King Of The Neon Jungle

A new CD from the Czech Republic arrived earlier this week. It’s another one in Memory’s ‘audience recording series’, this time we get the Las Vegas show from September 3, 1972 (M.S.).

Design

It’s a pity that the great picture on the front isn’t a bit sharper, probably it has been blown up a bit too much. The liner notes are a nice collection of facts surrounding this engagement. The 3 pages are decorated with some candids, both on and off stage. The back of the cover is not our piece of cake; even sunglasses couldn’t prevent us from squeezing our eyes. It’s very flashy artwork, but again, not our taste.

Content

To us it is one of the better engagements, since Elvis focussed on what he could do the best: singing. There are some jokes in between or during songs, but fortunately not too many. Unlike the first engagement in 1972, where he added quite some new songs, this engagement brought only two new songs, “What Now My Love” and “My Way”. In this show they are among the highlights, together with “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”, “Polk Salad Annie” and “You Gave Me A Mountain”.

A solo by J.D. Sumner is not as bad as one by “Singing Saw Nielsen”, but during “Walk That Lonesome Road” he goes very low sometimes, which spoils the song a bit in our ears. Overall it is a good show, in fair sound quality for an audience recording, and it feels good to have another early version of “My Way”.

Conclusion

For those that want to have everything there will be no doubt, they’ll buy it anyway. People that are “spoiled” by soundboard recordings, but willing to think over a good audience show, can go for it too. It is a pretty good show, in audible quality.