Double Dynamite

Rock Legends CD 1009

Las Vegas, NV. August 19th 1970 dinner & midnight shows

Track listing :

CD- 1: Dinner show: Tiger Man/ I Got A Woman/ You Don't Have To Say You Love Me/ You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling/ Polk Salad Annie/ The Wonder Of You/ Heartbreak Hotel/ One Night/ Blue Suede Shoes/ Along Came Jones (five seconds)/ Hound Dog/ Bridge Over Troubled Water/Suspicious Minds/ Can't Help Falling In Love.

CD- 2: Evening show: Intro/ That's All Right/ I Got A Woman/ Tiger Man/ Dialogue/ Love Me/ I've Lost You/ I Just Can't Help Believin'/ You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling/ Polk Salad Annie/ Dialogue/Introductions/ Johnny B. Goode/ Introductions/ The Wonder Of You/ Heartbreak Hotel/ One Night/ All Shook Up/ Blue Suede Shoes/ Hound Dog/ Bridge Over Troubled Water/ Suspicious Minds/ Can't Help falling In Love/ Closing Vamp.

Review :

Rock Legends is being known for releasing live concerts recorded from the soundboard, at least were known for that as this time they came up with a double CD set with two shows recorded from the audience.

There are some pretty good audience recordings out there, but personally I think Rock Legends should had used a different label name for releasing this, that way it would had kept the label name in a certain standard, which I'm afraid they lost now when releasing sub-standard material as " Double Dynamite ".

Evidently my above comments has nothing to do with its contents, these two shows are excellent and give a pretty good idea of Elvis' performances during his third Vegas season.

Both shows are from August 19th 1970, the dinner show is shorter and some editing were done as " Tiger Man " wasn't the opening number that night, most likely this song was right after " I Got A Woman " but the former song makes a better opening than the latter track. That dinner show is also my favourite of the two, Elvis is in great spirits all along and at the same time he performed great versions of several songs throughout the show.

The first CD contains also a very rare live performances of " You Don't Have To Say You Love Me ",that song wasn't done regularly during the August 1970 season and we have here a very inspired performance, this song was sung at the opening show of August 10th and equally recorded by RCA, same goes here with MGM who filmed that night, in fact this is something we can expect to see along with " The Next Step Is Love ", " Words ", "Stranger In The Crowd " and several others whenever MGM thinks we have waited long enough for a second " Lost Performances " video.

Well, I got a bit carried away and lost perspective on the fact that I'm reviewing a CD and not what MGM has into their Salt mines.

The second show is also pretty good and nothing bad could be really said about the show itself, it would be equally a lost of time in telling you that " One Night " or " Polk Salad Annie " are excellent, basically all shows from that period are outstanding and no ones should really be especially concerned with that.

Here's another matter that everyone should be concerned though, the sound quality, the audio quality of that double CD set is rather similar to " A Dinner Date With Elvis ", which isn't bad at all, we don't get to hear too many peoples talking or laughing nearby the microphones, which can be pretty annoying at times. Overall the sound quality is acceptable but the downside is that the original tapes were probably a bit on an higher pitch, which means that the music and Elvis' voice seem a bit speedy. It could had been easily corrected but it looks like Rock Legends didn't bother too much about that, did they?

I don't really recommend this double CD set to the fans who are looking for a 'soundboard' recording quality, albeit some of these mixing desk recordings can be pretty ordinary sometimes. For those who like to hear great shows and don't care much if it's sub-standard sound quality, then you are in for a treat. The packaging isn't really bad either although most of the photos are on the grainy side.

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