Inevitably, I had to wonder what book I would write for the series. Innocent enough. It's like the same reason I watch American Idol. I don't necessarily watch because I love the show or think the contestants are worth much. Some of them are, most are crap. But I watch because I love to take the themes and try to come up with what song would be the ultimate vote-getter or show-stopper. Then I go in my shower and I sing it and it's awful and I move on until next week. Back to the story at hand, I was trying to come up with my ultimate choice of album for the book series. This is when any tendency towards music snobbery you've ever had comes way to the forefront. Of course you want to pick an album that nobody else would choose to do, the easiest way to do that immediately seems to be to come up with an album, or even better an artist, that nobody has heard of. So I tried to get back into whatever indie mode I may have cultivated during my time at WCWM, but that never got very extensive. Plus it wouldn't be a pleasurable experience, because just about all the music I got into at that time I have not even a tiny fondness for now. Similarly the whole new folk thing I got into a few years ago. I mean, I like Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom well enough, but I don't think I could write a book about it. Tried looking at any number of other possibilities from the popular to the less so, and any genre I could come up with. Blacklisted, Ys, Too Bad Jim, Elmore James or Howlin' Wolf compilations (they'll allow compilations, but I'm not sure they'd allow blues. They specifically said "no jazz," so they might be looking for no other genres than rock/pop and things that crossover with that), Wild Gift, Boces, Astral Weeks (though somebody should definitely get on that), Curtis, Phases & Stages, Kick, Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, even a brand new one with New Amerykah: 4th World War. Although I'm crazy for all those albums, and there's certainly enough in some of them to write volumes around (for a better writer), none of them got me excited. It seemed like trying to pull a book out of them would be really hard. I can recognize the value of work, but to do something like labor over pages in support of a particular album, I think you need to love it in a way that borders on awe and certainly inspiration. Take Ys, for instance. One of my absolute favorite albums, I like to stack it up against the best. I've listened to it countless times and I'll listen to it countless more, but I still don't necessarily know what Joanna is getting at most of the time in her words. Actually, I could probably fill a book pretending I have some idea of what she's saying, or chasing it, but that would be a boring book. Every chapter would be completely separated from the previous, it'd be a jumbled mess.
But sometime last week, I came up with what would be the perfect album for me to explore. It ended up being nothing ob
scure, definitely not an obscure artist by any means, but an album that is unfairly lost amongst its artist's greatest accomplishments and not near as well-known as it ought to be. The album I came up with is Elvis Presley's Elvis Country: I'm 10,000 Years Old. When it finally popped into my head I thought it was just too perfect for a number of reasons. First of all, it's my favorite Elvis album. Elvis is basically my favorite artist, so that makes it a serious contender for my favorite album ever. But that is not even all that important as to why I think this would make a great book in the series. From the title, to the cover, to the song choice, the performances of course, the performances vs. the original performances, where it fits in Elvis's career, how it compares to other Elvis albums, its place as what I would say is Elvis's most (maybe only) cohesive album, and, maybe most intriguing to me, how it supports the mythology of Elvis. I'll probably end up going through a lot of those things in individual blog entries. Here, I just want to explain why I couldn't write the book.The title Elvis Country can say a lot of things about what's contained therein. Most basically, it's an exhibition of several different kinds of country music, sort of a survey of the history of a very important facet of American culture, though I will say it's never a simple genre exercise. It's not like when Conor Oberst or Jack White decide they're going to be country for a while, it's all Elvis, it's never staid. It is occasionally predictable, but in a way that I think references tradition in country music, and in a way that simply puts a lump in your throat rather than making you go, "Hmm. Interesting." Basically it's not Elvis taking a stab at country, it's how Elvis did country. That's the most basic problem for me. I don't know enough about country music to put it into perspective, and I can't think of a way of getting around that. You need that sense of history, that's part of what this album's all about. I can maybe talk about how country music relates to rock and roll, but not about country music itself, and that's way more important here. There's also the history of Elvis himself. I think it would make for a really interesting part of the book. Where was Elvis at in his life? What was he going through when he put in these performances? Where did the song choice and concept come from? But with Elvis, it's never as simple as saying, "Here's what was happening at the time. That's why he does this, and that's why he did that." Elvis's career and life were a series of little steps, one thing leads to another. For instance, in the broadest terms, Sun leads to success at RCA, success at RCA leads to movies, movies lead to drought, drought leads to glorious comeback, glorious comeback carries for a little and then becomes sporadic. That's really broad, and there's a lot of nuance in there that would need to go into explaining this album. Especially this album, because an explanation of this album probably goes back through Elvis's life even before he had any inkling of being a performer. I feel like I would have to read a bunch of biographies about him, which are certainly available. Full biographies, not just of the late 60s and early 70s, but rather encompassing his entire life. I mean, I could just read Peter Guralnick's two books. They seem pretty comprehensive don't they? Definitely. But who knows? It seems like there's a million different histories of the man out there, mostly because a lot of people want to capitalize off him. They want to make it about them, put them into his story, so it's hard to say what's right and what's wrong. Anyway, I could definitely go with Guralnick's books and make a decent case, but I'd just about have to recount the whole thing to properly surmise Elvis's stake in these songs. I think, or I assume. I guess it could be the case that these are just songs he liked at the moment and he could sing anything at the time and make it great. That would make it easier. Have to doubt it though. Not when those songs are from some of his long-time favorite artists like Eddy Arnold, and artists he'd covered before like Bill Monroe.
So, there's a couple big reasons why I can't write the book. I could probably do some work and get it together, but not by December 31st. Maybe in a few years? I'll probably come up with more reasons not to write while I'm explaining what I would put in there. In the meantime, the good that's come out of it is I'm listening to that album a lot, and even found some session work from that period that I've never heard before. Fell in love with it all over again.
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