Elvis Show 2008

The Elvis Show, which crawled back from the dead a few years ago, has now been officially "re-launched." I say officially because it sounds official. I say re-launched because it was officially a lot of work to launch it. Now that the ship has sailed, I can officially say it was a good time.

My friend Roy Wilson put the bug in my ear to do the show at Matty Ts - the last honky tonk on Long Island. It wasn't a bad idea - Matty's has a stage, although it is more like a corral, cheap beer and a the aforementioned honky tonk vibe. At last year's event the most common complaint I heard was that you couldn't see the performers, so a stage was pretty much required. You wouldn't think that a club with a stage is that hard to find on Long Island, but it is. Finding a club with a stage that would understand what the Elvis Show is all about and actually let me hold there is a whole other thing. So, Matty's was pretty much a lock from the day Roy mentioned it.

After a few rounds of the usual club owner nonsense, we were all set. I started making some calls, sending out some emails, dropping some hints. I always like to have a few new faces take part, I can always count on some of the old faces to be there and then there is always those unusual faces that pop in and out of my life. Twenty odd years down the road, getting this bunch of people together results in a very heady mix that brews more off stage than on. I have no idea (or I have forgotten) who slept with who, who slept with who's wife/husband/lover/brother/sister/mother/father, who kicked who out of which band, and so on and so forth. One of my blessings is really not giving a rat's ass about that kind of stuff in the first place. I may have found myself to be the center of some good gossip once or twice in my life, but I have no real interest in other people's lives, even the parts I'm supposed to care about which is a constant annoyance to some of my friends and family. So blind to any ill timed reunions or that I may be fanning the ashes of some long cooled romance, I went forward recruiting people for show.

In the end, it was a great night. We literally packed the club - at one point they had to stop letting people in. We raised a ton of food and a bunch of money. You can read, see and hear all about it on the MySpace page.

And next year we will do it again.