A limited edition double album vinyl set of the "Jungle Room Session" featuring all of the tracks featured on the CD edition and several added outtakes from other releases. Supplied in a new gatefold sleeve featuring additional Graceland images, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and DMM Copper mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London.
The Jungle Room Sessions - Vinyl Edition
Vinyl
ElvisNews review
FTD recently released another vinyl version of – this time – a classic FTD release, for years the #1 in the FTD Top 40. Is it an upgrade?
Design
Design-wise it is certainly an upgrade. It’s great to have heavy vinyl in your hands, with decent sized photos and readable text. All images are full sized shots of the interior of Graceland. Only one of the racquetball centre is a bit out of place in my opinion, but it’s still impressive to see all those trophies gathered.
Content
The vinyl version sounds a bit fresher, lively in my ears than the CD, but I have to admit that could be imagination since I just have something with vinyl (must be the age…). Some extra tracks are added to the original CD content, most of them can be found on Made In Memphis.
Since the CD was never among my favourites, unlike on many others’s lists, I didn’t have the intention to really listen to it, but just play it as background “muzak”. Although many of the songs are pretty good, they really need overdubs to mask Elvis’ weak performances, with only a few exceptions (Way Down, It’s Easy For You, She Thinks I Still Care, Bitter They Are, Hurt). Disregarding the fact that I was not really listening, I had to suppress the urge to turn it off a couple of times because it was too bad for my ears. Especially Danny Boy really hurts the ear, certainly when knowing there are some marvelous live versions by Tom Jones on my shelf…
I can be proud on myself for sitting through the whole thing!
Conclusion
The many people liking the original torture (looking at the FTD Top 40 there are many) might like this extended version, but I’ll stick to the occasional play of original released versions…