The fifth and last volume of Madison’s Standing Room Only Tapes, Rock My Soul appears to be the last release by Madison. Is it a worthy farewell?
Design
The artwork is the usual high Madison quality. Nice liner notes decorated with tons of pictures. Many of them are from the rehearsal. I saw some comments on our site and elsewhere that it is a missed change not to use one of them for the front. Obviously Madison doesn’t have pictures of the rehearsal in high enough quality to fit their high standard. Looking at the large gospel part of the CD, the image fits the content as good as can be.
Content
Most of us know the content by heart, with or without video images. Still I never heard it in this superb quality, To me the first part of this CD belongs to the best material Madison ever released. Young And Beautiful and Lawdy Miss Clawdy are real toppers in my book.
After some chat the room was shaken up by the opening riff and a nice version of CC Rider. Proud Mary and (one of my favourites) Never Been To Spain close the marvelous part of the CD.
The remaining is not exactly my piece of cake. I don’t like the gospels as sung by the Stamps if Elvis doesn’t lead them. After all I am an Elvis fan, not a Stamps fan. Those songs sung by Elvis are milked out that many times by now that I don’t really care for them, although it is nice to have them in their original context in this quality.
Conclusion
Madison can’t help that I don’t like the second part of these rehearsals, but to answer the question about the worthy farewell: Yes, they did close this series in style and it is a worthy farewell to their fans. If you can lay your hands on this document, don’t hesitate!
For me the first 11 tracks will end up on my MP3 player and I’ll hear the gospels I like whenever I play one of the DVDs….
Track listing:
01. Burning Love 4:02 / 02. Help Me Make It Through The Night 3:24 / 03. Can't Help Falling In Love 2:19 / 04. Young And Beautiful 5:17 / 05. Lawdy Miss Clawdy 2:48 / 06. Release Me 3:29 / 07. I'm Leavin' (partial) 0:41 / 08. Elvis chats with musicians 3:10 / 09. C. C. Rider 2:46 / 10. Proud Mary 3:54 / 11. Never Been To Spain 3:34 / 12. The Lighthouse 6:10 / 13. When It's My Time 5:00 / 14. I, John 2:09 / 15. Bosom Of Abraham 0:52 / 16. You Better Run (with false start) 2:10 / 17. Lead Me, Guide Me 3:45 / 18. Sweet Sweet Spirit 2:42 / 19. There's A Room At The Cross (partial) 1:54 / 20. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus / Nearer My God To Thee 4:47
The sound on the last ever Madison cd is amazing, much better then on the first part of this rehearsal released on 'Sunset Rundown' cd. What a farewell from Madison!
Good review, Lex. Informative with enough details without being too pedantic.
check ebay, many copies on it..
Haven't picked this one up, yet.. I'm sure I'll soon add it to my collection. It's like getting studio vesions of "Prod Mary", "Never Been To Spain", and even "See See Rider." Just curious - on the second run-through of "Proud Mary, which is on this disc, does Elvis sing "job" or "home" at the beginning ? "Left a good ? in the city.." Thanks for the great review, Lex !!
if you're interested in Elvis as a person ( as well as the music) then the stamps songs are quite important - i'm defiantely getting this
Not worthy of a release, really; bad selection, too few songs, snippets of songs and rehearsal
work during which EP does not give a good rendition.
I can't fathom why anyone but a casual fan would say this is unworthy of release! You must be new to the import world - fanatical fans only need apply! Madison comes through again with a terrific final release. I have found myself returning to this set often and I especially like the closing gospel segment. Even the non-Elvis gospel songs (and he's right there) are quite moving. A gem, folks, as usual. With smart liner notes and a great photos and design, what's not to like?
an absolute awesome release and a fitting farewell.they will be missed.
The quality of this release is great. Note that the gospel part of it was previously released on Vicky 0212: The complete on tour sessions vol 2 in 1990, with all the stamps songs complete (contrary to this disc), however on the new Madison release a different source was used as the remarks of the director ("Bob's still rolling, i do not know if he is cut or not" for example) can not be heard here luckily. Did not throw my vicky release away as it is signed by JD Sumner himself when the stamps performed in Belgium in the early 90's :-). New for me is the 5 minutes Young and beautifull rehearsal, great to hear the King sing this in 1972!
Ftd sohlud be about ready to put out some more On Tour material,surely they can see there only helping the bootleg craze by not covering the On Tour material in a serios way!
It seems to me RCA (Sony, whatever) and FTD both totally missed the height of the CD era by bypassing the ELVIS ON TOUR movie as both a soundtrack and potential co-marketing of a deluxe DVD version.
That said, if FTD wants to tackle EOT tapes now, or soon, so be it. Better late than never but as someone luckly enough to collect all the "Standing Room Only Tapes" of the EOT series from Madison, I think their work would be really cut out for them! I'd say give it a few years and see if you can come up with a new angle.
Niek', if I had such a J.D. Sumner signed Vicky boot, I'd be keeping it too! Otherwise, this is now the definitive, knock-out version of this material. It works really well as an album. We can all be proud, yes, proud of Madison for this final, wonderful effort.
Ftd needs to tackle On Tour very soon,the hampton roads show is a big seller waiting to happen,and not everyone buys bootlegs or can obtain them,id like to see a rehearsal set and concert set from Ftd or put them in a 4 cd set!
