Guess who's back, back again?

Not just Eminem, but an earlier singer-provocateur who got the
country all shook up. The other E -- Elvis.

In recent years, it seemed like the King really was dead -- no new
sightings at late-night doughnut shops, no greasy tabloid
revelations, barely a trickle of books; even daughter Lisa Marie, the
former Mrs. Michael Jackson, who seemed to have inherited her daddy's
freakazoid gene, hasn't been in the gossip columns lately. With the
25th anniversary of his death coming up Aug. 16, Elvis had never been
deader.

Suddenly, with the unexpected bang of a pistol shooting out a TV set,
Elvis is back on top, No. 1 in surprising new ways.

The No. 1 album for the last four weeks, "The Eminem Show," finds the
rapper paying backhanded tribute to his roots, defiantly bragging
that he's getting rich off music forms pioneered by black people,
just as Elvis did in the mid 1950s.

On the first single, "Without Me," which seems to be spilling out of
every other car radio at the moment, Eminem says, "Though I'm not the
first king of controversy/ I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley/
To do black music so selfishly/ And use it to get myself wealthy."

The No. 1 song on the British charts is a techno remix of a 1968
Elvis obscurity, "A Little Less Conversation," amped up to 21st
century standards by Dutch DJ Tom Holkenborg, who goes by the name
Junkie XL. (The Elvis estate wouldn't let "Junkie" appear on the
label of an Elvis song -- imagine that -- so it's credited to JXL.)

"A little less conversation, a little more action, please," Elvis
sings on the oldie, which was also on the soundtrack of the
movie "Ocean's Eleven."

The JXL single was released here Tuesday, and when rock station 99X
started playing it, it was flooded with favorable phone calls and e-
mails from all ages, says program director Leslie Fram.

"It's pretty bizarre," Fram says of the heavy listener feedback to a
station that has never had an Elvis tune in rotation, and normally
leans more to Papa Roach and Incubus.

The song is saturating England, spilling out the open doors of
Manchester nightclubs, booming in the HMV Music shop in Leeds and all
over BBC Radio One.

The remix was commissioned for a Nike TV commercial that has run
during the World Cup soccer tournament -- sporadically in the United
States, more heavily in Europe. The ad theme got people so excited,
it was released as a single, says Todd Morgan, director of media for
Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Meanwhile, in movie theaters, the Disney animated feature "Lilo &
Stitch" is about a little girl obsessed with old Elvis records; six
of his songs, including "Blue Hawaii" and "Suspicious Minds," are
inserted into the movie. "Lilo" was in a virtual dead heat for No. 1
at the box office last weekend with Steven Spielberg's "Minority
Report," taking in $35.3 million.

"I thought it would be fun to put the Elvis songs in for the grown-
ups," says "Lilo" co-director Chris Sanders. "But in the screenings,
all the kids were just loving it, and asking their parents about
Elvis."

Which, of course, is sweet music to Elvis Presley Enterprises. The
keepers of the Graceland flame had planned other hoopla to tie in to
the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death -- mainly a four-CD set released
Tuesday, "Elvis: Today, Tomorrow & Forever," and a new Web site (www

.elvisnumberones.com to promote a collection of No. 1 hits due out in
the fall.

"It's a wonderful surprise," says estate spokesman Morgan. "It's just
coincidental these happen to be such high-profile projects."

(There's even the umpteenth new book, "The Tao of Elvis" by David
Rosen, a Jungian analyst, which matches quotes from Eastern
philosophers with the wisdom of the former truck driver from Tupelo,
Miss. If it's meant as a joke, it's not very funny, and if it's meant
to be serious, it's a joke.)

The consensus among Elvis scholars is that he was manipulated most of
his life, mainly by his manager, Col. Tom Parker, sometimes by his
label, RCA, and in death, by his estate. (Eminem, no matter what you
think of him, is far more in control of his image than Elvis ever
was.)

What happens in August when the throngs descend on Memphis will be
somewhat planned and channeled, but what's happening now is more the
zeitgeist taking care of business, a harmonic convergence exposing
Elvis not to the same old fans, but to new generations who listen to
99X and Eminem and go to Disney movies.

Elvis is back in the building.
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