All the King's men
Being an Elvis tribute act isn't as lonesome as you might think, writes an all-shook-up Fionnuala McHugh
August is a tricky month if you're an Elvis Presley fan. Naturally, the air of gloom deepens as the anniversary of his passing, the 16th, approaches; and in the fourth decade since he was found on his bathroom floor, dead from drug abuse at the age of 42, the crowds still gather at his Graceland mansion, in Memphis, Tennessee, clutching candles for the weep-fest that is their annual vigil.
On the other hand, the spirit of Elvis clearly hasn't left the building. Whatever happened to his too, too solid flesh (and this is still open to debate in the furthest swamps of the internet), there is no shortage of individuals only too delighted to pay homage in and to his absence every year by climbing into spangled jumpsuits and - in a mournful yet upbeat sort of way - crooning into a microphone. Frankly, what better time to gather one group of people in an air-conditioned room to watch another group of people pretend to be the King than in the (hound) dog days of summer?
By happy coincidence, Tommy Ooi, former president of the Elvis Presley Fan Club (Hong Kong) and founder of the Elvis Presley Alliance of Asia, has his birthday in August, and has just turned 65. And as it was also the 11th anniversary of the alliance's founding, on August 16, 2002 - that date itself the 25th anniversary of Elvis' demise - he decided to mark both occasions with an All Asian Mega Elvis Tribute Artists Concert in the ballroom of the Novotel Century in Wan Chai. Eleven is not an especially significant figure, even in the fevered numerology of Presley-mania - although Andy Warhol did do a silk-screen painting entitled Elvis (Eleven Times) in 1962 - but Elvis' acolytes need little excuse for a party, especially if it involves major quiffs and rhinestone.
The alliance is Ooi's vision of an Asia united by love under a Presley parasol. The 2002 inauguration was a four-day event in Tokyo that included the Forever Elvis in Asia Mega Concert - at which your reporter happened to be present. Participants came from the Elvis fan clubs of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as Hong Kong and Japan. Certain moments from that August trip are still printed on the memory: the averted faces of Japanese salarymen on the subway, sharing a carriage with exuberant early and middle-era Elvises (nobody does late Elvis); the Thai Elvis, Vasu Sangsingkeo, who'd read international relations at Britain's Oxford University and was a member of Thailand's diplomatic service, belting out Suspicious Minds while attempting the splits in a jumpsuit more studded with emeralds than Bangkok's Grand Palace; the jostling at the karaoke club in the wee hours as a dozen Elvises all tried to grab the microphone (Ooi, for reasons best known to himself, sang Puff, The Magic Dragon); and, by the end, the surreal sense, while watching some of the sad, late-era videos on a loop at a mini-exhibition in Ginza (which included artefacts such as a Remington De Luxe razor, some exceedingly creased shirts and a knife and fork Elvis bought in Germany), that the King himself had become an Elvis impersonator, and not a very good one at that.
