El Vez – G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues – Review

El Vez

G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues (Big Pop)
by Nik Rainey

Twenty-five years ago, protest singer Phil Ochs stated that “If there is any hope for a revolution, it lies in Elvis Presley becoming Ché Guevara.” More recently, testy prose slinger Nik Rainey grumbled “If you wanna keep all your teeth, you’d better realize that referencing Elvis Presley has become cheesy guano.” Elvis parody/homages are not only annoyingly one-note, but they can kill – witness the recent death plunge of several parachuting E.-mitators, a tragic event that surely had on-lookers trying to stifle their giggles, secretly wishing that the dolts in Dread Zeppelin had gone with ’em. That said, there are a select few who take the still-resonant image of our fallen rock monarch and manage to wash down the parodic pill with a swig of subversion. Say hola to El Vez.

Born Robert Lopez, formerly a member of the L.A. punk band the Zeros, El Vez came into being in 1990 with an indelibly hilarious image that he calls “Elvis con salsa,” that famous pompadour combined with a pencil-thin mustache and a gold lamé jumpsuit with a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe sewn onto it, singing songs like “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Chihuahua” on albums like Graciasland. It’s an inspired joke, but El Vez sez there’s more to it than that. “Elvis is a metaphor for the American Dream,” he says, “a poor man that worked his way up to become the richest entertainer in the world. I like to compare that to the immigrants coming into America who have the same idea. El Vez is the way I can take American ideas and changing them to fit my zoot, to get across the idea that Latinos are part of American culture, too. The American Dream can be a Mexican’s dream also.”

Inspired by Ochs’ quote, El Vez’ seventh album, G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues (Big Pop) is a brilliantly funny combination of rock and revolution that can be best described as “Viva Las Vegas Meets ¡Viva Zapata!” And maybe you can throw in a little Viva (the Warhol superstar) as well, since he adds a touch of glam for spice, rewriting T. Rex (“El Groover”) and closing with a cover of Bowie’s “Rock & Roll Suicide” to boot. “In my book, Elvis was the first glitter rocker, with his gold lamé suit and his eye shadow, which made him revolutionary in that sense as well. There’s a serious message behind what I do, but it’s not heavy-handed like Rage Against the Machine or something like that. If you see the stage show, it’s kind of a mix of Public Enemy’s first tour combined with rock `n’ roll, Chavez, the Zapatistas, the Chiapas, all mixed up with a big slash of glitter ’cause, let’s be honest, just plain revolution would be boring! It’s sort of a Chicano pride thing gone militant. Everybody that goes to an El Vez show can walk away proud to be Mexican even if they’re not. It’s really something to see white college kids shouting along with `Say It Loud! I’m Brown and I’m Proud!'” What’s kept El Vez vital is just such a layering of medium, message, and affectionate mockery. “I think people are more susceptible to ideas if they’re in a lighter context – that way, I can walk the line between entertaining and soapboxing. The Elvis thing makes it easier to get in to what I’m trying to say. Maybe some of the people who hear my stuff will be inspired to go back to the sources, whether it’s pulling out their old Bowie records or dipping into what Ché had to say. If you keep your self-awareness in check and pay attention to the other stuff out there, it leads to a bigger sense of pride in yourself, pride in your fellow man and a general acceptance of all things goot.”

It’s a message – utopia with a squiggle over the “u” – that flourishes even out of context. “When I started out, I thought it was more a Southern California kind of concept, but people all over have em-braced us. I just came back from three months in Europe, and one of my proudest moments was when we played Berlin and I sang `Immigration Time,’ which is my re-write of `Suspicious Minds,’ and these Turkish kids came up to me afterwards and said, `We know what you’re singing about. We’re immigrants in this country and we’ve been through the same thing.’ It’s amazing how something like that can lose something in the translation and take on a different meaning for somebody else. It means the message is coming through.”

And El Vez shows no signs of quieting down. After their current swing through the States, it’s back to Europe with his Christmas show (Santanista?), featuring his other alter ego, angry-young-Chicano poet Rául Rául (who has been known to rant over Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts theme, “Hey, Charlie, I’m brown/ Por qué no Latinos in your stinking town?”), and a lot of carols El Vez-ized. More than just Paradise, Mayan Style or a swiveling pelvis in a sombrero, El Vez is a man with a message that even gringos can appreciate. Where does El Vez want us to be when the revolution comes? “San Diego,” he says.