Great Elvis Blog

Here's a link for a great Elvis blog, Gonna Have a Clambake.

Elvis was the most fantastic everything, of course. No one cooler, no one with better songs, which I can hear a thousand times and still enjoy. Best "comfort food" ever.

As for the song, "Clambake," that's an odd one. "Mama's little baby like clambake, clambake!" The movie has some really good parts, but I don't think it has enough "romantic payoff" in it. Meaning for me, Elvis and Shelley don't really get it on enough. There's too much pull from other forces, too much denial. I want a lot of kissing, a lot of hugging, all that.

And I believe Clambake is the one that has the song, oh, what is it? With the kids on the playground equipment? The little girl who is afraid to go down the slide? CONFIDENCE! You need C-O-N-F-I and a dence," or something like that. I hate that song. That's not one I could listen to a thousand times. And the girl really has something to be terrrrrrrrrified over, such a measley slide, too.

It's been a while since I've seen the movie, although I guess maybe it's only been a year or so. But I've seen quite a few others in the meantime and after a while they run together. Let's see, Elvis is a rich guy, an oil man's son, who wants to play poor to see if girls will love him for him. And he trades places with this poor guy who wants to be rich. Then they're at a hotel in Florida, and the guy from Great Gildersleeve is the doorman. Bill Bixby is in it, as a suave rich guy, a real lady's man, of course Elvis' rival. Elvis becomes a ski instructor. He ends up with the girl, as usual, but, as I said before, there's not enough loving throughout. In this one Shelley Fabares is very "hard to get." He has to preach to her, in song, something like, "You have everything, everything but love."

I know it's common blather to discount Elvis' movies and say they're crap. But I've never thought that. They're not Oscar-worthy, to be sure, but they're great for looking at Elvis. They're better than home movies, since he's a character. And they have great songs, again, that's a minority opinion that I hold. But I've been an Elvis lover since I was just a baby, and once it's bred into you like that, it's hard to deny.