mid February, 2006
Banner courtesy of Charmaine
- Lisa Marie Presley Marries Guitarist
(Yahoo! News, February 15 2006)
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of rock 'n' roll king Elvis Presley, has married guitarist and music producer Michael Lockwood in a ceremony in Kyoto, Japan, her publicist said Thursday. Presley, 38, and Lockwood exchanged vows in a traditional Japanese ceremony on Jan. 22, spokesman Paul Bloch said. It was Presley's fourth marriage. She was previously married to Nicolas Cage, Michael Jackson and Danny Keough, who is the father of her two children. The bride's mother, actress Priscilla Presley, walked her daughter down the aisle and gave her away, Bloch said. Daughter Riley Keough was maid of honor and son Benjamin Keough was a groomsman. The best man was Presley's first husband Danny Keough. Also attending the wedding were Lockwood's parents, Vivian and William Lockwood. Lockwood was Presley's musical director and is listed as executive producer on her 2005 album "Now What." Presley lives in the Los Angeles area but Bloch said he didn't know where the couple planned to live.
- What's in a name? This Holmes wants to be a star in another arena
(golfweek.com, February 15 2006)
As an amateur golfer, the talented John Holmes went by, as you might expect: John Holmes. When he won the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament last December, he was John B. Holmes. And by his first tournament as a Tour member this January, he had become J.B. Holmes. So it was J.B. Holmes who won the recent FBR Open by seven strokes. It was a remarkable achievement by someone with remarkable identity alterations.
This progression of name changes comes to you because this long-hitting Tour rookie has become the first person in the history of golf to change his name because of, that's right, a porn star. Another man named John Holmes was the most famous porn star ever. He was to the adult entertainment industry what Elvis Presley was to rock 'n' roll. He made about 2,500 adult movies in the 1970s and 1980s and was the inspiration of two Hollywood movies - Boogie Nights and Wonderland. He died from AIDS in 1988. It follows that someone else named John Holmes, like our golfer from Kentucky, would hear jokes over the years about having the same name. It's no secret, then, why he changed his name before moving onto the professional stage. ...
- Doubts surround French rocker's bid to become Belgian
(Yahoo! News, February 15 2006)
Veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday may not have what it takes to become a Belgian, a tabloid daily reported, as the singer bids to win his father's nationality. "The singer does not meet the condition of having lived in Belgium for three years, which is required under the naturalisation code," the daily La Derniere Heure said on Wednesday. The interior ministry has warned the lower house of parliament, which is expected to rule on Hallyday's application in the next few months, about the requirement, the paper said citing "good sources". ... The singer assumed until recently that he had dual French and Belgian nationality. But he learned this was not the case since, when he was born, his father was married to another woman and so could not pass on his nationality. Hallyday, once dubbed the French Elvis Presley, announced last month that he was quitting Universal records after 43 years to join rival Warner Music.
- Country star closes on Elvis' sales record
(soundgenerator.com, February 15 2006)
Garth Brooks is set to become the best-selling artist in American music history - if he can sell 500,000 more albums than Elvis Presley. According to new RIAA sales figures, country legend Brooks recently topped 116m albums sold with his new compilation "The Limited Series", which puts him just 1/2m albums behind Presley - the current chart topper. Brooks and Presley have traded places twice this decade, with Brooks first taking the title from the legendary rocker in 2000. ...
- Topping the pop: Manilow is back at the head of the charts with a set of '50s hits he makes his own
By Mark Brown
(Rocky Mountain News, February 15 2006)
The charts may belong to the likes of Mariah Carey and 50 Cent and Carrie Underwood, but not this week. Barry Manilow topped the charts again for the first time in 30 years when his new album, Greatest Songs of the Fifties, sold more than 155,000 copies and made its debut at No. 1. It was Manilow's first time topping the album chart since 1977. "After all the horrible reviews and jokes and putdowns, ... I just feel like I wasn't crazy all these years for continuing to stand up for the kind of music I believe in," Manilow tells reporters by phone from Los Angeles. "I see my name up there and I say, 'Of course there's an audience out there who wants to hear this.' " Only two other artists, Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, had No. 1 albums this far apart, Manilow notes, but both had to die to achieve it. ...
- Back again
By Jason Della Rosa
(Herald Democrat, February 14 2006)
As luck would have it, I haven't been all that lucky with the ladies since Valentine's Day last year. Not that there was any luck before then either. There has been a great improvement (of course, anything is improvement over nothing) but it seems the women of Texas still remain a mystery. So as I wait, patiently I might add, for an answer or a sign from God, Cupid or Elvis, it turns out to be rather lucky for the Denison girls basketball team. Call it Luck be a Lady Jacket. For in this very space 365 days ago I wrote about how I was going to spend Valentine's Day with them as the playoffs coincided with Hallmark's Love Festival. And wouldn't you know it but it has happened again. The location - Saginaw High School - and the opponent - Stephenville - are different but the routine remains the same.
- California Condor: Saving the `Elvis' of Endangered Species
By Robin D. Schatz
(Bloomberg.com, February 14 2006)
The California condor is "the Elvis Presley of endangered species,'' quips John Nielsen in his new book ``Condor: To the Brink and Back -- The Life and Times of One Giant Bird'' (HarperCollins, 257 pages, $25.95). Like Elvis, the giant vulture with the 9 1/2-foot wingspan is both worshipped and despised, according to Nielsen. The bird also has a "wicked mating dance,'' he writes, "and it's not really dead.'' Nielsen, the environment correspondent for National Public Radio, blends humor, history and science in the book, which recounts the $40 million-plus effort to save the condor from extinction. (There are about 200 California condors today, compared with two dozen or so 20 years ago.) ...
- Prosecutors plan to use media statements against Wecht
(phillyburbs.com / Associated Press, February 14 2006)
Federal prosecutors plan to use statements Dr. Cyril H. Wecht and his attorneys have made to the media in their case against him. Wecht, who consulted on deaths ranging from Elvis Presley to Laci Peterson and JonBenet Ramsey, was indicted on 84 counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, theft of honest services and theft from the Allegheny County coroner's office. He pleaded not guilty Friday. In court documents, federal prosecutors said they intend to use statements made by one of Wecht's attorneys, Dick Thornburgh, on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Feb. 6 and by Wecht on a Pittsburgh Cable News Channel show a year ago. ...
- Valentine Sing-A-Grams suprise Rolla residents
By Laura Ginsberg
(Fayetteville Observer, February 14 2006)
The ladies at the UMR Alumni Office got an unexpected surprise last Valentine's Day when Elvis showed up at the door with a rose in hand, preparing to sing "Love Me Tender" to the office staff. All over Rolla, this is exactly the surprise that many sweethearts will receive this year for Valentine's Day. The East Central College Rolla Student Government can be held responsible for the fun, laughter and embarrassment that may result from receiving one of its Valentine's Day Sing-A-Grams. This will mark the fifth year that the student government will be surprising Rolla residents with performances by Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe to raise funds for a variety of charitable work that the group participates in around the community.
"The thing I remember most was we have a woman in our office who loves Elvis, she was so intimidated that she hid behind me ... She thought having Elvis there was too much," Lindsay Bagnall, executive vice president of MSM-UMR Alumni Association said about last year's Elvis sighting.
Bagnall and her co-workers have enjoyed Elvis's presence the last two Valentine's Days, thanks to Lindsay's husband Kent Bagnall. And how does Elvis sound these days "He did a great job, he was wonderful," Bagnall said. ...
- Aging but still spry, Jones delivers a heartfelt set
By Tom Roland
(Yahoo! News / Hollywood Reporter, February 13 2006)
While leaving the Cerritos Center on Friday, a woman chatted about several artists, including Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty, who died shortly after she saw them in concert. Her line of thought was entirely reasonable because she'd just seen George Jones deliver a performance that practically demanded the concertgoer consider the loss of the Possum. That's not to say that Jones seems morgue-bound. To be sure, he's still spry and a bit mischievous. But at age 74, he's a different singer, a little less flexible in his range and a little less powerful in his delivery. Coupled with the funereal tone of some of his material, it was difficult not to think about his eventual departure. ...
- Music draws young and old
By Amneris Solano
(Fayetteville Observer, February 13 2006)
Charles Carlisle was singing the bluegrass classic "Just Because" when he switched up his act and began to channel Elvis Presley. Carlisle, with a mandolin strapped over his shoulder, curled his upper lip and did a dead-on impersonation of The King. Behind him, an impromptu band of banjo, bass and guitar pickers accompanied him. The six men, who wore button-up shirts tucked into their blue jeans, harmonized around a single microphone as the twang of their instruments blared from the makeshift stage. Even though they are not a group, they play with the confidence of a band that has been together for years. While the music played, Carlisle paused to converse with his alter ego. "Hey, Elvis," he said. The music faded into the background. "Are you really dead?" "Uh-huh,' he said in character. "You ever been to Clinton before?" Carlisle asked. "Uh-huh," 'Elvis" replied.
Carlisle swiveled his hips, strummed his mandolin and in his best Elvis vibrato belted out, "Just because you think you're so pretty; Now just because you think you're so hot; Just because you think you've got something; That no other girl has got." The audience of more than 60 people, mostly elderly, whooped and hollered. A woman in the back screamed, "Go, Elvis!" as Carlisle gyrated his pelvis to emulate The King. "Thank you. Thank you very much," he said, ending the song with Presley's signature line. ...
- Great One totes soiled cape to Italy
By Monte Poole
(Inside Bay Area, February 13 2006)
[Hockey player] WAYNE GRETZKY is scheduled to leave today for the Winter Olympics, where he will be The Great Curiosity from the second he sets boot in Italy. There goes the Great One. Did he know about his wife? Did he know about one of his best friends? What did he know? Was he involved? The fallout from an ongoing New Jersey police investigation into sports gambling has splashed considerable mud on Gretzky's heretofore flawless reputation. He may be totally innocent, but probably not. He may be deeply involved, but probably not.
... A serving of comeuppance, a dose of humiliation or something else unsavory or unwanted has a way of finding its way to those at the top our sports and entertainment chain. Call it the Curse of Genius. When an individual is so much better than everyone else, running so far ahead of the pack, perhaps even ahead of his time, nature tends to bring them back just a little. ... The individual possessing peerless gifts, thus set apart from contemporaries, seems predestined to The Curse. They generally will have The Moment when the skeletons start rattling their way out of the closet. Sometimes it's angry fate. Sometimes it's just a dose of public humiliation. Sometimes it's a simple matter of the cops showing up, bearing questions. Sometimes they show up dangling handcuffs. Sometimes your life is interrupted, other times threatened, still other times it is ruined. No matter how it looks, there is no perfect life. And those who think they have it will find it hard to keep living it. Maybe even impossible. Human frailty tends to find us all.
... Richard Pryor, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Cobain and Fatty Arbuckle were brilliant beyond compare, and none could escape his tragic flaws. We see the likes of Michael Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Whitney Houston struggle with their demons, which have placed them in embarrassing predicaments and disrupted, if not wrecked, their careers. All brilliant, all profoundly imperfect. ...
- What are the best all-time records?
By RICK CHASE
(wcfcourier.com, February 13 2006)
What is the best record album or single song ever recorded? Is it the one that sells the most copies, has the most airplay, wins the most awards or is voted the best in polls? Who decides all of this? Put several people in a room, and you'll get as many different lists as there are contributors. The Cher fans will be fighting with the Neil Diamond fans, and both of those groups will be overpowered by the Elvis legions and the winner of the Beatles vs. Rolling Stones lightning round. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion even if they like The Archies and can't stop humming "Delta Dawn" by Helen Reddy or Michael Jackson's "Ben."
Let's face it. "You Light up My Life" by Debby Boone was No. 1 for 10 weeks in 1977 and sold more than four million copies. Does it deserve to be on the best singles list of all time? Thankfully, there are some sources that are considered the supreme authorities in such matters, and I'm not talking about somebody's list of favorite Mac Davis tunes posted on Amazon.com. In the realm of record sales the authority is The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the recording industry trade group in the United States. The RIAA issues a load of data each year and keeps tabs on the top selling albums of all time. ... Rolling Stone (RS) magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time," placed The Beatles and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" at No. 1, a position the disc is accustomed to holding. ... The radio's most played rock era single song according to industry sources is "You've Lost That Loving' Feeling" by The Righteous Brothers with more than eight million plays since it was released. ... In 2001 the RIAA compiled a Songs of the Century list with "Over The Rainbow" by Judy Garland and "White Christmas" from Bing Crosby as the two top songs of the 20th Century followed by "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie, "Respect" by Aretha Franklin and Don McLean's "American Pie." The RIAA also certifies the best selling singles from actual sales figures. At the top of that list is "Candle In The Wind" by Elton John with 10 million singles sold. With sales of four million or more singles are "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen and "Hey Jude" again. Also present are Elvis Presley's classic 45-rpm single "Hound Dog/ Don't Be Cruel" that should not even be mentioned in the same sentence with "Macarena" by Los Del Rio and another song title I never thought I'd type for this column, "Whoomp! There It Is" by Tag Team. ...
We can learn several things from this confusing little exercise. First, anybody can compile a list, but some have more credibility than others. "All time" is a relative term. I saw a Blender magazine recently that defined "all time" as from 1980 to the present. "Best" depends on who is voting and certainly is a relative thing. A record may sell a lot of copies. It may be voted the best by even a respected authority. But, it is not necessarily the best for you. Only you can decide that.
- Reese Witherspoon Q&A: Witherspoon in 'Walk the Line'
By Anwar Brett
(timeout.com, February 13 2006)
Having made her name in edgy teen flicks like 'Election' and 'Cruel Intentions' and the hugely successful romantic comedies 'Legally Blonde' and 'Sweet Home Alabama', Reese Witherspoon is now one of Hollywood's most bankable female stars. Thanks to her stunning turn as June Carter in the Johnny Cash biopic 'Walk the Line', she is also now an Oscar-nominated actress.
... There's always a danger when researching someone you hold in such high-esteem that you may find out something that might disappoint. That doesn't sound like it was the case with June though does it?
That was actually one of the great things about it, the more I got to investigate her and look at her performances it really helped to inform my performance but also helped bring her to the fore in a way that she has never been before. In the 50s she was a huge star she was a great comedienne, and toured with every major male star out there. Every single one of them had a giant crush on her and she just would not give them the time of day. Apparently, John and Elvis had a big fight over her. She had a whole thing with Elvis where he was completely infatuated with her and possibly something happened and that was sort of winked at to me by the family. John became so jealous with rage every time Elvis's name came up. ...
- Elvis and High Point: The true story of a special February day
By David Perry
(Furniture Today, February 13 2006)
We all know that Elvis Presley and Las Vegas go together like peanut butter and jelly. And if we know just a little bit about Elvis we also know that he was born in a tiny house in Tupelo, Miss. [The complete text of this article is available only to registered users.]
- Smoking Gun packs heat in investigative journalism
By James A. Fussell
(seattletimes.nwsource.com / Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 13 2006)
It was extraordinary TV, as riveting as it was disquieting. As a nation watched, a stern Oprah Winfrey scolded James Frey, author of the best-selling memoir (and Oprah Book Club selection) "A Million Little Pieces," for embarrassing her, lying about his past and betraying millions of readers. Almost as interesting is who brought Frey's deception to light. It wasn't an investigative newspaper reporter or a TV station. In a true new-millennium moment, the literary rug was pulled out from under Frey by thesmokinggun.com, a three-person Web site that didn't even exist 10 years ago. Which raises a question: Who are these guys, anyway? The answer: just the latest symbol of the growing power and influence of alternative news gathering in the 21st century. ... Former Village Voice staff writer William Bastone started the Smoking Gun as a side project out of his Manhattan apartment in 1997 with his wife (and Smoking Gun site designer), Barbara Glauber, and New York freelancer Dan Green.
Together they filed Freedom of Information Act requests and scoured police stations and courthouses nationwide to find interesting "original source documents" about public figures to post online. Anything qualified: celebrity drunk-tank pictures, revelations from divorce pleadings, the juicier the better. ... From the beginning the site posted documents that got people talking - and clicking their mouses. The subject of its first document: Elvis Presley. Specifically, it was a memo chock-full of classic FBI black-mark redactions that carried an informant's contentions that Elvis was hooked on cocaine. ...
- Sorry Johnny, not everybody wants to walk the line
By John Harris
(Sydney Morning Herald / Guardian, February 11 2006)
All hail Johnny Cash! With Walk the Line tipped for several Oscars, do we have any choice? So, let it be shouted from the rooftops: any day soon, you would be best advised to forget about Elvis, Hendrix, Cobain and Lennon, and start pretending that you've always been a great fan of the most famous fella ever to have come out of Kingsland, Arkansas. Remember to pay dewy-eyed tribute to his wife, June, drone on about the bond between him and Bob Dylan, memorise the words to Ring of Fire, and load up your iPod accordingly. It's a shame he's not around to see it, but just as Oliver Stone ensured that 1991 belonged to that oafish fool Jim Morrison, 2006 is going to be Johnny's year. A great deal of the modern Cash-cult can be traced to his supposed artistic rehabilitation that took root in the mid-1990s, when he teamed up with the renowned producer and beard-man Rick Rubin and began the first of four drooled-over albums. Let us not forget that Rubin's methods for re-catalysing Cash's brilliance included roping in some of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to be his backing group, and covering Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, surely one of the worst quasi-religious rock songs ever put on tape. ... Of course, Johnny Cash was a talented, amazingly charismatic man with a soap-operatic personal history. Relative to some of the other greats of country, however, his music has always seemed one-dimensional, founded on chugging competence and blokey amiability, whereas some of his contemporaries had the ability to sound like lightning rods for the most heart-stopping of emotions. ...
- Elvis : His Best Friend Remembers (DVD)
(moviehole.net, February 11 2006)
Elvis Presley, "Diamond Joe" Esposito
No matter your age, your sex, your religion or your musical taste, there's something undeniably compelling about Elvis Presley. He was, and always will be, the king of Rock and Roll. He oozed charm, he had personality and he was indescribably one of the most influential figures of our time. You can never hear enough about him. Be it his early days, his days in the army, the movie career he had or his final moments, it's a compelling journey...and "His Best Friend Remembers" is up there with the finest of specials.
"Diamond Joe" Esposito was one of the king's closest and most loyal friends. He met him in the army, and later gave him a job as sort of a right-hand man. In this 2hr plus DVD, Esposito reflects on his memories of the King. Not just of the time he spent with Elvis, but what he knows about him, and the person he was.
Now the one thing about Elvis specials that always gets me is that every damn one of them says something different. Some reflect Elvis as a good guy, some say he was an arrogant slob. All argue on who found Elvis lying face down that tragic night, and even like to candy sprinkle his moments. Esposito seems to be on the money. He seems to be telling it like it is. Whether he is or not, only he knows - but he seems to have a good understanding of Elvis and his life.
This is a DVD for the Elvis fans. In addition to the lengthy documentary interview, there's 14 bonus chapters, including chapters on the King's death and mourning.
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