In order to outdo yesterday’s silly Elvis, we really must go up a quantum level. And that means we must move onto Majo Nixon. (H/T to James Fillmore for the reminder!) In 1987, Nixon released an album with Skid Roper, Bo-Day-Shus!!! And on that album was the first Mojo Nixon song I’d ever heard, “Elvis Is Everywhere.” I didn’t really discover him as an artist until 1990, Otis.
Just to be clear, the song is a celebration of Elvis. It also makes good natured fun of the cult of Elvis, but I’m sure that Mojo Nixon is, like all right thinking people, also a member of that. And the song also makes fun of Michael J Fox, although I think the actual target is the stuffy Alex P Keaton. The best line in the song is, “Elvis is in Joan Rivers, but he’s trying to get out, man!”
In 1987, Michael J. Fox had only done “Family Ties” and the hilarious, but kinda yuppie-worshipping movie, “Back To The Future.” He was sorta the face of 80’s greed is good. Later he was in a lot of comedy movies that punctured the idea of greed being good. I sorta have a warm place in my heart for those movies; they were like 40’s product films, cleverly-written. Like Andrew Bergman’s stuff, or Preston Sturges, the kind of thing you don’t see anymore.
And of course the deeply harrowing “Casualties Of War.” Everyone ignored it because “Platoon” made waves and Kubrick had his say, yet “Casualties” is the most intelligent, unnerving Vietnam movie. Coppola created stunning multimedia art with “Apocalypse Now” but “Casualties” is the more grownup film. Atrocities happen in war, and the whistleblower who calls them out is persecuted, ignored, and haunted for the rest of his life.
Also: “Elvis needs boats.”