Dwelling intensely, a phrase associated with old school anthropological fieldwork comes to mine. This piece dwells intensely in Elvis's what? Wake? Legacy? It's as much about the space he's created for us than the man himself. But without being sonically intimate (no interviews of Elvis sobbing), it is strangely intimate somehow, which I have to attribute to the producers' choices. We hear Elvis's echoes in our popular culture, our intellectual culture. The best parts were the Resident's story of The Baby King, used to frame the whole mixture. The interview with Gillian Welch from WUNC was great, well edited, well selected, fitted well into the whole thing
(and I have wondered what that song was about). It was also great to hear Salt brother Adam Allington's "Elvis Cop", one of my favorite rose among roses of the Salt corpus; Another straight documentary might not fit as well, but Adam's editing allowed The Elvis Cop to merge into Elvis himself, and in so doing, merge into the overall mix.
And so, overall, we're invited to consider Elvis and we're permitted a simple narrative in which to do it and a conclusion to draw. Elvis was sad, he was the king of need, and we all need him. It might fall apart if you look at it too closely, so don't. Just listen. Dwell. Coming soon to a radio near me I hope?
Review of The Plan- Elvis
Jesse Dukes
Posted on December 29, 2005 at 10:12 AM
Dwelling intensely, a phrase associated with old school anthropological fieldwork comes to mine. This piece dwells intensely in Elvis's what? Wake? Legacy? It's as much about the space he's created for us than the man himself. But without being sonically intimate (no interviews of Elvis sobbing), it is strangely intimate somehow, which I have to attribute to the producers' choices. We hear Elvis's echoes in our popular culture, our intellectual culture. The best parts were the Resident's story of The Baby King, used to frame the whole mixture. The interview with Gillian Welch from WUNC was great, well edited, well selected, fitted well into the whole thing
(and I have wondered what that song was about). It was also great to hear Salt brother Adam Allington's "Elvis Cop", one of my favorite rose among roses of the Salt corpus; Another straight documentary might not fit as well, but Adam's editing allowed The Elvis Cop to merge into Elvis himself, and in so doing, merge into the overall mix.
And so, overall, we're invited to consider Elvis and we're permitted a simple narrative in which to do it and a conclusion to draw. Elvis was sad, he was the king of need, and we all need him. It might fall apart if you look at it too closely, so don't. Just listen. Dwell. Coming soon to a radio near me I hope?