Smells Like Teen Spirit

In 1973, my parents were going out one night. They had gotten the usual babysitter. She was a teenage girl from down the street. We lived in Hampton, Virginia at the time. The folks were going out to see a movie, maybe M*A*S*H or the Exorcist or the Godfather.

The babysitter arrived as usual and my brother and I were eating TV diners. This was a big thing back then. A complete diner in a foil tray that you just pop out of a box and into the oven. It always had one corner covered in foil that the veggies were under and it had chocolate pudding in the middle top. Potato something or other was on the top right and the main dish was something like Salisbury steak (hamburger in gravy). The pudding usually was pretty nasty, baked hard on top. And who eats veggies as a kid when the babysitter is over? Peas and carrots, yuck. (For the record none of my kids have ever had a TV diner)

The after diner activity was typically some sort of TV. And TV back then was very different then it is today. You had 4 stations to choose from, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. That's it buddy! Well actually you could get a couple of more maybe if you put the TV on the UHF setting and then turn the outer dial in a hunt for a station in the snow. These stations were important for Star Trek reruns. On top of this limited selection there was no remote either, you had a dial with 2 - 13 on it and you got up and dialed in your stations! A 100 stations with nothing on was yet to come.

So prime time TV was a big deal, 3 stations effectively to chose from. PBS was only good for the Electric Company and that wasn't prime time that I can remember. So this particular night the babysitter is excited because Elvis is going to be on TV tonight. It was to be live via satellite from Hawaii, wow! Here we are 15 years past the king's prime, 5 years past the comeback special and yet Elvis commands 1/3 of the nation's TV watching at prime time. I was 9, my brother 11 and we watched the king of rock and roll come out. He had the white full body suit with cape. Black hair and sideburns. We knew about Elvis, who didn't. Everyone knew Hound Dog. Me and my brother used to sing that song and do the Elvis. Anyway, we watched Elvis from Hawaii. We saw the ladies oo and aa just like our babysitter. And we watched American lore and legend live via satellite.

I wonder why we knew so much about Elvis then. Our parents did get into Elvis when they were teenagers in the 50s but they weren't Elvis fanatics now. Our family didn't even own any Elvis records. I think its because Elvis as an icon touched the entire country at a crossroads of ages. He was from poor southern roots, Mississippi, with a mix of southern gospel, Robert Johnson and pure energy of youth. He cut across white and black but he was white. Something Ray Charles and Chuck Berry could not be. And most of all he flaunted it. His pelvis spoke volumes and brought out the teenage lust, angst, rebellion and freedom. And Elvis single handedly put it on the map. It pails to us now, all these years later with a totally different perspective of shock. And Elvis' bad demise and subsequent mockery doesn't help. But in the day he was the king of rock and roll and you could feel it when you watched.

John Lennon said there would have been no Beatles without Elvis Presley. Bono was changed by watching Elvis' '68 comeback special at the age of 8. Endless musicians who transformed the 50s rock to today's music talk of their first record being an Elvis record. And those that followed were influenced by those influenced by Elvis.

I was born in 1964... technically a baby boomer by the last year and a gen x by the first year. Born way after Elvis' heyday, heck born after JFK went down and during the year the Beatles arrived. So a tweener I suppose. I own only one Elvis record, his Christmas record that is part of the Christmas album collection I get out once a year. My generation ranges across the rock of the late sixties to the hard rock 70s and was part of the launch of MTV (graduated high school in 82) and into the 90s.

But I know Elvis and he is the king of rock and roll forever. "You ain't nothing but a hound dog, rockin' all the time...."