Let’s Be Friends - Bootleg Version

Released in the Polish import circuit – although you can never be sure with releases of this kind - is the CD “Let’s Be Friends”. Will we become friends with the producers?

Design

The CD is a re-make of an RCA / Camden album that has not yet been released on the CD format. Camden was a label that produced cheap releases, and this release has “cheap” written all over it. The booklet can be folded open, but why should we do that if all we get is clear paper… guess we’re lucky the cover is printed in color. The back cover is a re-print of the original LP cover.

Content

The CD sound good, “sound freaks” on several message boards dug into the quality and seem to conclude that the CD is a recreation using various CDs as source. Listening this compilation we can’t hear any “original L.P. sound”. The only song sounding less better than the rest is “Almost” … but that isn’t a favorite so we’ll skip that one anyway.

As for the compilation itself, it is a budget compilation but does contain some lesser played gems like “If I’m A Fool (For Loving You)” and “I’ll Be There” which we haven’t played in a while. The producers made one error, they used the 58 second version from the double features release of the song "Mama" on this CD while they should have used the long version (which is available on "Elvis Latino!".

Conclusion

What can we say about this import release… not much, we have another “original” Elvis album on CD for the collection. But due to the quality of the presentation, the poor selection of songs, the short playing time (only 9 songs!) we probably won’t play this CD again.

Track listing:

Stay Away, Joe / If I'm A Fool For Loving You / Let's Be Friends / Mama (short) / I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me) / Almost / Change Of habit / Have A Happy