Audionics released the last of five shows Elvis performed in Huntsville during his May / June 1975 tour. A professional release from all involved?
Design
This release is a quality package; a good design, nice images of our man and a 16 pages booklet with factual, yet a bit too positive liner notes on the show at hand. In a short time this import label has become one of the quality labels.
Content
This show, entitled "Adios Huntsville", is the last of Elvis' five legendary Huntsville concerts from the May / June 1975 tour.
This soundboard of this concert start at "Love Me" and Audionics decided to include "See See Rider" and "I Got A Woman / Amen" from Elvis' October 6, 1974 evening concert in Dayton to create a complete concert experience. But is it a nice concert experience?
Listening to the show it is a pretty basic set-list, so the surprises must be in the performances. Unfortunately they can’t be found there either. Elvis isn't quite concentrated and appears to be distracted from his "work" on stage although he mentions "I only work here" so he knows he is up there to make a living (a tough way as he tries to fool the male part of the audience kissing all the girls). Perhaps it is due to the women in the audience, they only appear to want get a lot of kisses and scarves.
For me there aren’t any real highlights in this show. Elvis needs help from the audience for the lyrics of “Burning Love”, a song he recorded and performed. For me that shows a total disrespect of Elvis for his work, and worse, for his fans. How unprofessional. He only saves himself from this sad position by starting a song he has known for years, "Polk Salad Annie", but skips the intro and going straight in the song. Songs like “Why Me Lord” and “An American Trilogy” which could have been highlights because our man usually tries to make an effort of his performances of these songs aren’t worth mentioning either. Getting back to the before mentioned disrespect, making jokes on you backing vocalist (JD Sumner) why praising the Lord in a gospel doesn’t show that much respect to the man in the sky either.
Conclusion
This release is a professional looking package with a mediocre show in great audio quality. Too bad Elvis wasn't that professional during this show since his "professional" contribution is the most important of the three.