Aha. That's basically what we ate every Friday at school when I was growing up. All the leftover veggies and meat from M-Th. In October they called it "Witches Brew". Thanks, @ClausH .
I've always felt that those three boxes highlight the best of Elvis, there's none of the 60's soundtrack crud, and even when the material isn't necessarily the best, Elvis just makes it more enjoyable than any other singer probably could. The 70's box is just about perfect for me, while he was still on fire and inspired during 1970 that wasn't to continue beyond that point, as his depression and drug use took over the music on the whole became much more maudlin and depressing. That doesn't mean there weren't still good songs and performances, it's just they became few and far between, so the box really does give us the best material from that decade. Other big pluses are the excellent books that come with the sets, in particular those in the first two sets which were written by Peter Guralnick, also having bought each box on release day I'm fortunate enough to own them in their original 12" x 12" LP sized format.
I agree, although I think that the How Great Thou Art tracks should have been included in the 60s box, but I understand why they chose to include some outtakes instead. The 70s box is perfect. The only track I would have added is Early Morning Rain. I played the first three discs to death and the box made me appreciate Elvis in the 70's. That has worn off a bit and today I rarely play the stuff after 1973.
Oh definitely Claus, "Early Morning Rain" is a glaring omission and should have been included. I also agree with you on the "How Great Thou Art tracks", having said that, I do think Sony/BMG more than made up for their omission when they put out "I Believe - The Complete Gospel Masters". That set, like the three decade boxes futher shines a light on Elvis as the great singer he was. In many ways it highlights the quality of those recordings in a way they they maybe wouldn't have been had they been lost amongst the secular 60's box.
Good friends. Please convince me to purchase or to not purchase the new Blue Hawaii Sessions FTD. I am on the fence in regards to this one and it is about to become the first sessions FTD I pass on. I have all the earlier Blue Hawaii releases - official and unofficial. Aside from completest mentality (which I tend to engage in all too frequently) what would compel me to buy this? Aside from the "Can't Help Falling In Love" takes that dip in quality, does the overall sound quality of the set supersede earlier releases?
I prefer the sound of the old 2-disc FTD. The sound is brighter and a louder on the new set. If you aren't a completist and need to sit through 16 takes of No More, 29 takes of Can't Help Falling In Love, 19 takes of Slicin' Sand and 17 takes of Steppin' Out Of Line, then you can easily skip the sessions set, and it also appears to have more edits than any of the other sets apart from Viva Las Vegas.
This was and still is a bewildering release - why on earth did they decide to arbitrarily leave off some of the studio masters ? Who decided what was essential and what wasn't. Just crazy.
Yes, the sound is a little brighter and louder on this new set, but still acceptable. The 2-disc does sound better, though. When you say edits, are you talking about the missing take slates on the masters, or other missing dialogue, etc.? I have the Laurel boot from the late '80's (Christmas present to 16-year old me in 1989), and the new session set seem to be identical content-wise, at least on the tracks where complete session for a given are on both.
Yeah I’m perplexed at the omission of both. Isn’t the point of the session sets to include all session material? Bad enough about the Can’t Help Falling In Love tracks in lower quality (which, pre release were touted as being from the session reels for the first time, clearly they aren’t).
Too many to fit on? That or they wanted to give a more upbeat and/or higher quality feel to the 70s set and felt some of the more weaker tracks would make it less appealing (and show up more clearly Elvis' decline).
Ernst Jorgensen was told from BMG that it could be a max 5 disc release and the 5 disc included are all full so no space left. (source: 1995/96 interview with Ernst in TMAHM) All things considering I think they did good regarding what tracks they included. We all have different favorites and it was impossible to please us all. The only things that bothered me a little when this release came out was the FS included on the great TNC track and that Tiger Man was slighty merged into I Can Help. And also that Lady Madonna was edited as much as 30 sec but we didnt know that at the time. The talking part in Mary In The Morning didnt bother me as much as it did for other fans.
They could have included another 27 studio masters instead of the live tracks which would have made far more sense.
I still speculate they didn’t include all the 70’s studio masters so as not to kill off sales of the individual albums on CD. Conveniently they left off at least one or more tracks per studio album (excluding Elvis Country, but that was a remix on the box and had the I Was Born snippets removed) so if you wanted the complete catalog you had to purchase the ‘original’ albums on CD.
I noticed that tonight. I was playing the Slicin' Sand takes, and the snippet of dialogue is missing where after Scotty's or Hank's guitar comes unplugged, Thorne says over the intercom jokingly, "Leave it unplugged!". After the the take breaks down, it cuts to the dialogue preceding the next take. I'm sure there are others. I'm overall happy with this new set, but not thrilled they trimmed stuff like that out, especially since there is room on the discs to fit all of it.
Live concerts was such a big part of the 70s that I fully understant they wanted to knowledge that despite disc5 was not played much by me. Also some poor live tracks was included like one of or maybe even the worst version of SM ever.
