They Said You was High Class

Max likes to dance. What that means is, we go into his room, put Max on my shoulders, pop in some Elvis (how he knows who Elvis is is a much longer post, fine by me, and mostly Kelli's fault) and jump around. Used to be, you could throw in anything: Elvis, Talking Heads, James Brown, Beck was ok for awhile, and Max would be fine up there, bouncing around. Slowly, he became more discerning, until we got it down to a couple of songs: Jonathan Richman's all-time ass-kicker, "Roadrunner" and the Elvis (coughcoughBigMommaThortoncoughcough) classic. The other day, Max and I had this amazing conversation in front of the boom box. I was about to put in Disc 1 of an Elvis box set. Disc one is mostly Sun Studio recordings, early stuff, before evil Colonel Parker came on the scene and E went all poppy. Disc 1 is fairly raw stuff.

I'm putting the disc in and Max pipes up, "Different."

"What, Max?"

"Different. Disc. Elvis."

"You want me to put in a different Elvis disc?"

"Different. Elvis. Disc." Emphatically, he says, "Hound Dog."

Stunned, I say, "Let me get this straight." I look him in the eye and ask, "You want me to put in a different Elvis disc, the one with "Hound Dog" on it?"

"NnnnnnnnNNnnnn," says Max.

Just so we're clear this means the boy knows which disc (they're different colors and have different pictures of Elvis on them) has Hound Dog on it. And he knew I was putting in the wrong disc. Next week, it's going to be: "Father, if you please, Pixies, Surfer Rosa, track 6, and make it snappy."