Elvis may be everywhere, but tonight he's at the Oriental.
Elvis is 75 today. Er, he would be, rather, if he wasn't, like, you know, dead and stuff. Things like this tend not to escape your attention, especially when you live with an Elvis fanatic (having Elvis's image permanently etched on your flesh does qualify you as a fanatic, right?) who circles the date on her commemorative Elvis calendar each year.
This year, we're planning to mark the occasion by heading over to the Oriental Theater, where they're throwing a big old birthday bash for The King. He won't be there, obviously, seeing as how he's no longer breathing and whatnot, but the Velvet Elvis will be in the house, and that's the next best thing to seeing The King himself in the flesh, don't you know?
Whereas most Elvis impersonators simply impersonate Elvis, the Velvet Elvis channels him better than anybody we've ever seen. If you close your eyes, he is The King. Hell, keep 'em open, for that matter. Fact is, the more time he spends as the Velvet Elvis, the more and more Jonny Barber is beginning to look like The King. (It's kind of creepy, actually.)
And we're talking about The King when The King was cool, the Sun Studios-era, long before he ballooned up and started rocking leather jump suits (well, that's the portion of the show we dig the most, anyway). And Velvet's band is dead on. That's right. Dude's got a band. And they're badass. Unlike the other pretenders, he and his crew play the music. Faithfully. Don't take our word for it, though. Check it out:
The Velvet Elvis: Told you. Kind of creepy, eh?
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