Actually, They Booed Elvis

via an Instapundit link to Mickey Kaus:

(Elvis’s death in 1977 rated two paragraphs in People Magazine.)

I like Presley's music well enough, but I've never forgotten the night Elvis died, not because I'm an Elviphile, but because I was in a dance club in Seaside, NJ when the DJ stopped the music long enough to announce it and the assorted John Travolta wannabes, Barry Gibb poseurs and their babes all started to boo and hiss. Within seconds Donna Summer, or maybe the Star Wars theme re-mix, or perhaps it was the Latin Hustle was again incessantly and inanely pounding its way out of the sound system.

Had it been Lionel Richie or any of those named above who had died, People Magazine would have had a huge spread - same goes ten or so years earlier had it been David Cassidy, 20 years earlier Bobby Sherman, and so forth. Anyone who thinks the celebrity culture started with Princess Di may know about celebrity today, but they know very little about the history of American culture.

Comments

[chip]

on the other hand...working at a music distributor we ordered 500-1000 copies of every elvis record that was in print at the time...including dreck like having fun with elvis on stage & sold out immediatly...i was having to hide stock in the warehouse & lie to accounts because we could not keep up with the demand...

the summer of 1977 disco was king...all that stuff you mention..we were even putting on the first punk rock shows here...but i have never ever seen anything like it...so he still had fans they just didnt hang out in discos

[JustOneMan]

I was in Joey Harrisons Surf Club in Seaside NJ that same night..with Kitty Shay. There was some wierd dude with pink pants, yellow socks and platform sandals....

[Dan Riehl]

Kitty Shay

It wasn't the surf club, it was that club right in Seaside??? Hoopers, orsoemthing? Anyway, it's the summer time, sugar ... ao, let yourself go!!

[seekeronos]

Disco was an interesting phenomenon, enjoying a short ride of a few years from the mid-late 70s, and then dropping off into a pit of obscurity...

... almost as if society had collectively awoke from a mass stupor in 1981, and asked... "just what the heck were we thinking, wearing platform sandals, yellow socks, pink bell-bottoms, a neck scarf, and a polyester paisley shirt so shiny, that it could actually amplify reflected light?"

And alas, did Studio 54 close its doors, and the cool chill of morning and the smell of fresh coffee and immaculately coiffed women in pantsuits and men in pinstripe suits bounding for the morning subways bound for Chambers St. around us remind us of the times a-changing.

Now, if only some of these atrocious pop performers of modern time - especially Britney and Paris - could so easily swirl around the waste drains of our pop-culture identities...

[Fred Beloit]

seek, there is a certain TSELIOTness about your comment above or perhaps Ginsbergian (no not that). What have you been reading lately?

[Phoenix]

Nice notice, Fred. Ah, the wasteland......................... the swirling drains....

Seek - You are wonderful in so many different ways! Wow...

[Steve Smith]

It may also have been that everyone in the club was already sick of hearing about Elvis' death, since the announcement (that he had died) had been made on all the networks in the late afternoon.

[seekeronos]

"--- What have you been reading lately? ---"

I've been reading way too much Harry Turtledove recently. Even if some of his alternate history readings are a bit funky at times (for example, a WW2-era Confederate Gen. Patton being taken captive by a US General "Ironhewer" [that's the direct English rendering of "Eisenhauer"])... the man knows how to spin a good yarn.

Apparently Turtledove doesn't care much for Jimmy Carter: in one of his books, he's a young CS Navy officer that gets gunned down by a band of Black guerillas on his peanut farm in Plains, GA)

[Dan Riehl]

"It may also have been that everyone in the club was already sick of hearing about Elvis' death"

You're kidding, right? Obviously you didn't know the beach/club/disco set in NJ circa 1977. Not much room for TV or news. And actually, now that I think about it, the DJ started to play My Way as a tribute - but had to pull it due to the booing. I felt rather appalled at the basic lack of respect, frankly.

[Fred Beloit]

"the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,...
...Curled once about the house, and fell asleep."

This is what we must have been thinking about seek and P.

'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T. S. Eliot

This is the first time I noticed that there is a fred in this title.

[Phoenix]

Ohhh. I had a fifth-grade teacher who read to us every day. The class was silent without fail as we listened to her perfect voice. She read "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' to us, and while we didn't quite get it all, ..... wait, I can't use 'we'.... I fell in love with the language of the poem. (I could get really smarmy here, but someone will make fun of me, so I won't.)

Wow. You just lit me up, f. :) Thanks!