Elvis Presley

Elvis Sightings Wherever CDs are Sold
April 4, 2008


Elvis Presley's A King's Ransom belongs in every CD collection in the Yukon.
He’s big, he’s bad and he’s back with a new CD. Love him or leave him, you cannot ignore him: Elvis is in the building.
A King’s Ransom is a collection of 15 original songs that speak with a powerful voice of the Yukon, love, spirituality and an occasional reference to alcohol.
At the core, this album is all about the emotion of classic rock and roll and the feelings this great music evokes.
The music on this album is a history of popular music of the late 20th century. The songs Candy and Welcome to the Yukon have a straight-ahead rock-a-billy feel. Welcome to the Yukon has the added benefit of being a primer of Yukon culture and some of its colourful characters.
God You Heard My Prayers (But You Were Drinking This Time) has a heavy blues riff that accentuates an autobiographical on-stage event that involves the longing for love and seven Spanish angels that “love only women and can never touch a man”.
The Elvis story continues with I Guess I‘d Be Naked If He Ruled In My Life, a song that documents a legal entanglement and a judge who insists he dress down for the court. “No rhinestones! How can a man shine if he can’t wear a few rhinestones baby?”
There is a surprising U2 groove in the song Double Single Hit This Time, a new wave groove in Everybody’s Memory Is Somebody s Mind and straight ahead rock and roll in the song Pink Cadillac.
“Well I’m a hunk of burnin’ love bolt of lightning coming back, sent straight from heaven in my Pink Cadillac”.
Seeking Comfort From a Can is a song of prayer from one seeking salvation from the bondage of drink: “God the demon I’ve been weaned on keeps me retching far from you.” If that is not poetry on the subject at hand then I don’t know what is.
Elvis Presley has an innate proclivity to perform, a natural in a world that resists the natural. He takes you out of your comfort zone, asking you to challenge your own perception of who you are. The quicker you get to that realization the faster you can get in on the Elvis festival of love.
That he is the legend of Elvis made flesh, placed here in the Yukon to continue the work of He before, is self-evident. With the voice, the moves and the jumpsuit, thine will be done.
A King’s Ransom is available throughout the Yukon, wherever CDs are sold and is a fine addition to any CD collection. You can check out and contact Elvis at his new website, elvis-a-presley-graceland.com.
If you haven’t seen the documentary, The Elvis Project, I would suggest you check it out. I think this film should be handed out to new émigrés to the Yukon as a way of saying, “Loosen up, we do things different up here.” With Elvis as cultural ambassador, we could do worse.
Ah, in a perfect world: well, my perfect world.

Bill Polonsky is a music programmer at CJUC 92.5 FM in Whitehorse and can be contacted at strangethingsdone@hotmail.com. Thank you very much.

- Whats Up Yukon