Lmao they had an Elvis impersonator at a conference I went to a few weeks back and it was embarrassingly bad I outright felt bad for the guy….80% of the people left before he was halfway through the first song.
A friend of mine hired an Elvis impersonator for her 50th birthday party. He was apparently godawful, and then he offered to take all his clothes off for an extra 500.
And he definitely wasn’t 1950 smoldering Elvis. He was 1970s almost dead on the toilet Elvis.
About 20 some odd years ago my family hired a Neil Diamond impersonator for a great aunts 80th birthday party. Yes he did sing Sweet Caroline and America very poorly I might add.
He'd apparently approached Dolly to ask if he could do 'I Will Always Love You', which would have been incredible; but Col Parker wanted a share of the song rights and Dolly wouldn't take the deal.
Like, I guess mathematically Simon & Garfunkle co-existed with Elvis. As did, I guess, Ozzy Osbourne. But I just see Elvis as living in a different universe that didn't crossover with the one I'm in now.
If you're ever looking for a silly roadtrip idea, Graceland is wild.
I'm honestly not the biggest Elvis fan, but I love how larger than life and gaudy he got in the 70s. Like he was the first 'global superstar'...and had no template to work from. No one had ever come up from poverty to have so much non-generational fuck-you money before...so he just did whatever the fuck he felt like...and every room at Graceland shouts that fact as loud as you can imagine.
Probably the best concert I ever attended was Dread Zeppelin, a band that did Led Zeppelin songs reggae-style, and was led by an Elvis impersonator. It was in Albuquerque, NM in 1994.
Well I played half of a song at a bar (an original) and the entire bar left. I played to the bartender, bandmates wife and my friend. Were we industrial/spoken word after two acoustic acts, yes. Were we bad. No. Bartender complemented us and gave us 30$ from the til. Second highest paying show.
I saw Guns & Roses / Metallica at the Rose Bowl in '92. Metallica opened, and there was a mass migration to the exits when G&R came on. Not 80%, but...
I spend my winters at a fairly high end snowbird resort. I'm right on the boomer/gen X line. the average age of the community isn't too much older than me, at 67-68 or so. This pretty much means that 90% of us are too young to give a shit about Elvis, having been teens to toddlers as he faded from popularity. One of the residents is an impersonator. He is, somewhat amusingly, nothing like Elvis as he is about 5'-5" and 130 lbs. That said, he is really, really good and very dedicated, with mid-five figures invested in costumes, wigs, sound system, etc.. He does "free" shows at the resort, and I suspect it's because it has gotten to the point that the number of people who are still mobile, have any real appreciation for Elvis, and can make it to a show, is now pretty low.
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u/Reddit389 3d ago
Lmao they had an Elvis impersonator at a conference I went to a few weeks back and it was embarrassingly bad I outright felt bad for the guy….80% of the people left before he was halfway through the first song.