for the fact that my hands were busy in the washing-up bowl. No dishwashers for us; I like the old skool, punk rock way of cleaning my cutlery and crockery!

So, it was with a little bit of jadement (good word; just made it up) in my heart that I reached for the other free CD in my collection this month. This one came with Kerrang! mag and is a re-rendering of Metallica's "classic" Master of Puppets album, with each track performed by a band that is new-ish.

I pick K! up once in a while anyway, and I was particularly intrigued by this concept. I don't know much Metallica apart from the stuff they play on the Kerrang! and Scuzz TV channels and what was on the great documentary film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Trivium are on there, and I'd already bought their album and it's pretty good. And Funeral For A Friend are on there, and Wife is currently digging them. So what the heck, right?

And it's pretty good. Again, I haven't got through the whole disc yet; this time, though, because the songs are so damn long and full of (perhaps slightly overindulgent) guitar solos. But so far, so good. Only downside to this story is that by buying this mag and CD I feel I'm giving money to Metallica and, hence, that cunt of a lead singer who goes off and shoots bears in Russia. Asshole.

So, free CDs – here's what I've learned: some are a load of fucking wank; some are cool. But even the cool ones might mean money goes into the hands of people you don't like.

Either way, it's a bit fucked up. Perhaps, as with lunches, there's really no such thing as a free CD.

Mojo dickheads

Went shopping at Sainsbury's and – against my better judgment – bought a copy of the latest Mojo magazine, mainly cos it had an Elvis covers CD on the front. Also cos it had "the 100 best albums released since Mojo was launched 15 years ago". I'm a sucker for those dumb lists.

Anyway, Elliott Smith's Either/Or had a pretty respectable showing, at number 24.

I read the review, being quite familiar with the record: Smith is probably Wife's fave artist. And yes, she liked him before his death. We even saw him play in London...

I couldn't help myself from blurting out what those Mojo cocks had written, what they had called Elliott, presumably thinking it was a cunting compliment.

"I didn't hear that," said Wife.

"I'll never repeat it," said I.

"Never say it again," she reiterated.

I won't. Not even here.

Did you know...? The word "mojo" is foreign; it means "tossers who are hung up on the '60s".