Go to main content

Heartbreak Hotel – Dutch Stamp CD

By ElvisNews.com / Kees, June 30, 2006 | Music
The Dutch postal service released the first official Dutch Elvis stamp; to celebrate this they also released a CD with stamp in cooperation with the Dutch Elvis For Everyone fan club.

Design

The releases from this fan club either have a great or a poor, homemade, design. Strangely enough this cooperation with a billion dollar multinational falls into the last category. We wonder, how can you make such a poor design from such a beautiful stamp? On the back it isn’t better either, Elvis looks like a “turtle” with a small head in a way too big coat.

Content

The CD contains talking only. 30 answers to 30 questions, nice, but you have to read the track information for the sound bites to make any sense. Why not add the questions to the answers we get from Elvis?

In between we get studio chatter, or should we say just studio laughing … this doesn’t paint a very serious image of Elvis as a recording artist to a stamp collector listening to this compilation. The CD also contains two spoken versions of “Softly As I Leave You”, a complete interview from 1956 and the 1972 New York press conference.

What we miss is the title track; why no “Heartbreak Hotel” to celebrate a stamp with that for a theme? A Hayride version could not be that expensive for cooperation between a fan club and a billion dollar multinational.

Conclusion

This CD really is a missed chance, in stead of a cooperation it is a disappointment. Just sound bites, some talking and an interview are not interesting enough to play completely or more than once.

Track listing

Track listing:
1. Intro “Heartbreak Hotel”
2-9. Elvis answers
10. Behind closed doors / The studio session excerpts #1
11-16. Elvis answers
17. Behind closed doors / The studio session excerpts #2
18-22. Elvis answers
23. Behind closed doors / The studio session excerpts #3
24-32. Elvis answers
33. Softly As I Leave You (spoken live version)
34. Softly As I Leave You (rehearsal)
35-37. Elvis Answers
38. June Carter Talks About Elvis / Elvis Poem (June 4, 1960)
39. Goodbye
40. Complete Robert Carlton Brown interview (March 24, 1956)
41. Complete New York press conference (June 9, 1972)