RUDIMENTS, pt. 50
Making Cars
The night Elvis Presley died I was
house sitting, right here where I am
now, oddly enough. My wife's parents
were traveling, as was their wont each
Summer - England, Wales, some sort
sort of Jubiliee I think too, for the Queen
or something. Two weeks; it was all a
vacation for us, and pretty big time -
by our standards this was high living.
Even if it was Avenel, NJ. Two of our
friends had come over as well, from NYC,
and we just walked around, talking books
and stuff, and then came back here and we
heard abut his death. I was never big on
traveling like that - air-travel, luggage,
international places, passages, and all
that. I don't mind driving myself to
wherever, enjoy it all actually, with one
small bag of junk maybe and what's on
my back, catching a low-budget motel
here or there along the way. I like to
get lost, meander about, find this or that
new local thrill or something old and no
longer kept up, history, etc. All I really
need is the few states around me and
a decent vehicle. I never had any passport
or things like that. Just never interested
me and I'm not that kind of traveling kind.
-
Elvis Presley never meant anything to
me, fact he was kind of a creep, I always
thought - something like a 1950's version
of a speed-freak dynamo, always stupid and
always out of control. By the time he died
he seemed pretty useless. I never knew why
all those other rocker guys were so determined
that they owed him so much. Hindsight is
20/20, except when it's not. The one thing
he did do to me, for me, is open my eyes to
the idea of what mass-entertainment is or
was becoming or could be, and that led to
a lot of things for me later - not that I was
the entertainer but just more that I could
learn about what all went before.
-
So anyway, Elvis was dead, and everyone was
supposed to care - all those Graceland people
lined up to gawk, leaning teddy bears and all
that. Boy, that stuff gets me going. What he
left behind wasn't even a legacy, more just a
pile of junk - dumb-ass, sneering movies and
theatrical - bad theatrical - fakery, bad songs
a semi-legendary Vegas come-back concert
where he seemed more like a dirge-sex-icon
to lonely, disappointed, middle-aged women
that anything else. A hundred years before all
that. I had learned, things were different.
-
I had always been a Mark Twain fan, though I
cannot really say why. Some of it gets a little
simple, some cute. His persona wears a little
thin, later in life - his life. But back in his
day, tent-circuits, traveling shows, town to
town along raggedy dirt roads, small-size
big cities, by today's standards, he'd always
be on the road (let alone being in debt and
pretty much having to constantly work,
contractually, to turn coin and generate
book sales and gate). He developed this
very essential stage-show thing - which
later took off and others followed and
hundreds imitated. He'd take the stage for
hours, with, here and there a sidekick for
a bit, a shtick, do a part comedy show,
stand-up thing, read his own work, in
character voices, interrupt himself, have
an off-stage sidekick be doing some other
sort of distraction as a foil, he'd stumble,
forget, recover, laugh at himself, and use
various voices - bungling old men, the
country rube, the teller of tale-tales, the
big liar, and more. All to entertain the
audience, which was often coming and
going, uproarious with laughter, and sitting
on the edge of their seats. He had the cigar.
He had the big suits, white or whatever.
David Byrne took notes. Twain made sure
they got their money's worth, and often just
went on. Town to town, a few days here,
a few days there - announced by quick
poster saturation two towns off, and word
of mouth that was constantly building.
Mark Twain (Sam Clemens) was wise and
smart enough to know what to steal from and
how to integrate it all into the whole of his
new performance. Banjo. Pieces of minstrelsy.
Here and there a bit of song and more tall tale.
If you read Huck Finn, there's some of that in
those two devious fake-traveling Shakespearean
actors who float in and manipulate things for a
while until they're found out. It's presented
very well, and all rings true.
-
The country was small but growing. (Mark Twain
did a long European tour with all this material
too. Lots and lots of the famous places). All
these little dirt towns were getting connected.
There was no media to speak of, just the loud
mouth and the megaphone, handbills, maybe
some telegraph stuff, runners and town-to-town
messengers about what's coming - like the
circus coming to town. Excitement had to
be generated. Nothing like Elvis, I guess, and
he'd probably have been a real hoot. Somewhere.
A lot of old movies kind of, or try to, play on
this idea - small-town energies, brash and
naive young kids trying to put together a real
show on hay bales and barn loft platforms. The
traveling minstrel, the traveling band, the local
high-school troubadours. It sometimes seems
like poor, sad America likes to talk back to its
older self, when things were real and, maybe
simpler, or more curt anyway, more balanced
and hands-off. No one else touched your stuff
like happens today. It's all a throwback
effort - to when America really did have a
weird, authentic 'past' - but before it was the
past. There's a good book somewhere, by
a guy named Greil Marcus, called, the 'The
Old, Weird, America' that gets to the point
of these matters, although somewhat in the guise
of today's music scene, or the 1980's anyway.
It's the kind of stuff I like to know about, even
if I'm never keen on the newer stuff and the
nowadays of what he sometimes talks about.
I like the old and that's the way I try to live
and the way I'll probably die.
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