4 - Friday, August 7, 1987 - North Shore News Bob Hunter @ stricily personal @ THIS MONTH — take your hats off pilgrims, bow your heads ~— will be the 30th anniversary of Elvis’s visit: to Vancouver. Go ahead, weep, Hf that’s what you want to do, Get it over with, Three decades, brothers and sisters. It was August 31, 1957, f didnot happen to be lucky enough to five in) Vancouver then, but if f had ft would have killed for a ticket to that concert. My hormones had mostly already changed, but Elvis had done ir- teparable harm to omy teenage sense of self. For instance, 2 danced funny coutpared to omy Mom, who danced pretty funny — herself. Rock & Roll was the nuttiest kind of dancing since the Charleston, and whereas the Charleston was a single specific dance, Rocking & Rolling was a genre. Well, it was more than that. Or so it seemed. Mt seemed ke a Way of Life, and this was long before the term Way of Life had any kind of pop meaning at all. ESE aa ELEN OE 1ST key Ive sung You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog along with a bus driver in Bavaria, Don's Be Cruch with a tuk-tuk driver in Bangkok, Heartbreak Hotel with a skiff operator in’ Trinidad, Jailhouse Rock with @ logger in Northern Spain, J'm AL Shouk Up with a bunch of sailors in a bar in Stockholm. The amazing thing was that none of these gentlemen other- wise spoke anything more than a few phrases of English. Ah, bur Elvis? We could all sing old Elvis songs. L actually believed for a certain part of my fife thar Elvis was some kind of great natural force that was helping to bind humuni- ty together, although we all know such a view is pure hokurn. He turned out to be a grossly egomanical, lonely, tormented, dope-craved chauvinist pig. A man’s man, as they say. EE RATT “Quite apart from wanting to be Elvis - you know, worshipped by everybody, a multi- millionaire, thousands of women — every boy my age got to follow a living myth through his rise and his precipitous fall to doom.” There was the hit parade chart to be followed from week to week, the appropriate drapes or jeans to wear, the correct length of sideburns, the perfect amount of Brylcream, collar tucked up just so, watch out for the Duck Tail! Ah, sigh. Most importantly, however, there was the question of how well one Rocked & Rolled. Forgive me if 1 was misreading everything, but it does all seem very primal and foreplayish and mating-ritualistic in retrospect. To my children, of course, Elvis is a joke. But then they have trouble believing that | as actually in love with Sandra Dee, the real Sandra Dee. Elvis was the K:ng who hap- pened to emerge over the radio just as I was hitting the Gonad Wall, or whatever it is that you break through at puberty. He was the overwhelming, supreme, towering role-model of that era. It went further than the kind of adulation Frank Sinatra had earned in an earlier time. As any number of social studies will tell you, Rock & Roll marked the en- try-point of black Rhythm & Blues into mainstream North American—and, indeed, world—culture. Today there isn’t a country you can go to without hearing some modern form of Rock & Roll playing, along with plenty of Golden Oldies. And plenty of Elvis. Love Me Tender is still one of the most emotionally-evocative popular songs of alf time. A Foof Such as I still brings a grimace of shared wisdom. Ah, the early dreams of manly glory, personified by Elvis sing- ing: “When I walk through that door, baby be polite...”’ Of course it was sexist pro- gramming and all of that, but, come on, it was basically harmless balm for our poor little male egos. Male egos at puberty need all the help they can get, believe me. I was in Australia when Elvis died. That would make it 10 years ago. All you heard on the radios were old Elvis songs, par- ticularly My Way. Over and over again. Quite apart from wanting to be Elvis—you know, worshipped by everybody, a multi-millionaire, thousands of women—every boy my age got to follow a living myth through his rise and his precipitous fall to doom. Elvis was a kind of a rich media cousin, you could say. You knew you’d never get to meet him, but you followed his fate, no matter what. Even when [ got into being a snotty pseudo-intellectual, 1 wat- ched out of the corner of my eye to see what happened to him, And when he died, it’s true, I ac- tually cried! But it’s true what they say, Elvis lives! Wanna dance, baby? 1L.D. MAY FOIL THIEVES Car stereos stolen A RECENT survey conducted by the North Vancouver RCMP shows stolen stereos account for over one third of all thefts from vehicles locally. Owners of expensive imports containing top of the line audio equipment such as Blaupunkt and other makes are increasingly being targeted by thieves. Often the stolen items are im- possible to identify. To deter thieves and identify audio equipment, the police ask the public to plan to attend the Rotary-RCMP vehicle identifica- tion session scheduled for Satur- day, Aug. 8, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Esso station; 17th Street and Lonsdale Avenue. SAFE VOYAGE TO FRANCE rctic escape aided THE LAST Jeg of a harrowing escape from the aretic by as French woman, who recently survived six daya in the wilderness, was coordinated focally by a West Vancouver company. Renou Distribution arranyved passage to Marsailles, france for 24-year-old Lydia Marie Barragan, Barragun and Jean faeques LeFranc, 28, had planned to study caribou in’ the far aorthwestern corner of the Northwest Ter: ritaries, The two were In a canoe when it) flipped and capsized. Lekrane drowned while trying fo reach shore. 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