Skip to main content

So i thought i should listen to: Elvis

31.8.17

 So I thought I should listen to some music. So I heard 'Lonesome Cowboy' by Elvis. It evokes this image of a wild west cowboy man who does good deeds on his own, travelling afar in search of cowboyness.

I don't think it's done ironically, but I hear all sorts of man-man ideas of isolation and independence. I don't know what Elvis was really going for here, but the thick waves of romantic manliness suggest he is trying to, sincerely, create the cowboy-man ideal he sings about.

I also don't see Elvis as a particularly manly type. I'm sure he intended to be, but he wore colourful clothes and does singing. Men aren't supposed to do either of those things- singing is a pretty thing (and 'pretty' is a word most men can't pronounce properly 'cos we say it so rarely) and colourful clothes are pretty as well.

So I thought I should put Elvis in the soundtrack 'cos he somehow messes up in the man-man picture. But not like the artists who traditionally did that deliberately. Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Prince etc, despite being groundbreaking in their way, were dressing their way in a very deliberate, conscious style. Part of this is, I think, his appropriation of black blues singer, in style and sound. Listeners to his first record- 'That's Alright' at Sun Studios thought he was black. He wore typical satin lace jackets, more commonly seen on the backs of the jazz and blues singers he stole from. His style was colourful and tight, more traditionally feminine than masculine. Maybe it's because the white image of masculinity doesn't sing or wear colourful clothes. So his appropriation of black musical culture means that he doesn't fit our/my idea of white masculinity.

So Elvis wore someone else's shoes in many ways. He doesn't evoke the lonesome cowboy man image successfully. So I thought I should put him in the soundtrack


(Admin note- I think this should be open to comment/criticise/add. So please do. If you can't, let me know and I'll see if I can change it

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Guest 2. Eleanor Paisley

17.2.18 Eleanor Paisley moved to London in September 2016 London is many things to many people: formidable, dirty, modern, exciting, full of opportunity. For me, London represented a step towards the life I wanted to have: being at the centre of everything in a multicultural society. As a student, I did feel as if I was in another world. It didn’t feel like I was in England at all. I would regularly socialise with fewer English people than otherwise – which suited me just fine. In university as well as all over London, the word ‘metropolitan’ applies perfectly. However, the adjective that I would most use when describing my time in London is ‘lonely’. In a sea of people, running from A to C to B then back to A again on the tube, buses, bikes, taxis, cars and trains, you become totally anonymous. Despite walking every day from Southwark to Strand, I rarely got to see much greenery. The air is alive with the business of the people, and only myself and a handful of my cohorts dared ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guest 4. Frances Corbett

23/2/18 Frankie moved to London in October 2016 “I know I said I was thankful for my legs that carry me everywhere around London yesterday but what the fuck I am tired. On the nice side of things, I bought a falafel wrap today. Yes.” My diary - Monday 22nd January 2018. My words about London have been waiting to spill out of me for a long while now, and they have finally arrived. It took myself a sufficient amount of time to begin, knowing that they would never quite fall how I wanted them to. Here is my short attempt at voicing a few words on a city I both love and hate. I’m not a small town girl. I love my hometown/where I grew up; being surrounded by an abundance of green, having my family nearby, the air being so fresh. It’s just not quite me. My patience is extremely short (as I’ve finally come to terms with), and I longed for something new to sink my teeth into. London called. When arriving, it was all excitement. Moving out, properly, for university was alway...
Post a Comment
Read more

Interview with Alexandra Blanchard. Writer of 'What Would Harold Pinter Think?'

26.2.18 I spoke to Alexandra Blanchard about her upcoming tour of 'What Would Harold Pinter Think?', which opens March 1 at the Judith E Wilson Studio.... 1- This is your first staged play. How long have you been writing for? And is stage your main focus, or do you write in other mediums? I’ve always written but not seriously until three or four years ago. I’m more interested in performance rather than the stage in particular. I’m fascinated by ways of performing, ways of seeing performances and the fragments of performance that lodge in the dusty nooks of your brain that grow and reshape your interactions with the world. I think that’s a discussion that all performers run into - what you create will never be seen or remembered as a whole. But as long as one shard get stuck, then something remains of that one unchangeable and unrepeatable night. That has to be enough. I write a lot of poetry which I often think of as a collage of shards that I’ve collected from perform...
Post a Comment
Read more