Captain Marvel,Jr. Records 2001-6
Track Listing:
Arlene calling Elvis (private phone talk to Graceland, early 1970)/Make The World Go Away(take 3)/The Next Step Is Love(take 11, extended)/Walk A Mile In My Shoes(8-11-70 MS)/The Wonder Of You(8-13-70 DS)/Funny How Time Slips Away(take 1)/I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water(take1)/Love Letters (take 5)/Don't Cry Daddy-In The Ghetto(8-13-70 DS)/Just pretend (8-11-70 MS)/When I'm Over You(take 1, extended)/I Really Don't Want To Know (take 4)/Faded Love (take 2)/There Goes My Everything (8-11-70 MS)/Make The World Go Away #2 (8-13-70 DS)/Twenty Days And Twenty Nights (8-12-70 MS)/Faded Love #2 (take 1, extended)/Tomorrow Never Comes (take 13, plus workpart ending, take 1).
Review:
This is the newest from Captain Marvel,Jr. and although a lot of peoples seem to be all excited about it, I for one have all kind of mixed feelings about it, and this is mostly due to the used of the live tracks that were taken directly from the Laser Disc of " Lost Performances ". A CD has already been released with all these songs and there's no improvement whatsoever on their quality here, concerning these latter tracks lifted from " Lost Performances ", I've always thought they were sounding okay for the video or on a video laser machine, but the mix on several of these tracks sucks a great deal, and mostly because they weren't intended for an audio release. If you want to know what I'm talking about then just listen to the live tracks from August 1970 on the BMG box-set and compared these with the ones on " Make The World Go Away ", there you have a real pleasant audio mix and don't get annoyed because the level of the drum increases during the same track, or else the " Sweet Inspirations " are way too much up front, it can be verified easily while listening the chorus part on " Walk A Mile In My Shoes ".
This CD also features a phone conversation taped in the early '70s between Elvis and a woman named " Arlene ", considering the type of material it is, the sound quality is more than acceptable, and quite enough for noticing that Elvis isn't too excited with Arlene, at least not anymore.<g>
Now here some comments about the studio tracks from the latest Captain Marvel,Jr. baby, as far as I'm concern this the best part of the CD, some have been heard before in these undubbed forms, but at least their sound qualities are improved here and we don't get to hear some annoying acetates skips or getting the feeling that Elvis is eating chips during the recording.
The highlights on this outing (mine of course) are ; The Next Step Is Love ( undubbed master track and extended), Love Letters is also the undubbed master but I've always liked this version from June 7th 1970 over the one from 1966, Elvis sounds much more soulful so-to-speak, this is also the first time that we get to hear this undubbed and extended version of " When I'm Over You " with such great sound quality, who knows? Perhaps Elvis was thinking of Arlene when singing that one!!!!!????
The packaging is certainly one of the nicest I've seen in a very long time and for sure the best one for 1998 so far, there's a nice little booklet featuring some MGM index cards for the recording and/or filming of the live shows in August 1970.This is a top notch presentation overall and hope the next ones will be as nice as this one.
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