Mojo Nixon, "Elvis Is Everywhere" (1987)

(listen)

A lot of things about what is likely Mojo Nixon's best known song have dated badly, not least the main thrust, the tired old literal deification of Elvis Presley, with its unpleasant echoes of the hobbyhorse mythmaking of the '80s. It's a novelty song, and sounding infinitely smaller a year or two past their era is a problem that novelty songs have. I knew someone who shared a place with Mojo Nixon for awhile and he said what you see (hear) is what you get, an entirely unfiltered guy who sat on the couch and played a guitar and held court, day and night, 24/7. Any time my pal came home, he'd find it again. Mojo Nixon. Carrying on. I've only seen him once, but yeah, it was pretty much this, raving around a lot of different songs, including this one, of course. I have always connected with the whole shtick somehow, it just makes me laugh. He's got a kind of Don Rickles/ Rodney Dangerfield type of energy that I love, the comic who throws everything he's got into it until you can feel the figurative veins throbbing in the brow. And in this way he gets laughs. Example: After he blows it (nowadays—it used to be one of the reliable laugh lines) with an unfortunate Michael J. Fox dig, this is where he goes: "And Elvis is in Joan Rivers but he's trying to get out, man. He's trying to get out! Listen up Joanie baby"—and into the chorus. I know it's risky to make this kind of assertion, but—that's funny! It's really funny! In the 25 years since this song came out Joan Rivers herself has made it better and better.