Elvis's Legacy Will Last Forever

Elvis Presley’s Legacy Will Last Forever! “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” Famously quoted by John Lennon, talk about high praise, by one of rock n rolls legend praising, “The King.” Elvis will forever be linked to the foundations of rock and roll, combining black R & B, with gospel, soul, and country folk blues, Elvis is one of the pioneers in modern music and his platinum selling albums might hold records for as long as there are statisticians. The 1950’s was the beginning of a musical revolution and Elvis was at the epicenter, one could argue that the 50’s was the greatest decade of music in the 20th century with artists like Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and Little Richard and that is just with Rock and Roll, when you consider all of the monumental jazz artists, like Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk, and Louis Armstrong, the fifties are solid. Everyone has an Elvis story, whether you met him sometime or where you were when he died he had a profound impact on your life. With me, Elvis is linked to my grandmother and I cannot think about Elvis without thinking fond memories of my dear grandmother who would play Elvis tapes and we would sing along with the records and she would coach me on how to dance, I probably was 6, but the memories stand out, I remember my grandmother’s older sister telling me a story of when Elvis came to Little Rock, and she met him and shock his hand and she said she was never going to wash her hand again and that stands out in my mind. For one man to have so much influence and power it truly is mind boggling, Elvis had so much power he brought a weapon in to the White House when he met Nixon, only Elvis could have done that. Back in the mid 90’s my grandparents took me to Memphis for the first time to see the Titanic exhibit and to go to Grace Land, it was one of the best experiences of my childhood it stands out in my mind as an epic adventure, and we all went to the Memphis Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. When we entered there was this old black man wearing a cape and I noticed that he had two much younger white women with him, it turned out that this man was none other than Ike Turner, I met Ike Turner, shook his hand got my picture taken with him and made the Memphis News because there was a news crew from a local station. Memphis just has so much American history both good and bad intertwined you can feel the vibe, an aura of the city, like it is alive, within a place like Memphis Elvis lives and he will continue to live for as long as Memphis is city, which possibly could exist for thousands of years, considering how old the original Memphis is in Egypt. Elvis could be the Ramses of New Memphis and the King’s legacy will live on in the embodiment of the cities living spirit. Imagine Ramses with Memphis, Egypt, that is what Elvis is to Memphis, Tennessee! KG

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Watch IT Today!

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, is one of my all time favorite movies! If you have not seen Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas you need to see it today, download it off the web or go rent a VHS or something but you have to see it today. It is about a reporter and his lawyer who go on a drug bender in Las Vegas and the movie is just incredibly awesome, it stars Johnny Depp as the reporter and Benicio Del Toro, as his lawyer, it was released in 1998 and to me is both actors best movie or my favorite movie of both actors. Each time I watch the movie I catch something that I did not notice before or a scene that I watch takes on a different meaning than it did five years ago when I watched it. I saw my VHS copy today and popped it into my VCR, which has gone the way of the Dinosaur, but none the less I have all these movies on VHS why buy them on Blu Ray until the Video tape unravels, besides Blu Ray High Definition literally hurts my eyes with its pure clarity, but any way the movie has started to evolve in my mind as I grow older and really grasp what is being described and the scene that grabbed my attention today is when the reporter realizes that he is in Las Vegas to write a story and he cannot do LSD all night with his lawyer, so after smoking out of a light bulb and meditating he sits down at his typewriter and writes about San Francisco in 1965 during “The Great Acid Wave” and the dance club called The Matrix and being a “Street Freak” he was right in the epicenter of the counter culture movement. He scores some LSD and is in the bathroom when he spills half of it on his shirt at the same time a young hippie comes, in who you might recognize from a popular band, he asks, “What’s the trouble”? The reporter informs the man that he has spilt LSD on his shirt and the hippie starts to lick it off of his shirt when a business man in a suit walks in shocked to see this occurring. The reporter recalls,”With a bit of luck his life was ruined forever.” The reporter starts to have “strange memories” pondering to himself has it been 5 years already since the “peak that will never come again, San Francisco in the middle 60’s was a very special place to be a part of…” and “ no explanation can….touch that sense of knowing that you were alive, in that corner of time in the world.” The reporter steps away from his typewriter and opens the curtains and stares out the window, “There was a universal sense that what we were doing was right, that we were winning, that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of all evil…We had all the momentum, we were riding the crest of a high beautiful wave, so now less than five years later you can go on top of a hill in Las Vegas and look west and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high water mark that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” This scene is so captivating because it made me start to ponder my life and what should I be doing with the little time I have on this planet to be alive. The reporter is dead now but he lived during the most radical time of change in American history, “..in that corner of time in the world.” He left his fingerprint on the world, his stake in the ground that said, “I was here.” Even if all he did was get high and write about it, that is what he did and his words will live on forever, because he is linked to the time in which he lived. So my question is what will I be linked to, what will I do to be remembered, because it is not about money my friend, a rich man in Manhattan is made of flesh and bone just the same as the homeless man pissing himself right now on Mission Street in San Francisco and death for both of them is certain, you cannot take your gold with you. What do you want to work for? What do you want to live for? How do you want to be remembered? What are you going to do to achieve your goals? I will tell you this you cannot fear anything, fear of failure or fear of humiliation, because in the end it does not matter. Life is always on the edge of death, you cannot fear it, you cannot escape, you must embrace it and run with it and live life with love in your heart and a determination to make something of yourself and leave the world a better place, or at least a different place, make future generations envious of the corner of time in the world where you are living today, and in their envy they will be inspired to do the same.