Saturday, April 24, 2010

Elvis Is for Labour

In Thursday’s entry about a comic book depicting conservative punks as evil, I mentioned planning to see Elvis Costello last night — so I was a bit saddened (though not shocked) when I saw a headline today saying Elvis had been recruited to bolster the reelection campaign of the UK’s Gordon Brown — but it turns out to be an Elvis Presley impersonator, which is much less cool.  The logical question, then, is who would win a fight between a left-wing Elvis Presley impersonator and demonically-possessed conservative punks (this would also make a decent, long overdue sequel to Bubba Hotep).

My dad likes Elvis Costello, yet I remember him complaining way back when I was a kid about Costello making some lefty-sounding anti-U.S. comments.  Hm.  Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  Elvis has lightened up a bit, though, if we take as evidence his 1999 Saturday Night Live appearance, in which, as I learned last night, he pretended to interrupt the Beastie Boys and they (like Costello in his decades-earlier Saturday Night Live appearance) switched gears and sang the anti-corporate “Radio Radio” instead.

1 comment:

Gerard said...

That was a pretty entertaining set.

My favorite Elvis Costello song is Wave a White Flag, although most of his songs exceed the creative depth of The Beastie Boys.