Elvis isn’t as unavoidable a cultural phenomenon as he was in the 80s. People don’t see him at grocery stores, or drop him into cheesy comedies, and even Nicolas Cage doesn’t do a terrible impression of him anymore. But one iteration of his personae is still going strong: El Vez, the Mexican Elvis . In fact, at this point Mr. Vez’s career is almost as long as Big E’s–he’s been donning a jumpsuit and drawing a creepy mustache on his face with sharpie for 20 years. And as Robert Lopez he’s been playing music for 30 years; his first band the Zeros was a legendary LA punk band, who later people took to calling the Mexican Ramones for their short and sweet songwriting and the fact that they are all Mexicans. Yet El Vez never ages, in his world, on the stage, it is perennially 1968.

Seeing his act for the first time always contains the same three realizations, even for the skeptical and humorless. The first is “This is hilarious!” as the character whips through costume changes and the back-up singers crack jokes and the whole seventeen-layer irony-burrito opens up before you as he sings “In The Barrio” dead serious. The next is: “This music is awesome!” as gritty garage guitars, bombastic funky drumming and a horn section so tight even Buddy Rich would approve turn a mish-mash classic rock parodies from Elvis to Bowie to James Brown, into Vegas grind sleaze of the highest order. Finally you listen to what he’s saying, and realize that the lyrics aren’t simple puns and racial jokes. My fave EL Vez song changes the words of Viva Las Vegas to Viva La Raza (”Hooray for the Race” — famous battlecry of 70s migrant worker activists). The song, like everything he does, twists Elvis’s appropriation of the Spanish phrase to celebrate the cheese-capital of America and its stolen Spanish name into a celebration of the politics of Guevara and Chavez. It’s a neat trick which allows him to confront large groups of white and brown folks of widely divergent age groups with issues they might usually never think about.

I’ve never seen his X-mas shows, but going by the track titles of his last Holiday album (Brown Christmas, Mamacita Donde Esta Santa Claus?) I’m guessing he’s covering similarly subversive ground here. Tonight the triple-level revue is coming through the 930 Club with the excellent Tennessee surf-rock wrestlers Los Straightjackets backing him up– I expect to see a lot of aging rockabilly chicks with their kids and bald guys with black hats getting their sweat on. I talked to El Vez on his way up the rainy East Coast about Bob Dylan, punk rock and losing to Obama in the 2008 election.

BYT: You’re just leaving Atlanta huh? How did that go?
El Vez: Very good, very first show of the tour, it was a great crowd. Saturday night on a Tuesday night. We were even surprised how good it went.

BYT: You’re not traveling with Los Straightjackets are you?
EV: No we keep ‘em sep-er-a-ted! Different van, different band, they’re not supposed to even look at us until we get onstage!

BYT: Lolling. So onstage at least, they are acting as your backing band or is it two shows?
EV: It’s one show, which has El Vez and LS. They are playing my songs with me, I am singing their songs.

BYT: So when you say “their songs” do you mean their regular set or is it mostly Christmas songs?
EV: No the whole show is Christmas! They have Christmas stuff that gets El Vez-ized and my X-mas songs get Los Straightjacket-ized. We’re both out of our respective boxes at times.

BYT: You’ve done two Xmas albums?
EV: Three actually–there was one released only in London that never came out here. And the Straightjackets have a couple Christmas albums too, so it’s near and dear to both of our styles.

BYT: What’s your relationship like with traditional Christmas music? Do you love it?
EV: Well…I’m a musicologist of sorts, so everything gets absorbed, into the ipod of my brain, and so even thought it’s not my favorite I want to twist it to fit my own ends. So the end justifies the means at the end of it. I like the idea of Christmas, and Elvis loved Christmas. But me I like to mix it up because Christmas is so full of nostalgia (it’s really for kids) so I’m just providing a little match under Santa Claus. I like to mess with it, because its so full of camp value. It’s an odd phrase but I like to say I’m putting a match under Santa’s red behind.

BYT: Give em the hot-foot, yeah. Have you heard the Bob Dylan Xmas album (ed note: holy shit it is scarier than Saw II )
EV: No I haven’t I was just talking to someone about it though.

BYT: It’s wild. Cognitive dissonance out the wazoo.
EV: I hear there’s a video too? I need to hear it. When anyone’s been in the business as long as he has (and I’ve been in the business 21 years) you end up having some crazy stuff in your repertoire.

cue the crazy Bob Dylan christmas video:

BYT: Yeah, I guess it had to happen eventually. Well speaking of Elvis, do you think his public perception has changed over the years? Does he signify something different to crowds than he did 20 years ago?
EV: It’s an odd thing. Like with Michael Jackson, once you die everything changes, and then everything becomes even more golden when the actual person isn’t there to get in the way of the legend. And so as Elvis’ years go on, things change: there are times to wane and times to come back. And the enterprise will bring something new out and it’ll start over again. But he’ll always be here.

BYT: You spent 2008 touring the country playing shows to promote your run for the presidency…are you disappointed at the outcome?
EV: No, well yes. I mean no one likes a loser, but I’m going to keep on trying. I’m like the Ralph Nader of Elvis Impersonators. 2012 I’ll be running again and according to the Mayan calendar it’s the end of the world, so, vote for El Vez: What do you got to lose?

BYT: This was the first time you’ve run right?
EV: No this was my third time running already, and I’m going to keep on trying. Yeah I did it in 2000, 2004 and 2008. I can only do it every 4 years.

BYT: Uh…So…(gets jokes) Well you could do it more…
EV: It’d be cool if I could do it mid-term. (other band members crack up in the background)

BYT: Though I’m sure you would have rather won, do you think the political situation is better now? Does the Obama era have room for activism?
EV: Well when we did our first shows after he was president it was like a stone lifted off of me, since the last 8 years were so anti-Bush because I had much to rally against. It was like gee I don’t have to do these songs against Bush, I’m free to do a whole new thing. We’re in an inbetween state right now, though there’s always something to speak out about. It’s not like there’s one revolution that’s going to change everything–its a constant struggle. One guy isn’t going to make it all better, it’s up to us, to the people, to make sure that the candle of the Statue of Liberty stays lit, cuz freedom isn’t going to take care of itself.

BYT: You’ve been playing shows with the Zeros again, what’s that been like? Had you re-united before?
EV: No we just started again. We did some shows about 10 years ago, in Scandinavia, but we didn’t have the four original members. It’s going really well, we did some shows on the East Coast and we did some shows in Texas and on the West Coast. In January we’re doing a tour in Europe. In San Diego, they have this San Diego music foundation, and they presented us with a lifetime achievement award. Wayne Kramer from the MC5 presented us with the award onstage and we got to play a song with him. It was really nice to see that people appreciate us. And we’ve been playing these all-ages clubs and all these 15 year old kids know all the words. I mean these are songs that we recorded before they were even born. And all these latino kids come up to us saying “Oh you are our favorite, our whole family…” It’s just really nice that something we did as 16, 17, 18 year olds, can touch so many people.

BYT: That must feel amazing…
EV: Yeah, I mean to have something that you made as a kid 30 years ago…I mean they have us as their ringtones now!

BYT: So you went from the Mexican Ramones to the Mexican Elvis…about that choice-
EV: Well, people didn’t call us the Mexican Ramones back then, it was a label they came up with much later. While El Vez was, in my mind, more calculated. I wanted to be more Mexican than you, and at the same time more American than you, to exemplify what Mexican-American is…and so it was more of an art concept piece. But it still used the punk rock ideas, because the very first year, all my shows I did with Karaoke tapes that I bought at Graceland. And it was like me singing louder than the vocals on the tapes, so they’re going “Suspicious Minds,” and I’m going “Immigration Times!” The shows were at clubs, so it was like guerilla theater in a punk rock venue.

BYT: I guess I’m wondering if parodying this music industry giant came from some bitterness at the music business, so the the subversion-
EV: It’s homage at the same time though. It’s very yin and yang: celebrate/make-fun-of, homage/satire. It’s walking the line of both….I’m telling you something serious and I am wearing sequins and platform shoes. But the subversion part I would say gave the chance to do my own thing, to not owe the record companies anything. Because the music I’m using is just mash-ups of someone else’s work, so there was never this feeling of “Oh we gotta get signed.” Working against the system instead of within the system, we never had to please the people at BMI or where-ever. It was more free-range. Free range chicken El Vez.

BYT: Speaking of which, there’s a restaurant in Philly called El Vez. Is that ripping you off?
EV: No we have a licensing deal! We used to work together and I did some Cinco De Mayo street parties up there a couple of times. I’m not there to oversee the daily ins and outs of the new waiters and waitresses but we have a deal worked out. We’re still working on opening another one in Atlanta. It’s really nice, everyone needs a restaurant named after them. Charro has one!

BYT: What you need is to have an El Vez impersonator at each franchise.
EV: Oh, a door greeter. Hmm, I will put that into the suggestion box.

BYT: Another level of meta-commentary is always classy. Thanks again!

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