The Best 25 gigs of all Time

In an in depth look at the article ...

You just don't get it.

The only thing "in depth" [sic] about your comments is how they painfully illustrate that not everyone on this MB -- or in the "Elvis World" -- is sophisticated enough to appreciate or absorb Cohn's magnificent prose.

Perhaps you should seek out your own "music mentor."

Subservient guys like yourself, drjohncarpenter, seem to be always kneeling in veneration to the likes of Marcus, Marsh, Guralnick, and Cohn as if they were literary giants and not just skilled authors and rock journalists.

It's far more rewarding to actually listen to Elvis and think about his recordings and performances in the privacy of one's own mind.

True those writers mentioned above do have style and imagination.
Qualities you appear to sadly lack yourself.

Of course I appreciated the merit of Cohn's piece on the Elvis Concert, it was just so lazily framed! Get it?

As you failed to learn any manners I feel the level of your comprehension must be highly suspect. Thank you for displaying your quite peculiar scholarly approach.

As a well trained musician in both classical and popular music I find your discordant remarks to me unwarranted, and as a matter of fact, quite silly.

Jumping to conclusions is not the wisest route to take when addressing people you are not aquainted with. Live and learn.

(Hope there are no mistakes for your twin, spellbinder, to capitalise on!)

Having been busy exploring the pages I discover I'ts not exactly a thriving message board here, a lot of people are not contributing anymore?

Well, the faking of the article I previously mentioned aside, it's clear that Cohn is a great writer, with a brilliant style and insights uniquely his own.

How could anyone refuse these potent, sterling descriptions?

Only on 'How Great Thou Art' did he cast off a sense of creeping dread. At the final bellowed line - 'O my God, how great thou art' - his voice turned raw and harsh, and he sounded like a great wounded beast, stumbling towards oblivion.

The sacramental spirit was typical of Elvis shows in his final phase. His audience - families from grandmas to babies, bottled blondes of a certain age, working stiffs and their wives - didn't come simply to be entertained but to share in an act of communion. Richard Nixon's silent majority, they used their idol's life to channel and bear witness to their own; to relive first loves and marriages and divorces, glory days and wreckage alike.

This night on Long Island, though, he was no ruin; certainly not the zombie I'd seen in Vegas. He'd packed on major poundage, his moon face had lost all definition, and there was no mistaking the corset straining to hold in his gut, yet he seemed reborn.

Instead of the triumphalism of Gerry Marsden and the Kop End, he treats the song as a private meditation, full of pain and the yearning to believe. Though the lyrics speak of hope, Elvis turns them into a cry, as if reaching for one last sliver of light in engulfing darkness. I am alone, he seems to be saying. All of us are alone. But maybe, just maybe, we can find someone or something to cling to. In his case, it's God. But each of us, hearing him, reaches for our own salvation.

The rest of the night is a blur. Objectively, I have seen better shows - Jimi Hendrix at the Savoy, Prince at the Ritz, James Brown (more than once) at the Apollo, and Johnny Paycheck at the Acadia County Fair, to name just a few. None chilled me as profoundly as those few minutes of Elvis alone at the piano, singing a song I can't stand. If great art needs nakedness, it was the most naked performance I've ever witnessed.

If that doesn't describe Elvis and his fans in the twilight years, then nothing does.

Some of us were not THAT impressed with Cohn this time.

What's the point in the highlighting? We are adult readers are we not?

What's the point in the highlighting? We are adult readers are we not?

When one reads,............. that doesn't mean that one is actually PERCEIVING.

Cohn's descriptions might not be for everyone, but I fail to see how they wouldn't warm the heart of even the coldest fan. He clearly loved Elvis and summoned on his own writing talents to put that love across.

But I guess that the corrosive emotion of jealousy takes many forms.

It's far more rewarding to actually listen to Elvis and think about his recordings and performances in the privacy of one's own mind.

Please let us know when you give this a try, it might improve the anemic content of your posts.

I appreciated the merit of Cohn's piece on the Elvis Concert, it was just so lazily framed! Get it?

You did? None of us managed to catch the "appreciation" in pearls like "he buried his gem of a description of the Elvis Concert in excrement." Perhaps you can be less lazy in the future or, better yet, just don't post anything at all!

As a well trained musician in both classical and popular music ...

Here we go ...

(Hope there are no mistakes for your twin, spellbinder, to capitalise on!)

Ouch. You just dropped yourself down another peg, Columbo. (Unlike you, the signature at the bottom remains my sole "log-in" name, period!)

Having been busy exploring the pages I discover I'ts not exactly a thriving message board here, a lot of people are not contributing anymore?

Please feel free to join them?