On the A-side, with the Mellomen group of backing singers, Elvis’s vocals ride on a guitar/drum/bass strut while telling the tale of his break-up and subsequent sadness, quickly making its point in the minute and a half it uses. The B-side runs a minute longer, bringing in The Jordanaires for the tune, which takes a turn into more country-flavored rock. Acoustic guitar jangles along while Elvis warns against messing with a U.S. male, with a few spoken asides furthering the mood. A bit of an odd pairing, but both sides are quite decent.
On their debut album, the Village People deliver what would practically be an EP at about twenty minutes of material, if not for the first side being a ~10-minute medley, flowing from “San Francisco (You’ve Got Me)” to “In Hollywood (Everybody Is A Star)”. Not quite as chorus-focused than their later big hits (at least until the end of the medley), the A-side plays up the actual instruments, with just shy of a dozen musicians performing the tight-written rhythms, with twists into big and funky grooves. The Village People themselves do little more than sing, with Felipe Rose, the Native American character, also playing bells.
While the vocals are a little too persistent for the music to launch into a really strong treatment of the central melodies for any of the songs, the arrangements are kept sharp and hooky, even if they do tend to run on into lackluster drop-offs. Significantly less campy than follow-up material would prove to be, there’s a surprisingly straight-faced quality to this first album, matching the serious expressions of the People on the cover.
Scrambled Brains 