early March, 2006
- Special officer for Elvis?
(Parkes Champion Post, March 3 2006)
The Parkes Elvis Festival committee will investigate the possibility of funding a coordinator to oversee the planning of all future Elvis festivals. From humble beginnings the festival has grown in popularity over the years to become the region's premier January attraction. This year's event generated an estimated $4million in tourist revenue during the three day staging with thousands flocking to Parkes from throughout Australia and overseas. Parkes Shire Council's Tourist Manager Monique Kronk said the Elvis committee had identified the need to do some long-term business planning to guarantee the festival's success. In recognising that the committee was strongly reliant on the support of Council she said strategic planning was now required to ensure the festival's growth remains sustainable - both financially and in its future impact on the town's infrastructure.
`The committee intends to engage an events consultant in the next few months to workshop planning issues and opportunities,' Ms Kronk said. `They will also explore the feasibility of funding a future coordinator for the festival. A coordinator with event and management expertise is required to lead the volunteer festival committee through this important growth stage.' Ms Kronk said that options were currently being explored on how an Elvis Festival coordinator might work alongside or be combined with the proposed new Shire Events Officer.
- Is Elvis dead?
(Reporter-Herald, March 2 2006)
Give government workers the means, and theyıll attempt to hide those things already in the public realm. Secrecy is alive and well in Washington, despite pronouncements to the contrary. Now, even documents that for years had been available through the National Archives, copied, placed on the Internet and published in government or scholarly reviews are being reclassified and locked away. Such acts might be laughed off as mere silliness were it not so incredibly expensive. It is costing millions of dollars to run the secret reclassification program and store the documents for decades. ...
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UK Pop Charts This Week: 12th #1 for Madonna
By Bill Lamb
(about.com, March 2 2006)
Madonna now ranks behind only Westlife, Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley for the most UK #1's of all time. "Sorry" is the #1 pop single this week.
- The King-hit of Elvis
By Robert Messenger
(Canberra Times, March 2 2006, Times2 section p.4)
Half a century ago today, Elvis Presley's HeartBreak Hotel changed popular music forever. It wasn't the first rock 'n' roll hit, but it was one of The King of Rock, Elvis Aron Presley. The still-haunting Heartbreak Hotel entered the United States Billboard Top 100 half a century ago today -- on March 3, 1956. It had been recorded as the seventh take of Presley's second song during his first session for RCA Victor, on January 10 -- at the Methodist Television, Radio and Film Commission Studios in Nashville, Tennessee -- tow days after the singer's 21st birthday and a little more than six weeks after Sam Phillip had sold Presley's Sun Records contract and his singles and unreleased masters to the international label for an unprecedented $US40,000 (of which Presley got $5000). ... Fifty years on and it's still one of rock's greatest tracks. And as for Presley, well he's lasted an awful long time, too, dead or alive.
- In bed with Priscilla
By Chris Johnston
(The Age, March 2 2006)
A PUBLICIST tells the photographers they can now take an "eye-shot", one by one. But hurry up. The flashes start strobing. She's sitting on a bed at Myer. The queue for autographs is immense: 1000 people, all wanting a moment, the briefest of moments, something to take away. They want to say that they met Priscilla Presley, the woman who married Elvis. They want to say they touched her or glimpsed her, had a close encounter, however fleeting. So it's crazy, it's intense, as it always is around fame. People are told to do this and that, line up here, wait there. There's security everywhere and an army of those publicists and image-makers.
And then there's Presley, who is 61; a small figure within it all, tiny even, but serene, extremely calm and dignified within all the adoration and clamour. It's that famous surname, Presley. That's what does it. She was married to Elvis for six years from 1967, having met him when she was 14 in 1959. It still shocks her that people turn up when she launches a product or goes to a Hollywood party or does even the merest thing in public. "I thought I would get maybe 60 people coming along in Melbourne," she says later. "One thousand come and I'm like, 'Wow, amazing.' But, you know, it's not true to say it's just because my name is Presley. When Elvis and I divorced I had plenty of enemies. I had to build up trust from the public. People felt so close to him and also very close to his passing. We'll never see the likes of that again. So I certainly don't take Elvis's fans for granted." They're a dedicated bunch. Obsessive. Nuts. There's a man lurking around the back of the crowd who has the hair and the belt buckle and even a tie with his hero's image on it. A group of older women from Geelong cry and shake in a huddle. People shout, scream.
Greenvale woman Mary-Anne Britt has come with an odd piece of Elvis ephemera. In 1977 - she was 15 - she posted him a koala bear and a love letter, to "Graceland, Highway 51 South, Memphis, Tennessee, USA 38116". He received it, and signed for the delivery, but then died. The parcel was sent back, with Elvis's signature on the postal form, signed on August 15, the day before he died. She wanted to show Elvis's widow. And Anne Wright, 52, from Burnie in Tasmania. She got up at 4am for a 6.30am flight and came straight to Myer in a taxi. After Presley's launch yesterday (a range of bed linen), questions were invited. Mrs Wright chose to ask if anyone would ever be allowed into Elvis's bedroom at Graceland, which of course was Priscilla Presley's bedroom too, for a while. The answer: "No. That's private." An hour after, people are still there, waiting for their piece. A fan hands her a baby. Others clutch the autobiography, Elvis and Me. Many have Elvis belts, ties, bags, hats. They're here to see her because she was with him. "She's only tiny," says someone from the crowd. "She's had a facelift," says another. No one digs too deep. They just want a second. A split-second will do.
- PRESLEY LAUNCHES LINE OF LUXURIOUS LINENS
(contactmusic.com, March 1 2006)
PRISCILLA PRESLEY has launched her own collection of fine linens after falling for quality bedsheets and towels when she was married to ELVIS. The famous widow unveiled the Luxury Linens Collection, with design partner BRUNO SCHIAVI, in Sydney, Australia, yesterday (28FEB06). The show featured items in the range including bed linens, cushions, towels and bathrobes. Presley explains, "When it comes to developing a personal taste, you have to start somewhere. "(Living with Elvis at Graceland) was my first introduction into finery and once you've slept in fine linens, you can't go back." The 60-year-old insists that her linen collection is high-end, but priced affordably, and according to Presley, provides the best chance of a good night's sleep.
- 'Zizek!' is content to tag along with 'Elvis of cultural theory' (MOVIE REVIEW)
By Joshua Glenn
(Boston Globe, March 1 2006)
High-end furniture from the 1970s is back in vogue now, one hears. A viewing of ''Zizek!," which follows the antic Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek on a brief 2003 lecture circuit from Buenos Aires to New York to Cambridge and back home to Ljubljana, suggests that the same is true of that decade's intellectual accouterments. ... Why Zizek, and why now? Fledgling director Astra Taylor seems to have no clue. Despite her subject's insistence that ''everything must be theorized," she offers no theories and appears perfectly content -- titillated, really -- simply to tag along with ''the Elvis of cultural theory." (Considering Zizek's abundant flop sweat and eye-rolling twitchiness, let's make that the '70s-era Elvis.) The movie was produced by the Documentary Campaign, a nonprofit aiming to combine progressive politics with artistic filmmaking. It fails at the latter due to clumsy camerawork, inadequate lighting, and uninteresting editing; it fails at the former, one is pleased to discover, for more intriguing reasons. ...
- PRISCILLA AT 60: She still looks 25, but is it all down to £25,000 of help?
By Victoria Kennedy
(mirror.co.uk, March 1 2006)
SHE shot to fame as the fresh-faced 22-year-old who married the king of rock 'n' roll. And Priscilla Presley seems to have aged just three years in the four decades since she wed Elvis. The 60-year-old former Dallas and Naked Gun star turned up to launch her luxury bed-linen range in Sydney yesterday looking enviably slim and amazingly line-free. So how has she managed to hold back the years? Harley Street plastic surgeon Jeya Prakash, who counts Jordan as a client, reckons it could be down to about £25,000 worth of remodelling surgery. He says: "Priscilla has had what I would call a facial regeneration - she has had all her facial features worked on. Lip fillers cost around £600. Her nose is also much sharper and the tip is more defined, which indicates a nose job, at a cost of about £4,500. She has most likely had a brow lift, which costs £6,000. The cheeks have been raised. This indicates a facelift - a face and neck lift come to £6,000. She may also have had a chin implant at £4,000. Finally, she may have had whole-face laser or chemical peels to get rid of wrinkles and ageing spots. This would cost around £4,000 and lasts five years.
"She doesn't look anything like 60 - I think she looks more like 30. But the surgery is natural-looking and she doesn't look overstretched."
- Priscilla Presley's range fit for a king
(Sydney Morning Herald, March 1 2006)
BEING privy to the finest linens at Elvis Presley's Graceland is undoubtedly going to influence a girl.
So it was no wonder Priscilla Presley -- in Australia to launch her linens range with design partner Bruno Schiavi -- yesterday declared her range "fit for the King". One of the world's most-famous widows hosted a catwalk show of her expensive collection of bed linens, cushions, towels and bath robes -- and there wasn't a leopard print or any blue suede in sight. The range is as impeccably put together as the woman herself, who, at 60, looks best when she breaks her carefully maintained porcelain veneer with a giggle, as opposed to her media-wary smile.
Conceding her taste for luxury between the sheets stems from her Elvis days, she said that was her first introduction to finery and once she'd slept in fine linens, she couldn't go back. The collection is top-end, but according to Presley, provides the best means for a good night's sleep. Presley was in Sydney yesterday and will be in Melbourne today.
Cool, calm collected: Priscilla Presley.
Picture: AP
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