May 20 - Faded Love

The Straight Arrow import label released a press-release announcing that the team obtained a couple of great quality Las Vegas off-line recordings. The first release will be "Faded Love" containing the infamous February 15th, 1973 Dinner show. Elvis had the flu and appeared on stage against his doctor's advice. "Faded Love" was released on May 24, 2010. 

These concerts were recorded using a 1972 portable Sony high-end cassette recorder equipped with two microphones. The microphones were placed apart from each other in the balcony seating, behind the mixing desk of sound engineer Bill Porter. Usually, such tapes are called a "booth recordings" and often are used for mixing in with a multi-track recording to obtain full depth of the sound. However, the label calls them "two-mike ambience live recordings"- because that's precisely what they are according to the team.


From the press-release:


The first volume of our mini-series is titled "Faded Love" (SA/SP 2010-01-02) and will feature the infamous February 15th, 1973 Dinner show. Elvis had the flu and appeared on stage against his doctor's advice. There was no Midnight show on this day. He was trying hard, but after seven songs he called the Stamps to the spotlight to sing a couple of gospels, and left the stage. During that time Charlie Hodge - true professional as always - introduced each song, adding a couple of jokes too. Elvis returned after some 20 minutes, and apologized for his voice problems. He finished with "Can't Help Falling In Love" and he was about to leave the stage, but he suddenly decided that this would disappoint his fans. To the audience’s surprise, he continued the show and tried to make up for his restricted vocal abilities with several rare performances. "Faded Love" is the very first known live-performance of his 1970 country-rocker, while country weeper "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is sung on stage for the last time. "Polk Salad Annie" was performed only twice in 1973 (listen to the only other live-version on 2009’s Straight Arrow's release "A Change Of Mind"!). During "An American Trilogy" Elvis changed the lyrics to: "Oh I wish I was - in the doctor's office" but otherwise sung a straight version of the song. Finally "Can't Help Falling In Love" was performed for the 2nd time and that made this show even more special. We decided to add an edit of post-concert fan's comments related to this show for historic reasons, too.


Unlike previous releases from Straight Arrow, this mini-series will be presented in cool looking digipacks with all necessary information and rare photographs.


Note: the Straight Arrow team is aware that this concert was released in 1992 on the CD "Las Vegas Dinner Show". However, it was a below-average quality audience-recording, in no way comparable with two-mike ambiance live recordings. Forget the old inferior outing and enjoy this new, clear, warm and ambient stereo sound!


(Source: ElvisNews)