Death ain't what it used to be. Time was you gamely popped your clogs and looked forward to some tasteful floral tributes and a nice chunk of marble with your name on it. Then technology came along and chewed up the rule book. At least it did if you happened to be a decomposing rock 'n' roll icon.
Consider John Lennon, 15 years deceased when his surviving band mates, keen to drum up some publicity for their moribund Anthology scam, stumbled upon old tapes of Lennon crooning in the bath. Before you could say "crass marketing opportunity", Paul McCartney and producer Jeff Lynne had performed a spot of studio necromancy and Lennon was fronting Free as a Bird, a ghoulish "new" Beatles song. Ten zillion Fabs fanatics dutifully sent the track to number one and Macca's pension fund bloated exponentially.
At least the remaining Beatles went to the trouble of issuing previously unheard material. Fat Boy Slim, no stranger to mangling other folks' tunes, didn't even take the time to forage through Jim Morrison's out-takes pile before disinterring the Doors singer for last year's Bird of Prey single. Maybe he should have been more diligent. The release stiffed, sounding a death knell for the ensuing Between the Gutter and the Stars album. Publicity-craving Slim was reduced to doing Sunday supplement features about life with celebrity missus Zoe Ball and the joys of nappy-changing.
Somewhere, the Lizard King - who undergoes an umpteenth resurrection when the LA Doors tribute group visits Dublin next week - must be smiling.
It's still a matter of debate whether Elvis Presley really croaked on that toilet bowl 24 years ago or is currently flipping burgers in a Mullingar chip shop. In fact, these lingering question marks over his corporeal status needn't detain us. Presley's sequin-studded legacy has acquired a mythic resonance. He is a post-modern deity, Jesus with a quiff.
While nobody has yet mustered the gall to append Elvis's lip-curled bassoon to a jungle-lite beat (actually, German techno terrorist Alec Empire had a go, but his irony-laden juxtaposition of snarling bass lines and twisted reverence is much too clever and subversive for a throwaway article such as this), the next best thing touches down in Dublin tonight. Elvis - The Way It Was sees a live orchestra playing along to footage of the King belting out his best-loved show-stoppers. Artistic necrophilia or uplifting hokum? It depends on whether you regard Elvis-worship as benign nostalgia or kitsch idolatry.
For sheer inventiveness, it's hard not to admire Moby, the diminutive New York electronica pioneer who in 1999 pulled his career out of the bargain bin by issuing a record crammed with songs by deceased blues singers. Having gleefully frightened away his modest fan base with an axe-grinding pseudo-metal album, Moby parachuted into the mainstream touting a rifled collection of 1920s Deep South campfire dirges. In the weeks before Play's release, Moby cheerfully enthused to anybody who would listen (not an awful lot of people at that juncture) about the new genre he had invented.
Techno-blues-gospel? Chuckle chuckle, wheezed the critics. Who was going to swallow this? A compilation of antediluvian Mississippi Delta laments garnished with low-tempo dance beats? What next? The Prodigy remixing Mise ╔ire? Moby grinned ruefully and promptly sold four million albums.
Rather more ghastly was the 1995 attempt by the surviving members of Queen to cash in on Freddie Mercury's posthumous elevation from debauched cabaret cheerleader to iconic showman.
With his next perm imminent and the price of hair extensions sky-rocketing, shaggy-mopped guitarist Brian May locked himself away with reams of unfinished Mercury vocals (many delivered in a sickly mutter from his deathbed) and knocked out an unlikely "comeback" project. Made in Heaven galloped up the charts, permanently banishing May's bad hair woes.
Scarier still was a stunt pulled by Natalie Cole several years previously. You probably don't remember Natalie. In her late 1980s heyday she carved a passable career warbling in Whitney Houston's jet stream. Her bubbly, large-lung ballads dated faster than platform trainers, however. Desperate for one final twirl in the limelight, Natalie turned to her dad for help. Dad was crooner Nat King Cole, several decades dead. Huh, thought Natalie. As if that's going to be a problem. Just dig up one of his old hits and let me dribble over the top. Copies of Unforgettable are today coveted by Satan-worshippers and have been known to cause household pets to gnaw their own limbs off . . .
The surprising thing is that more deceased stars haven't been pressed into service by idea-starved studio boffins. Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain, the tragic frontmen of Joy Division and Nirvana, are prime candidates. It's seven years since Cobain's suicide and Nirvana tribute bands such as the The Australian Nirvana (frequent visitors to these shores) have proliferated. Expect a bone-quaking Smells Like Teen Spirit remix any month now.
Even more terrifying is the prospect of today's pop luminaries staging posthumous comebacks. An eternity of Robbie Williams singles? Ronan Keating serenading us from beyond the grave? Now that really would be a fate worse than death.
Elvis - The Way It Was is at the Olympia tonight. The LA Doors play the Olympia next Saturday