Doppelgangers
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Not so long ago Aris de Vries sent me two books: The greatest rock & pop miscellany ever! and Is Elvis alive?.
The second book, written by Gail Brewer-Giorgio came originally with a cassette tape. That tape was not with the book, but I had bought the book long ago myself, and I although I had done the book away, I had kept the tape. So now it is complete again. It is very difficult to get rid of things!
The Is Elvis alive book is not worth reading, neither is the tape worth listening to. It might be a joke, but I think it was not meant as a joke. It is meant to make money. For people like me, who see life as a mystery, it is sometimes hard to deal with people who spread lies and non-information for money reasons. But this book is too stupid to have any effect. And the tape is stupid too: while there are a few thousand Elvis impersonators in every major American city, Gail Brewer-Giorgio hired a guy who hardly sounds like Elvis. And he has nothing to say either! I have listened to the tape a few times back then, trying to find out if it might be a joke after all, and if I missed the clues. But I don’t think so. It is all just stupid.
The other book is very good! It contains all kind of facts about records and musicians, mostly presented as lists. Like this list:
I found this article about the Doppelganger problem of Fleedwood Mac a good read too:
I like doppelganger stories. The best Doppelganger story that I know of, is the one about the guy who replaced Paul McCartney, after the real Paul McCartney died in a car accident in the late sixties. I have not written about this, but I certainly will in the near future.
Thanks to Marijn van der Waa I have heard both the complete CD’s by The Fab Four, that I mentioned on December 25th. They were even better than I expected! Both CD’s can be bought at Amazon for only 10 dollars, and that is definitely worth it.
Here is their version song of a song that I never liked at all, but in this version I can’t get enough of it. What a brilliant recycling of the Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross riff. And believe me, all The Fab Four songs are just as great!