E Wayne Ross

Putting politics back into US hip hop

From english.aljazeera.net, a story about Fredwreck, a US born hip hop producer whose family is from Palestine. He has an upcoming album and new song, “Dear Mr. President,” which is directed at George W. Bush and is a reaction to events in Iraq and attempts to ask questions that he thinks are not being addressed in the mainstream media.

It is a protest song that brings together the talents of the big-name rappers Fredwreck works with, including Cypress Hill’s B-Real, Evidence from Dilated Peoples and KRS-One.

Listen or download from: Fredwreck.com

Here’s the cover art and tray back for a very limited edition mix tape I made a couple of years ago (and shared with several very lucky people). There is also extensive art work inside the booklet and on the cd label. All the artwork is stolen and uncredited. As you can see (hopefully) the tunes range from the familar to the ultra obscure, including a couple off of a cd produced by an Elvis fan club in Italy.

Anyway, the convergence of the 28th anniversary of Elvis’ death and my continued obsession with Thurston Moore’s Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture demanded that I post these to the blogosphere.

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Europe all shook up about the King
Roll over Beethoven

Austrians are preparing an extravagant Elvis Week to mark the 28th anniversary of Presley’s death

By WILLIAM KOLE
Monday, August 15, 2005
The Globe and Mail Page R4
Associated Press

VIENNA — Mozart would be mortified. Beethoven would probably spin like an LP in his grave. But for next week, at least, they ain’t nothing but hound dogs to Austrians obsessed with the King.

Vienna’s Hilton becomes the Heartbreak Hotel today, when Elvis Week — seven days of live music, memorabilia and screenings of Elvis Presley films — kicks off for those who love him in Europe, where he never even gave a concert.

The festival coincides with the 28th anniversary of Presley’s death on Aug. 16, 1977.

But it underscores the singer’s huge popularity in Austria, Germany and other countries where he’s still got fans all shook up.

“For me, he was the only unique entertainer in the world,” said organizer Wolfgang Hahn,.

Hahn runs Elvis4You, a new shop in downtown Vienna that sells Elvis music, memorabilia and trinkets.

“My mission is to tell people in Central Europe how good he really was,” he says.

Presley’s popularity in Europe has grown even though he never performed publicly on the continent.

The only time he spent in Europe was a 1958-60 stint in the U.S. army in Germany.
He also visited Paris twice while on leave and stopped briefly in Scotland when the military plane carrying him home was refuelling.

Harald Molan, a 23-year-old university student, describes himself as “a medium to huge fan.”

“It’s no different than someone who’s crazy about Mozart, who has been dead for even longer,” he said.

“At least there’s footage of Elvis on video, which you don’t have if you like Mozart.”

Hahn, who’s 42 — “the same age Presley was when he died” — takes his Elvis seriously.

He calls himself Wolf Memphis, drives a car that bears an “ELVIS9” licence plate (one through eight were already taken by other fans), wears an Elvis guitar pick on a cord around his neck and is the lead singer of Little Memphis, a band that does Elvis covers in English and German.

No pompadours, mutton-chop sideburns, lip curls or hip swivels for him.

Hahn, a friend of Presley’s widow, Priscilla, makes regular pilgrimages to Graceland and sees Elvis impersonators as sacrilegious.

“There was just one Elvis. I think it’s strange to imitate him,” he said Friday.

“It’s a gag for a birthday party, but we take Elvis very seriously. He started a musical revolution.”

Vienna’s Las Vegas-style festival, which is expected to draw hundreds of fans, isn’t the only Elvis event being offered offer.

French fans plan to gather in Fontainebleau on Aug. 25.

Elvis enthusiasts in England will assemble in Bristol on Sept. 6 for United Elvis Meetup Day.

Elvis rocks on in Britain, where a re-release of his 1959 hit One Night soared to No. 1 on the country’s singles charts in January.

Over the years, Presley tunes have topped the British charts 20 times, beating out the Beatles, which only managed 17.

In Italy, where a fan club based at the Memphis Cafe in Milan boasts 430 members, about 70 people recently headed to Memphis, Tenn., on a trip they organized to mark the anniversary, spokesman Maurizio Falletti said.

Presley is also hot in Germany, where fans on Thursday kicked off the 4th European Elvis Festival in Bad Nauheim, his base as a soldier, with a weekend of karaoke performances and Elvis impersonations.

In Austria, the Elvis frenzy might have prompted the Von Trapp Family Singers of The Sound of Music fame to head for the hills.

But Hahn says he can’t understand anyone who isn’t crazy about Elvis, an obsession that began when he was 13 and first heard All Shook Up.

“I just froze. I said, ‘This is my guy,’ ” he recalled. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”

Among his most prized possessions, Hahn counts such items as a Gibson guitar signed by the singer, an original Elvis tour jacket and a framed autograph.

He also owns a photograph of the legendary singer with Priscilla Presley. “He was 10 times better than what you hear on a CD or see on a DVD. He could do everything — rock, but also gospel and ballads that are so untouchable,” he said.

“Even at the end, he had presence and charisma.”

Today is the 28th anniversary of Elvis’ death. Here is the first of my posts in honor of the King.

Elvis R.I.P.

Mandatory reading on Dead Elvis:

Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obession by Greil Marcus.

Mandatory reading on Live Elvis:

The Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Carless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley both by Peter Guralnick

What not to read on Elvis:
An Elvis Pathography

Buy a term paper on Elvis’ Death:
“Elvis’ Death” word count: 959

Buy a video about Elvis’ Death:
Elvis–Death of a Legend

Elvis’ Eulogy

Elvis’ Funeral

Elvis Exumed

The cause of Elvis’ death…Dichotomous thinking???

Elvis’ Autopsy

What was buried inside Elvis’ coffin????

Was Elvis’ Death a Cruel Hoax?

Elvis Sightings

Elvis Links

Check out Elvis links while listening to Elvis rehearse “Suspicious Minds”

Quote of the day: “If life were fair Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.”

[WARNING FOR DAVID B: Note that the following review is not entirely positive. I hope my opinions on the concert do not harm our friendship or undermine the sales of your new book.]

I plunked down my $117 for a ticket (plus the $8.50 “convenience fee” for the privilege of making my purchase from Ticketmaster; plus a $2.50 fee to print my tickets at home using my own ink and paper) to Springsteen’s “solo acoustic” tour over the weekend, then found out that “Bruce rules!” has a new meaning.

As Colin and I walked through the doors of GM Place (which has been transformed into an “intimate” one-third of a hockey arena) we were handed a sheet of “rules” for the concert. No cameras or recorders, okay no problem with that. Shut off your cell phones, what is this the symphony? Everyone must be seated at the start of the first song. What? Concessions will offer a reduced menu starting 30 minutes before show time and will close 10 minutes before the show and remained closed throughout the performance. Huh? “Curtains and doors to the lobby will remain closed during the entire performance and latecomers will not be seated. Everyone should be in his or her seats before the start of the first song. What’s going on here? I thought this was a rock concert?

So I did the only thing a middle-aged rock fan could do, I made sure I went to pee before I sat down (and went again before the doors locked me in). Avoided the beer and wondered if there was an official “Devils and Dust solo acoustic tour” catheter (and if there was one would it come with Bruce’s photo and a list of all the cities on the tour…hmm).

Okay, so the stage is set. The 7,000 or so fans are all seated and waiting for The Boss to arrive. We wait and we wait. For 45 minutes we wait. Did I miss something in the rules? Perhaps everyone has to be seated and quite before we get the concert (like Mrs. McNeil used to demand of my third grade classmates and me before we could go out for recess).

Finally Springsteen arrives to a chorus of cheers and the familiar shouts of “Bruuuuuuccccee.” Heavy curtains lit in purple/red lights backed the stage. And before Bruce sits down at a pump organ and starts into a heavily re-arranged version of “Living Proof” he asks us all to be quiet, so he can give us “his best.” Then huge screens on either side of the stage then light up and alternately zoom in on his feet pumping away and super close-ups of his face as he starts the concert. (I hope everyone got seated!)

Before the first tune is over it starts to dawn on me, we have followed all the commandments and have entered into the “Church of Bruce.”

The second tune was an incredible reworking of “Reason to Believe”–done Sonny Boy Williamson style, with a harp and stomp board Bruce rages with his voice distorted in a weird and spooky way as he sings through the harp mic. Great stuff and a (the) highlight of the night along with “Thunder Road” and “The River” done at the grand piano; “Because the Night,” and “Fourth of July Asbury Park (Sandy)” on the harmonium and the encores of “Blinded by the Light” and “Promised Land.” The lone electric tune was a Chuck Berryesque cover of the blues “Ain’t Got You” (Colin’s favorite of the concert).

Bruce also played the obscure (?) “Janey Don’t You Lose Your Heart,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Rising” (btw, another highlight), “Matamoras Banks” (a real downer), “Lonesome Day,” and the “Real World” along with a bunch of other tunes in the 2 and a half hour show.

But, besides the worst closing song in the history of rock n roll (more about that later), what stood out the most about the evening was the religiosity of the concert. Bruce was chatty a various points in the concert, but the two primary monologues (sermons?) of the evening were about the centrality (geographically and culturally) of the Roman Catholic church to his neighborhood and family when he was a kid and a meditation on the meaning of the Garden of Eden (which was quite different from the snake’s version of the Garden of Eden, which I’d experienced at The White Stripes concert a few days before). Then there was the his performance of “Jesus Was an Only Son.”

I’ve been a Springsteen fan for a long while (and own every album of his, save the box “Tracks” and his latest “Devils and Dust”), so the religious references in his lyrics we’re really not a surprise, but the set list seemed crafted to highlight those references and give them added punch. And perhaps the solo acoustic performance, the pump organ and harmonium cast the myriad salvation references in a more literal context.

As is obvious, this put me off.

The performance as a whole was technically outstanding (kind of felt like being on the set of a well choreographed MTV Unplugged shoot). Bruce’s voice was in fine form (though he insisted on closing too many songs with his lonesome wail, in fact the power of that trope was greatly diminished by the fifth or sixth time it was used).

I left a bit irritated by the rules, the evangelistic impact of the set list (which was heightened by the Bruce’s unconvincing throw away comment that he could not remember the last time he went to church when he wasn’t “under duress”).

Then there was that closing song. One of the worst set closers ever, a cover of The Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” done on the pump organ that lasted at least 10 minutes, but it seemed like thirty. Here are the lyrics,

dream baby dream
dream baby dream
dream baby dream
dream baby dream
forever, and ever

dream baby dream
dream baby dream
dream baby dream
dream baby dream
forever

(repeat ad nauseam)

You get the picture.

Colin, in a very politically incorrect moment, rated the concert “R for retard.” We sang “Dream Baby Dream” the rest of the night and into the next day whenever the moment called for father son ridicule.

Ironically, I left GM place with an unsatisfied rock n roll soul.