By Thom Fowler
I'm in Goldfingers, a little bar in Hollywood, and it's packed; the last band has finished their set, people have been drinking and now it's time for the show to end all shows: Extreme Elvis. I didn't know they were going to be in L.A. but a friend of mine from S.F. who knows the band asked if I was going. I promptly sent out an e-mail to get on the guest list. I had just left the Free Speech Coalition's yearly awards dinner and it seemed natural that I would go from talking to Larry Flynt and Ron Jeremy to this.
I'd seen the band but I knew that for most of these people, the reputation drew them out. They were here to see some hardcore act. While the show is, in many ways, an act, the story behind the act helps bring out another dimension.
The crowd is waiting for this guy they've all heard about and now here he is, finally, in their town. In Los Angeles, where stars are born. And they know that after tonight, their lives will never be the same.
"Extreme Elvis is Harnessed Masochism," Extreme Elvis tells me. Because he is being sued by Graceland, I have to call him Extreme Elvis; from here on out, I will simply refer to him as EE. This is not a story about Elvis, it is a story about EXTREME Elvis, the name of the frontman as well as the band. The similarity ends at the sideburns. The Elvis estate is worried that Extreme Elvis may be degrading the Elvis brand image. I think Elvis did a fine job of that all by himself in those last moments. They found him in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles, dead from an overdose.
And that is how legends are born. Ask Hendrix, Joplin, Monroe, Morrison, Dean.
"Ultimately, the reason for destroying yourself is selfish," says Double E. EE may not be destroying his body, but you've got to have armloads of self-esteem to get up on stage and remove all your clothes, especially if you are fat and have a small dick.
"It's a one-joke gimmick, it'll be a miracle if anyone remembers us. We'll be like that song 'I know what Boys Like' by the Waitresses. [People will say] 'There was this guy that was fat and naked and pissed and he did Elvis songs.' That's where we're headed."
If EE is anything, it is a mirror of our culture. They are best experienced on several levels at once. The Freak Show, The Social Comment, The Irony, The Subversiveness, and a real desire to be taken seriously as artists and musicians. There is no way to pinpoint where they are at any moment. Sometimes what you see is all that is there, and sometimes what you see is just the tip of an iceberg of what they are about. The problem with categories is that inevitably something comes along that isn't easily filed away and then how do you tell people what you are or what you do.
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"I'm telling you about what happened in the '90s when everything underground got packaged and commodified. I'm telling you now, nowadays, in the final analysis, in the footnotes of VH1 BEHIND THE MUSIC, it'll be a shock Elvis act where a fat guy got naked."
EE does a lot of Elvis covers, but without trying to be Elvis. They have taken his music and turned it into jazzy rock and they have a couple of original songs - one a country-western song about "faggots" that is not homophobic at all, which is the irony, but more like a celebration of the love that dare not speak its name.
They were recently involved in a fake Republican Rally in People's Park in Berkeley. Pretending to be Republicans, they staged a rally intending to draw protesters, which it did. Even after they explained the joke, there were still angry college kids who didn't get the news, yelling and picketing. Their method for raising social consciousness is like the Guerilla Queer Bar underground (which isn't THAT underground if it's got a Web site). A notice is sent out to people on the mailing list who show up at a chosen bar and turn it into a Queer bar for one night. This kind of Situationist prank is what the Cacophony society was famous for before they exhausted their retinue and everyone knew what to expect.
I want to pretend that EE just always was, but the people in the band do have backstories. EE was a journalist teaching English in Japan at the height of the dot-com boom, When he came back,he couldn't afford anything and he was angry. Extreme Elvis started out as a reaction to the whole dot-com boom.
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"Yes, we were responding to the whole dot-com economy. San Francisco was a very different place before. I came back and there it was. There were friends of mine talking about retiring in five years. I was like 'wait a second.'"
Brian Eno developed his infamous "Oblique Strategies" to work through creative blocks. I'm extrapolating, but there doesn't seem to be a direct connection between being the part of Extreme Elvis you see at the shows and the dot-com boom. I recently talked to Bruce Weber, director of THE COCKETTES, and he brought up the same thing - about how suddenly there were thousands of people coming to San Francisco just to make money and that has never been the reason why anyone came to San Francisco. They came, usually, to free themselves. That shift in attitude on such a grand scale, changed overnight what San Francisco was, and those who are from the old San Francisco, such as Weber and EE, thought something precious had been lost.
I can't figure out how Extreme Elvis is commenting on the dot-com boom, except that the once-vibrant underground art and music scene had been depleted and perhaps EE was trying to regenerate some of that genius rebelliousness. EE didn't really go into it with me, but being from San Francisco and experiencing all that firsthand gave me some insight. (I know EE somewhat socially from S.F.; I just happened to catch them in L.A.)
I don't think it's all about anger, though. Because their shows aren't angry shows. They aren't screaming about how everything sucks. They do Elvis songs.
"From the beginning it was anger, shit and anger. The first show, I threw shit. Elvis ended in shit, you gotta begin in shit. Everything after Elvis, you have to start where he ended with shit and anger. At the end, Elvis lost everything that mattered to him. He was depressed. He was totally alone and he was rich and famous. We are just taking the ugly thing and turning it right back around. People call us ugly, This is a tribute."
I wasn't the only media guy interested in the band that night. There was someone from Viacom and the BBC there as well. The BBC reporter is also an award-winning writer who penned a few controversial shows for the Beeb. Now she's on assignment in America.
Not only were there more or less official entertainment representatives there, but there were a few opportunistic sleazebags as well.
I conducted this interview in the patio of Goldfingers in Hollywood. EE hadn't yet dressed. His cape had gone missing and he was signing autographs for people who were saying, "Sign it to the Nazi Jew." So he writes, "Ryan Gosling is going to be a big star." Since I supplied the Sharpie, I helped out with the autographs and drew a halo over EE's head. EE has a way of managing all the freaky fringe people who find him because they all think he's going to be an unstable, insufferable, GG Allin weirdo, just like them. They don't realize they are going to get therapy.
While we are talking, various people in various states of mental disrepair, alcohol-induced or otherwise, sit with us. Some guy interrupts and says, "Would you tone down your act if it meant you could go on the talk-show circuit?" I just let the tape roll because this was going to be good.
The answer, of course, is no.
"We are basically commenting on cult of personality and on fame. If you want to put me on Leno, great, I'm the king of comedy."
"But you can't take off your clothes on national television," says the guy.
I'm feeling helpful so I chime in, "You can on HBO."
EE replies, "They shot Elvis from the waist down. I'd do an HBO thing, I'd do a CNN thing. I'd do a 700 Club thing. This is one big private joke. If I could sell out based on the reputation I already have, that would be beautiful. You never know when we'll throw shit again."
While EE jokes about his meteoric rise and his flirtation with the idea of mainstream success and fame, he reminds us, "In New York Janeane Garofolo came to the show and I discarded a condom in her lap. I could get huge, but I would always be a star-struck person. I'd be a starfucker, I'd be a bottom-feeder, I'd find someone more famous than me. I never want to be anything but at the bottom."
The guy persists, he smells money. He gives EE a lesson in Showbiz.
"There are two things that have gone up in value in the entertainment world - Marilyn Monroe things and Elvis things. You are almost a rock financially for us."
Turns out, this guy is just talking some trash. His day job is delivering lost luggage for an airline. A job he calls, "lonely and thankless." And his dreams of producing a big act were finally realized when he got 12 months in prison for holding with intent to sell 50 POUNDS of weed.
"How much weed do you have now," Extreme Elvis asks, clearly throwing this guy for a loop. If he's playing games, EE has a card up his sleeve.
"Way less than that."
EE continues to play with the guy, just entertaining him. "In this town, they call [weed], 'schwag.'"
Another guy sits down to join the party now. Drunk, or pretending to be because he wants to be down with the double E. The conversation has somehow turned to bisexuality being a career choice in Hollywood and he says, "I don't have a college degree, but I took some classes at UCLA. Lesbianic tendencies are more prevalent in women."
(pause)
He also holds the view that homosexuality in Hollywood is brought on by the industry in Hollywood. If it wasn't for showbiz, there'd be far fewer fags. Someone call Falwell!
Anyone with a bullshit detector could see those two guys were sleazebags looking to cash in on a novelty act and trying to speak the language he imagines Extreme Elvis would speak. He was going to say anything to get his attention but kept failing miserably because he aimed in the wrong place. What they both missed is that EE is a very smart man, that underneath the show there is something sincere.
The first time I saw Extreme Elvis, they tried something different. They put a fake campfire on the floor in the middle of the venue and people sat around the fire and lyric sheets were passed around. It was an acoustic set. We eventually ended up singing Kumbaya after two jugs of Jack Daniels had been emptied by the crowd and Elvis had stripped down to nothing. In L.A., he tried to get the audience to sit down a couple times so he could get personal, have a little talk. In S.F., the audience always responds and lets Elvis lead the adventure. In L.A., people were wary, didn't know what to think. They showed up to see a freak show, not a person. It's too bad, they missed an important part of the whole experience.
And that's the secret of Extreme Elvis. There are Extreme Sports, Extreme Fast Food and even an Extreme Honda dealership, so naturally, there had to be an Extreme Elvis. But wait, there's more. The act seems to be pandering to people who get off on the shock value, and sure, that's why you go. But it's like a little gimmick, a delivery vehicle for the medicine. Extreme Elvis is a big hug.
During his shows, EE often says, "Come over here and get on your knees and let the healing begin." While I'm not very comfortable pointing this out, EE has a very small penis. He doesn't shy away from showing it off, and makes it part of the show, so I should mention it. People were commenting, "Where is his dick?" So he pissed in a cup to help the audience find it. And then he threw the piss on his backup singer.
After the show, I went back to the hotel room that they all shared - three in each bed. They had all showered, were getting ready for bed, or were in bed talking about getting ready for the show in Vegas the next day. EE was eating a bowl of cereal with soy milk. The whole scene was relaxed, chatty, amiable, like a sleepover. It was pointed out to me that two of the band members are Jewish. "Jew manages money for rock band. There's a headline." I asked him if him being Jewish was an important thing for me to know to understand the band. He said, "No."
What is important to know is that everyone in the band is a vegan and buys most of their groceries from a worker-owned collective that operates a grocery store in San Francisco. (A worker-owned collective is just that, it's like if Safeway was owned by the employees - decisions are made by a committee and profits are returned to the employees. This particular store, Rainbow Grocery, also has programs where they fund various social and political groups that share their leftist, progressive idealism, and by selling organic produce, they are supporting organic farming.)
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Extreme Elvis are not preaching their politics and social idealism, they are just living it. Which is refreshing in San Francisco where the more radically inclined can be pretty in your face about what they believe and how YOU are responsible for the destruction of Planet Earth and the downfall of the human race - because the food you eat is loaded with chemicals and overpackaged and overpriced to make up for advertising costs or because you buy Shell gas rather than say ... hell, just because you buy gas.
Extreme Elvis is a show, and it's also a process. In much the same way Crash Worship was more than the music, but an excuse to get naked and wallow around in mud and wine. You can get snippets of live shows, T-shirts, stickers and photos through their Web site. Be the first person to be in the know.
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