How Not to Miss Red Elvises
By Kayt

How Not to Miss Red Elvises

So how many of us are missing Red Elvises this summer? Missing seeing them play their beautiful and fun-filled music, missing talking to them, missing dancing in front of the stage or under the stars or in dark beer-smelling bars across America? They’ve been sharing their talents with Russia and that’s wonderful…for the wild and crazy Russian fans, and they’ve been on vacation, which is wonderful too…for the guys’ sanity and relaxation. But what about us, here in America, who miss them? We just have to come up with new and creative ways to cope.

So, with that in mind, let’s just tell ourselves we don’t miss them. Nope, not a bit. No heavy sighs when we open our closets to find something to wear and those red party clothes peek out and whisper “When? When will you wear us again while dancing to 'I Wanna See You Belly Dance?'"No quiet pangs of longing when we see that pizza commercial on TV and hear the familiar strains of Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” that sounds so much like a certain Red Elvises song. And absolutely no disappointment when we go out and see some other entertainment and it just doesn’t have that Red Elvises charm.

Not working for you, huh? I didn’t think so. I actually went to the Sawdust Festival this year, mainly to find one of the craftspeople and order a jewelry box I wanted, since there really was little other reason to go. I found myself glancing up at the main entertainment deck and it seemed weird not to see Our Favorite Band up there setting up. So going to places where they’ve played before when they’re not playing doesn’t help a bit with the “trying not to miss them” thing. Not that you can’t enjoy those places, but it can seem odd to be there without Our Favorite Band there too.

We can go one of two ways with this. We can either try to push thoughts of Red Elvises from our minds until we next hear of tour dates near us, or dive head first into things that make us think of them in an effort to not miss their physical presence quite so much. Whichever plan works best for you would depend on your own personal coping level, I suppose. Here are some ideas:

1. Get totally involved in your work. In the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of work crises to take care of, very important things that went awry that I had to handle, so that did help a little since I had to focus most of my remaining brain cells on those things. (They turned out okay, thanks). But what if you have no crises or anything very important to do, then what? I hardly think concentrating hard on stringing paper clips together would help, at least not for very long, unless you’re an extremely focused and not easily bored individual. You’d have to be pretty obsessed with paper clips, actually, to push all thoughts of Red Elvises out of your mind that way.

2. Get very obsessed with a computer game, redecorating your room/house/apartment, shopping for (nice) shoes, learning to cook exotic dishes or anything else that can occupy large chunks of your time without hurting any other aspect of your life too much. I like "The Sims," by Maxis, a game in which you can create little simulated people, build and decorate houses for them and tell them when to eat, sleep and kiss their neighbors. It’s quite addictive and, although I haven’t actually tried this, you can even create three guys named Oleg, Igor and Zhenya (who won’t really look like them) and give them musical instruments to play. Be really generous and give them a big stereo and a swimming pool too, and then create yourself so you can go over and visit them. You can send them Downtown to shop for candy, teddy bears, swimsuits and pajamas and even throw a party if you have the right expansion packs for the game. Parties, redecorating and shopping in real life as opposed to a computer game can all be expensive ventures though, so maybe you should try just inviting a few friends over for pizza and beer, unless you want to become a computer nerd like me.

3. Immersing yourself in Red-ness so you feel like they’re still close by is maybe a happier way to go. You can:

a.Pull out all your Red Elvises CDs and listen to them, in order or randomly, until you know all the words, English and Russian. Refuse to listen to anything else until you see the band again.

b. Look at pictures of them every day. If you haven’t taken any pictures of them yourself there’s always the Red Pages – go through all the old archived issues, there are pictures in every issue. Going back to the shopping angle above, if you can spare the bucks, go pick out a camera to use at upcoming shows so that the next time a long dry spell comes along you’ll have pictures to look back at and remember the fun you had. Or you could just get one of the disposable cameras, those work well too.

c. Watch videos of them. If you don’t have any videos, beg or borrow the money to order “Red Elvises: Live on the Pacific Ocean” from redelvises.com. It’s quite a show! And no, I’m not going to suggest begging or borrowing enough money to go buy a video camera to use at upcoming shows -- those things are expensive! But if a very rich and very distant relative happens to pass on and leave you a large enough amount of money, then you can occupy some time with shopping for a kick-ass camera, or maybe even some plane tickets to go to a distant show.

d. Think of them and smile mysteriously. This will often cause people around you to ask you what you’re smiling or thinking about, and then you can talk to them about your favorite band. You may even convince someone to listen to their music or go to one of their future shows and then you’ll have someone who may also miss them with you in the future and therefore understand your pain. Well, friendships have been built on less, I’m sure.

e. Attempt to learn Russian, or read everything you can find about Russia. If you’re like me, every time you hear anything about Russians you think of Red Elvises anyway, so you could think of them and educate yourself at the same time!

The one thing that won’t help at all with not missing Red Elvises is whining about it. Go ahead, try it… stamp your foot, wave your fists in the air and whine, “They don’t play here enough! It’s just not fair!” Do it again. And again. Did that help? No, of course not. Not only are no more tour dates in your area magically popping onto the schedule, you are now feeling even more out of sorts, like a whiny brat, and that doesn’t do anyone any good. Does it sound like I speak from personal experience? Ooh, I’ll never tell! So anyway, I don’t advise whining; you should listen to some music and dance around your house or apartment instead. It obviously won’t make tour dates magically appear but music and dancing almost always makes you feel better about things, it’s sort of like exercising without forcing yourself to do something boring.

Is it possible NOT to miss Red Elvises after you’ve seen them a few times? Well, I suppose it is for some people, but for the devoted loyal fans who know and love them and have seen them as much as possible, it’s not so easy. We can get involved in other things, live our lives, keep listening to their music and remember all the good times, but the thought keeps coming back “When will Red Elvises play here again?!” The only cure really is when we see more tour dates posted for our areas -- that’s when we can stop missing these guys and start looking happily toward seeing them again!