(28 march 2007)

as the cliché goes, you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover. i know this isn’t strictly a literary moral. it has deeper meanings. it’s trying to say that we aren’t supposed to judge our fellow humanity for things like wearing caftans and carrying amulets. we should get to know them and understand why they wear caftans and carry amulets and then we can judge them at our leisure.

but to take the cliché literally, what the hell are we supposed to judge a book by if not its cover?

recently, i’ve been dabbling in novels. not heavily and not with any intent of defecting to fiction, but just poking my nose here or there as a flippant distraction as i biographically wind my way through the many mistresses of george iv. and i’ve come to notice that i always judge a novel by its cover.

in biography- because biography is most often about a single character- the cover is a fairly straightforward thing. it involves a picture of the biographical subject. since there are inordinately more biographies of beautiful people, this picture is usually quite lovely. if it’s a woman, she’s in soft-focus and fluffy-haired and possibly accompanied by a small dog. if a man, he’s stern, and in a becoming power pose and tight pants.

the plot of a biography is captured not so much in the cover as in the title, which is often a breathless variation on this theme: my lady scandalous: the many scandalous lives of the scandalous mary robinson: the secret, the sex slave, the scandals! or, if a man: the scandalous sex prince: the many scandalous lives of the scandalous king george iv: the secret marriage & the scandalous seductions! that’s biography.

but what about fiction? its titles err of the side of brevity and the allures of its covers need to be immediately accessible. we do not wander into the fiction aisle and grab the first plain jane penguin edition that catches our eye. nay! we want cool colors! provocative pictures! gold stickers! or maybe this is just me and my acute aesthetic attraction to all things bright.

wives & daughters entered my life because it was hot pink. it was written by elizabeth gaskell and that had a teeny tiny something to do with my forking over the $7.98, but mostly i coveted the hot pink. it would be a welcome burst of life alongside the lineup of dark and dreary austen maroons. a 678-page fragment of a novel, wives & daughters is one of the best things i’ve read this year. and i read it only because it looked like it’d been dunked in a bucket of flamingo dream.

equally superficial attractions drew me to bel canto. it first caught my eye years ago, but i nabbed it at the white elephant for two reasons- 1) it cost 50 cents, and 2) it’s cover boasted that it had won the orange prize. like most fiction, bel canto concluded in a manner perfectly calculated to exceedingly frustrate me, but i enjoyed it nonetheless. it’s a lyrical little novel about a south american dinner party taken hostage by terrorists- and i picked it up solely because it was cheap and had won a prize named after a fruit.

the grim reality is that we can never read all the books we want to read. thus, we must pick and choose. i’m sure i’m missing a whole heap of glories simply because an art director somewhere out there has a fondness for beige and his books are winning boring normal awards named for people rather than produce. but i’m okay with that. we can’t read all the books we should read, so why not read the 50 cent oranges instead?

(9 june 2006)

long long ago in graduate school, we used to watch the first half of titanic– pre-berg. though we always had every intention of tackling the second part, it inevitably fell by the wayside and when we went to watch it again, we would return to part 1. because, really, part 1 is all you need.

it’s bridget jones on a boat. it’s anne and gilbert in the atlantic. like twilight, it makes us feel 16 again.

watching titanic with croftie the other day, just the introductory music was enough to bring a nostalgic tear to our eyes. we recalled sitting in backseats on long vacation rides, sniffling to james horner’s plaintive notes and wiping our eyes on flannel shirtsleeves. we remembered thinking my life is so tragic– though we couldn’t recall why and we’re pretty sure it wasn’t.

at the time, way back in the winter of 1997, i was wrought with grief that princess diana didn’t live to see titanic. as though had she lived three months more, jack and rose’s timeless tale might have pulled her from a wayward course and assuaged the pains of mental illness.

there’s something about being 16. stupid things seem so big and the big stuff seems so easily resolved by stupidity.

the most stupidly fantastic element of titanic, that which most endears it to 16 year old girls, is the ridiculously absurd plot. jack and rose knew each other for under a week. yes, he saved her life and that would tend to bring one pretty close to a person pretty quick, but not that close.

in rose’s shoes, we would have complained that jack called us “rose” too much. we would have rather died than hock up spit in front of him. and we most certainly would have been a little more frightened when he pulled us into that medieval looking gym, stared deep into our eyes and emphatically declared: “i KNOW you, rose. and YOU won’t be happy living like THAT.” unlike us, rose was naked within hours.

but these realities are nothing when you’re 16. and james cameron was eerily aware of that. which is why we will love him forever for making titanic, part 1. we don’t know how he did it. the mournful music that tugs at our girlish hearts. the beautiful clothes for which we would at least consider life-long enslavement to evil billy zane.

not to mention the shots that capture every single glorious nuance of the wonder that was leonardo dicaprio’s cuteness in 1997.

leo chewing on a cigarette during the poker sequence; leo rocking a tux during dinner; leo telling cora she’s his “favorite girl”; leo dancing in the jauntily unbuttoned white shirt; and our absolute favorite, leo blowing the strand of hair out of his eyes during the portrait session.

years later, it almost hurts to look. and yet, still, we have to rewind.

and somehow james cameron knew all of this. he knew what we girls wanted and needed: a movie about a ridiculously good-looking couple who fall ridiculously in love in a ridiculously short period of time, have a series of ridiculously dramatic adventures set to ridiculously mournful music and meet a ridiculously predictable end to the crescendo of a ridiculously saccharine ballad by a ridiculously skinny diva.

yes, we are ridiculous. and he knows us so well it’s scary.

as usual, croftie says it best: “watching this movie, i’m really surprised james cameron isn’t a 16 year old girl.”

(28 september 2006)

Being a Memphis native, I love Elvis impersonators. They’re like friendly clowns. I’ve seen them picking out fruit at the grocery store, passed them walking down Beale, and cut off their Cadillacs in traffic. I’ve lived among them and they’re still a thrill. It’s a whole other slightly more embarrassing thing to admit that I love the entire genre of which Elvis impersonators are a subset—the cover band.

I rode on an airplane with an Elvis impersonator during Dead Week. His name was Irv Cass. I didn’t have to ask if he was an Elvis impersonator, because he was Elvis. He sat on the plane reading tabloids aloud in deep, rich, Presley (say it right: Prez…ley) tones and a sugary Memphis drawl, commenting on the moral lessons to be learned from the life of Pamela Anderson. An Elvis impersonator pontificating on Pam Anderson’s fake breasts. The irony.

Cover bands are the tabloids of the music world. Say you love The New Yorker and you’ll be pegged as an intellectual. Say you race home on Thursdays praying this week’s issue of Star has arrived, and you’ll be dismissed as a flake. Professing undying love for a U2 cover band yields much the same result as the naughty tabloid habit. People take a hasty step back. They make Stop Where You Are! hands. They avert their eyes. They shrug and say something unremarkable like, “Well, if that floats your boat…”

The common line of thought is this: the editors of In Touch aren’t up to producing legitimate news on a weekly basis so they manufacture unfounded gossip about celebrities that only ignorant people would believe. Similarly, cover bands aren’t up to writing original music so they crapily recycle the music of famous, much-beloved artists, a travesty that would appeal only to the musically ignorant.

This would be where the common line of thought is stupid.

Because the best arguments are always founded on the bedrock of Elvis impersonation, we begin with the Elvi.

I will admit that Elvis impersonators are inherently ridiculous. I love them, but I can’t help remembering the 1989 Bill Bixby-hosted television special Elvis, Where Are You?—two hours based on an impressive collection of Elvis phone recordings (ie. adolescent prank calls conducted with perfect Presley pitch) and Elvis sightings (ie. impersonators caught on tape by gullible Michiganders) that left me convinced the King was indeed alive and living in Kalamazoo. But this only represents the fringes of the Elvis cult. There’s more to impersonation than being caught leaving the Citgo and mistaken for the living King.

It may be a knock-off, but impersonation is far from simple. Beneath the pagentry and the kitsch lies a more sophisticated art. El Vez, “the Mexican Elvis,” uses Presley’s songs as a springboard, pilfering the music but including his own original lyrics about immigration, political empowerment, and racial dissent. He manipulates Presley as a metaphor of empowerment, superimposing Hispanic culture onto Elvis’ iconic life as the quintessential American Dream. If you can get beyond the cheesy album covers and the fact that he’s “The Mexican Elvis,” you’ll find the same sentiments that resonate through the entire catalogue of highly respected bands like U2.

Knock-offs aren’t always as superficial as they seem. Obviously, there’s much more to a cover band than the derogatory term implies. A cover band is a tribute, a celebration, an homage, an impersonation, a theatrical, a performative art. They represent the real thing, the genuine article. As the Elvis tribute artist, Irv Cass says, “It’s as close as you can come to reality.” In other words, impersonation is the realest fake.

And being this fake is a hell of a lot of hard work. Vertigo USA, a Chicago U2 tribute band, has shelled out its own money to buy gear worthy of Bono and the lads. Vertigo puts on a damn good U2 show. Juggling day jobs, side projects, and families, the band members tour the country on their own dime, because they love the music that much.

There’s something to be said for loving something that much, and I think an integral element of impersonation is that love, of either the music or the icon. Openly and loudly and unabashedly—regardless of the cultural validity, social acceptability, or the sheer cheesiness of what you’re doing—loving something that much. Because it’s a taxing job, one that demands the vocal skill, musical talent and stamina of a top-notch performer. The cover band is very much a case of tough love.

I interviewed Faux Bono (Alan Lewis) this summer. He didn’t come in character. Watching Faux Bono eating a pretzel, you wouldn’t have thought: BONO! Watching him onstage an hour later, you couldn’t think anything else. Faux Bono’s mimickry of Bono’s moves was without flaw. He clutched his shirt cuffs, thrust his hips, prowled the stage, strutted into the crowd, swaggered across the floor. He’d recently gone from playing Jesus in Godspell to being Bono. But he swore he didn’t have a messianic complex.

Faux Bono’s dead-on impersonation did not come naturally. It took a lot of hard work. The obsession started when he found a rogue copy of Achtung Baby in the bargain bin. From then on, Faux Bono screened U2 concerts, practicing the mannerisms, trotting out the stage moves at kareoke bars. He would snag someone’s sunglasses and sing his heart out. One night, a drunk guy leaned in and said, “Boy! I hope you’re able to do something with that one of these days.” At a Vertigo show, you wonder how he could have possibly done anything else. The kid is Bono through and through.

Faux Bono told me that as Bono, all he wants to do is to make people forget they’re not seeing the real thing. It’s an illusion very much complicated by the fact that Vertigo is, in reality, playing small pubs and bars, not 25,000 seat stadiums. Faux Bono says he gets through it by asking himself, “What would Bono do if he was playing here right now?” Watching him, you wouldn’t guess he had to think about it at all.

Done well, impersonation looks easy. Like modern art, we think: I could do that. Look. Watch me. I’ll do it right now. Truth is, very few of us could. Because we don’t love either the icon or the music that much. We don’t love U2 enough to stay home and drink tea and take care of our voices and practice. We don’t love Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds” enough to fork over our own money for tour expenses and advertising and rhinestone jumpsuits. Like any art—and it is an art—impersonation is demanding and difficult and the only reason it ever looks easy is because the artist is just that good.

Impersonation is deception. Faux Bono is not Bono. Irv Cass is not Elvis. But they almost are. They’re authentically fake. They’ve studied hard. The sugary Memphis drawl of Irv Cass lulled my thoughts back to sticky southern summer barbeques along the mighty Mississippi. It was a drawl so lilting, so smooth, so velvety, that it was shocking to know it came from a Detroit native.

But we overlook the deceit. I’ve seen two separate Neil Diamond tributes. One Faux Neil even carried on stage-banter about his “good friend Barry Manilow” before breaking into a cover of “Mandy.” Yes, a Neil Diamond cover band covering Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.” So meta. And no one stood up to accuse Faux Neil of being an evil liar and duping us all. We didn’t feel cheated that he didn’t really know Barry and that he might not even know a Faux Barry, because it’s implicit in the cover band viewing contract that there will be a pretty significant suspension of disbelief. And we were cool with that. We knew the rules.

Impersonation is inevitably a failed deception. Despite the effort at verisimilatude, there’s no escaping the fact that masquerading as another band or another person is an obliquely fake enterprise. This falsity is most often betrayed by anachronisms, which are, in turn, largely responsible for the fundamental kitschiness surrounding cover bands. Elvis died at 42, Irv Cass is now 53. Faux Neil, the dear friend of Barry Manilow, was decked out in glittery scarves and low-cut blouses, but sang accompanied onstage only by the saddest of boomboxes. Even Vertigo’s U2 tribute, of which I’m an ardent fan, is a little off. Sometimes Faux The Edge is dressed in Joshua Tree-era garb, while Faux Bono is decked out à la Zoo TV. So impersonation is not perfection. And that’s the one thing that those who can’t handle the kitsch will be the first to point out. That people no longer love “Mandy,” jumpsuits are not cool, and Elvis is dead.

But, ultimately, it’s the imperfections that are most interesting within cultural artifacts: the dissonance between interpretations, the stories we believe that turn out to be untrue. It is the fictions that best capture the overarching values and dramas of the society that created them. We can only see so far on our own, while fiction affords a sweeping, panoramic cultural view. Cover bands are a living interpretation of a cultural icon. The impersonator captures the sound, movements, and image of the icon, even after the individual behind that image has long since passed away. It’s tableaux vivant for the modern age.

To me, the most fascinating element of impersonation is that process of deceiving to recreate a reality or an image. Because in reality, if we deceive, we are condemned. What is acceptable on a stage will not be tolerated in life. And yet, we all pretend. To an extent, we are all fictitious, we are all performing. We pretend through friendships, marriages, careers, hope and fear. We pretend we’re happy when we’re sad. We laugh when we want to cry. We remain silent when we want to kick and scream. But unlike impersonators, we are not onstage. We are real, the impersonators are fake. And somehow they seem more honest.