A neo-contemporary social and political anaysis of the Red Elvises phenomenon as it pertains to an aging baby boomer, with
apologies to the late Director
By John Saranto, M.D.
----------I've got a big old flatbed; it's red, it's got a license plate that says "RD ELVIS", and it wasn't until I was driving it home from the
band's most recent show at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz that I started thinking about something I used to worry about a lot when
I was a kid and arrived at a disturbing realization: THE MAN IN THE EVENING GOWN WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!!!
How I got there is a bit convoluted, the story started several decades ago. I'll try to explain...
-----Back at Moe's, I'd handed the license plate to Oleg, who showed it to the rest of the band. They all seemed to like it and Avi
and Zhenya took a look at the truck during intermission (Avi told me he knows someone who went and painted "Red Elvises"
on the underside of his airplane's wing, now THAT'S a fan). Later they all autographed the front plate, thereby instantaneously
doubling the value of the truck.
-----The truck's a 1955 Chevy 1-1/4 ton flatbed, a fine example of the so-called 'first edition' transitional body style which
appeared on Chevy pickups and heavy duty vehicles for a short time in 1954 and 1955. It represents the rapid evolution which
characterized American truck design in the mid-20th century. I bought it from a retired farmer in Gilroy named Arnoldo not
long after the first time I saw the Red Elvises play Moe's. It was venerable and dignified, like I want to be someday when I,
too, reach middle age (hey wait, I already did!).
It looked like it had a lot of work-life left in it and was very, very red. While
taking it for a test spin we passed a car playing an early Elvis Presley tune loud with the windows down; Arnoldo reminisced on
how popular Elvis was becoming when he immigrated from Mexico in the mid-1950's. Needless to say I bought the truck. It
needed a name and somehow all of the above loosely associated imagery led me to name it 'the Red Elvis' by the time I went
to register it, hence the plate (I'd studied similar associative thought processes in patients when I was a medical student rotating
on a psychiatry service).
-----Like Arnoldo, I have memories of Elvis in the 50's. My brother Chris had an almost-new '56 Chevy Bel-Aire and I remember
sitting on the front seat at the drive-in burger stand with one of those rickety trays that the carhop attached to the window,
loaded with burger, fries, and milk shake under my chin. Somebody with a convertible would have their radio tuned to KFWB,
playing the latest Elvis tune in the LA sunshine. It was great, being a kid in the United States in the 50's and early 60's, except
there was this one catch, something they called the Red Menace...
-----CNN's documentary on the Cold War was forty years in the future and it's just as good, because nowadays it's terrifying to
find out that we REALLY WERE as close to becoming radioactive toast as we were led to believe back then. The people
whose job it was to propagandize us Americans decided it was important that we fear and dislike the bad guys on the other
side of the Iron Curtain lest we become complacent and therefore vulnerable to their threat, whatever that might have been.
They did their job well, so even us kids knew exactly who the bad guys were and where they came from. They were the
Commies. They came from Russia. Red was their favorite color. Therefore, Russians were bad guys and red was a bad color
(being pink wasn't so good, either). We knew we just had to be better than them because we had washing machines in every
home, Chevrolets with radios, and rock 'n roll music, as much as you wanted to hear whenever you wanted to hear it. Maybe
someday they'd get around to having appliances and cars like us but they'd never have Elvis Presley or Dick Dale or Chuck
Berry - they couldn't do rock and roll 'cause they didn't speak English and even if they could they didn't have electric guitars to
play it on, just those funny looking triangular things they called balalaikas. One thing we all knew about Russia was there was
this scary place called Siberia...
-----The Cold War made people get all weird and paranoid. I remember the nighborhood's first Nuclear Family. They had a big
bulge in their front lawn with air vents sticking up out of the ground; having one's very own bomb shelter was a kind of
suburban status symbol back then. I remember Vice President (!) Richard M. Nixon bragging about the superiority of
American home appliances to Premier Nikita Khruschev at some international trade expo even as our two countries were
battling to gain superiority over each other by building the biggest, the nastiest, and the most atomic bombs (in the news photos
Khruschev looks unconvinced, even cocky as Dick poses over a Maytag like a game-show spokesmodel. The Russians had
the audacity to threaten to bury us - economically, no less - in spite of our Maytags). I watched a televised anti-communism
rally where Pat Boone (anybody remember "Love Letters in the Sand"?) addressed the audience and said he'd rather see his
family lined up and shot than see them live in a communist dictatorship - I'm not kidding, the guy was serious! What got me
paranoid and disturbed me the most was J. Edgar Hoover's anti-communist polemic, "Masters of Deceit". It made me realize
how tricky they were - they could gain your confidence, then get you thinking just like they did and doing just what they
wanted you to do by cleverly exerting mind control IF you let yourself get complacent, for even a minute. Sure, "Dr.
Strangelove" was hilarious but we didn't let ourselves laugh as hard as we might have when Slim Pickens rode the Big One
down to Armageddon because, in spite of knowing we were the good guys, deep down inside we knew that someday the
Russians really were coming and that was how it was going to end, no matter what. Life was good at the moment, but the
future was hopeless.
-----Of course, things lightened up after the Berlin Wall came down. We let ourselves relax and, I'm afraid, get a little complacent
like J. Edgar warned us not to. Then something started happening about the time we started letting our guard down. Some guys
from, of all places, Siberia taught themselves to play electric guitars, mastered the English language (well, sort of), and started
writing rock and roll as if they'd invented it (that's another thing we were taught - Russians would have you believe they
invented EVERYTHING). They played surf music like Dick Dale, rocked like Elvis, even did country and western and, gag
me with a spoon, disco. Nobody caught on to what was happening because entranced audiences were having too much fun
dancing and thinking everything was great as they surrendered themselves to catchy beats and clever lyrics (Oleg's conspicuous
red balalaika might've been a tip-off, if anyone had kept their wits about them). The Russians even gained the
collaboration of a nice Jewish boy from Texas whose family allowed him to play drums instead of becoming a doctor or lawyer
- lucky for us all - and before we knew it the name of the King himself was inextricably linked to THE COLOR RED (Igor
even named one of his favorite body parts after Elvis!)
-----We baby boomers stood by, were even willing participants as the Russians commandeered our very culture and began to
exert mind-, then economic control over us all. Their music now insidiously permeates nightclubs, homes, and (I confess)
operating rooms across America. They make people dance uncontrollaby and think they're having a good time as they
unwittingly surrender their good US dollars in exchange for bowling shirts, souvenier condoms, and CDs (which they in turn
obsessively play to any and all who may innocently listen and in so doing run the risk of becoming - RED). A reliable witness
even told me that Red Elvises sometimes depart after shows in the willing and unchaperoned company of our most nubile
American females (this last from a buddy, Mike, who recently got out of the Navy. He may in fact not be the most reliable of
witnesses. He was tossing brewskis with the band members after a recent show when he said he saw this happen. I know he
was trying to keep up with the Russians like a proud American sailor should, but I'm willing to bet Oksana Baiul, the Ukranian
figure skater, could drink him under the table from the time she was fifteen).
-----More than four decades have passed since those innocent days under the warm LA sun, when rock and roll was still an
American institution. Richard Nixon continued posing throughout his political career until he became a national joke. Nobody
under the age of 45 remembers Khruschev, Pat Boone came out with a heavy metal album (!) and, whether it's true or not, J.
Edgar Hoover lives on in our collective memory as the FBI's first and foremost cross-dresser. I recently forked over my hard
earned money for "Shake Your Pelvis" and, God help me, I'm LOVING that disco beat!!!
-----That guy in the evening dress (and probably a fetching pair of CFM pumps) who did his best to warn us was right all along, but
the Russians are here anyway. I know it's probably the mind-control thing, but at long last it feels like there really IS hope for
the future.
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