« Giant Sucking Sound, Part Deux | Main | Reckless Burning, In The Shape Of A Cross »

May 16, 2009

20th Century Pop Music Haiku Artist

My exploration of Elvis/Nixon a few missives back and the way I love to go on about it at work caused a hipster (but he's really pretty smart and not at all smug about it) cow-orker of mine to bring a CD for me to borrow: Elvis: 30 #1 Hits.

He thinks Dylan is God and we all roll our eyes when he goes on about him, but we're kinda mean people.

It's the job, the job does it do you. ANYWAY!

I decided to give the King another chance and I must stay, at least with Elvis's #1's, my Presley appreciation quotient has gone up.

But what really got me about all those songs was their absolute brevity. Most of them clock in at under two minutes, with "Hard Headed Woman" sneaking in at just under a minute fifty! Now, I'm a kid of the top-40 era when the exemplar of the pop music tune logged in about 3 minutes more or less. Compared to Elvis's work, this stuff was the long form.

And they moaned and groaned when Don McLean came out with "American Pie" ... never mind "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (which is its real title, actually).

Which explains the title of this post. Elvis sang haikus in comparison to today's stuff.

No, nothing political here. I'll be exercised about something later, promise.

Posted by The Chinuk at May 16, 2009 09:29 AM