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no more bell, no more pop-up notifications

I AM DIS­CON­TIN­UING THE SERVICE that sends pop-up mes­sages to readers. Sub­scribing to these pop-ups—called push notifications—required you to click on the bell (the large image pic­tured above) in the lower corner of this blog. Due to their neg­a­tive im­pact on the speed and ef­fi­ciency of this blog, these no­ti­fi­ca­tions will cease immediately. [Read more] “no more bell, no more pop-up notifications”

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elvis found alive (a movie review)

ELVIS FOUND ALIVE is, de­spite its pre­tense and tack­i­ness, ba­si­cally a bi­og­raphy of the man. It com­piles facts and quotes from var­ious sources and links them to­gether, more or less chrono­log­i­cally, of­fering no new fac­tual data and no in­ter­esting opin­ions or in­sights. You pretty much know it’s a “moc­u­men­tary” of some sort from the get-go. [Read more] “elvis found alive (a movie review)”

elvis’ number ones and golden hits

SELLING ELVIS PRESLEY was never that dif­fi­cult. Even during his low pe­riods, each new record gen­er­ally sold hun­dreds of thou­sands of units (al­though few were number ones) while his back cat­alog sold mil­lions. Be­cause of that, RCA took Presley for granted and failed to issue quality com­pi­la­tions and prop­erly pro­mote the ones they did release. [Read more] “elvis’ number ones and golden hits”

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“elvis movies” is a work-in-progress

MY APOLO­GIES IF YOU ARE HERE looking for some­thing to read about Elvis’ movies. I started writing some notes for a se­ries of mini-reviews of each of Pres­ley’s movies—trying for some “ob­jec­tivity” about the movie and its sound­track music in each review—and ac­ci­den­tally pressed the Pub­lish button in­stead of the Save Draft button. [Read more] ““elvis movies” is a work-in-progress”

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was “e‑z country programming 2” the first LP to feature an elvis track?

E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING was the title of a se­ries of pro­mo­tional LPs man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor in the 1950s. Each record col­lected sides from cur­rent sin­gles by var­ious country artists. One of these records fea­tured “I Forgot To Re­member To Forget” and “Mys­tery Train” by Elvis Presley. [Read more] “was “e‑z country programming 2” the first LP to feature an elvis track?”

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just gimme some truth about colonel parker

BAZ LUHRMAN’S “ELVIS” has made thou­sands of know-nothings into overnight ex­perts on both Presley and Tom Parker. While I loved the movie (and ap­pre­ciate the Hol­ly­wood For­eign Press As­so­ci­a­tion rec­og­nizing Austin But­ler’s phe­nom­enal per­for­mance), Luhrman took some se­rious “artistic li­cense” with many facts about both men’s ca­reers. [Read more] “just gimme some truth about colonel parker”

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Elvis Presley Tapes is up and running!

WHEN I BEGAN MY BOOK A Touch of Gold book way back in 1988, I was mostly con­cerned with vinyl records. While the book even­tu­ally em­braced a broad spec­trum of music-related col­lectibles, I fo­cused on 78 and 45 rpm sin­gles and EP and LP al­bums. I paid little at­ten­tion to pre­re­corded tapes than I did.  [Read more] “Elvis Presley Tapes is up and running!”

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should I believe anything I read about elvis on quora?

SOMEONE ASKED ME, “Should I be­lieve any­thing I read about Elvis on Quora?” I be­lieve in an­swering yes-or-no ques­tions with a yes or a no, so I re­sponded with a simple “Yes.” But I also be­lieve in adding nec­es­sary caveats to those one-word an­swers so I fol­lowed that with, “But only if I wrote it.” [Read more] “should I believe anything I read about elvis on quora?”

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lew shiner, elvis, and “mystery train”

I DON’T NOR­MALLY DO BOOK RE­VIEWS be­cause I find it dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate my en­thu­siasm without in­cluding spoilers. But here I offer a short story re­view. Twenty-five years ago, I was turned on to Lew Shin­er’s novel Glimpses. I loved the book and found Shiner’s other novels and read them and I be­came a fan. [Read more] “lew shiner, elvis, and “mystery train””

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