In 2013 Follow That Dream Records released a double album called "The On Stage Season", which features soundboard recordings of the opening and closing show of the king's second engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. With this one FTD strayed from the norm and put the compact discs in a fold-out 7" digipak, a treatment usually limited to the collector's editions of classic Presley albums.

Both shows were recorded through the mixing desk in mono and both are suffering from mic overload. Vic Anesini did his best to iron out the distortions, but even he cannot do magic and so the audio quality is a few miles behind releases like "What Now My Love" (Las Vegas, August 1972) or "Hometown Shows" (Memphis 1974/1975).

Of course streaming wasn't the norm back in 2013, but as expected Follow That Dream Records hasn't bothered yet to make the album available in digital form. However, the Memphis Recording Service has re-released the recordings you find here as well as the one featured on FTD's "The Return To Vegas" on a tripple disc named "The First Engagements: 1969 - 70". This album can be found on various streaming platforms and even features fake-stereo incarnations of the recordings. You have to judge for yourself if this is an improvement (to me these earlier and somewhat distorted recordings sound better in mono), but at least you can listen to the stuff if you don't own a cd player.

For reviews of the concerts just tap on the links:

Opening Show: January 26, 1970    Closing Show: February 23, 1970