Design
This CD comes as a digi-pack in the FTD style, but this one actually has liner notes ?. It looks a bit dark with black as the basic color.
Content
The SR label already released two concerts from this series, the August 11, 1971 Dinner Show (Trying To Get To Memphis) and the August 17, 1971 Dinner Show (Setting The Standard). Now we get the previously unreleased Dinner and (part of the ) August 10, 1971 Midnight Shows.
This stint in Sin City shows the first signs of Elvis caught in the Las Vegas trap according to the press reviewing Elvis’ performances. The fans apparently don’t agree, Elvis sold out the series directly when the news was issued and he beats his own attendance record by attracting 4428 fans to his concert (the record would never be beaten because the fire department limited the number of visitors per show to 2000 people.
Listening to the show I find it very enjoyable, there is still a lot of spunk in the performances, o.k. not too much chatter in between the songs, but hey, the man is at work so no time for chit-chat. The rockers rock, he still does “Whole Lotta Shakin’”, a personal favorite, and “Bridge” Over Troubled Water, “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” and “You’ve Lost That lovin’ Feeling” get the treatment which make these songs show stoppers at a live performance.
The concert is enjoyable, the audio-quality unfortunately not. The producers made a good effort to make this recording sound as good as possible, even filling in gaps in the tape with snippets from an inferior recording to give the complete concert performance impression, but the overall quality of the tape isn’t very good and spoils the listening experience. But as with more concerts, this is probably the only way to enjoy this concert. Since Elvis concerts were short this season, this dinner show running at 57 minutes is actually a long show, we get seven tracks from the Midnight show of the same date, the remarks made for the first part of the CD apply here too with the addition that the audio-quality is worse.
Conclusion
An enjoyable - previously unreleased - concert for completists or "Elvis students" only.