In July 2021 Sony's own collector's label Follow That Dream Records released two more shows from the "Elvis Summer Festival 1973". This time we got to hear the midnight show from August 20th and a special 3 am bonus show from September 2nd. The sound carriers were housed in a fold-out 5" digipak, which featured pictures from that very engagement plus the announcement of the special 3 am concert. As usual FTD stuck to the moribund compact disc format and didn't issue the product through the streaming platforms.

In contrast to most of the other live releases, these concerts were not recorded through the soundboard of the engineer. This time two microphones were installed in the Showroom Internationale to catch the music plus the reactions of the audience. In general the recordings sound quite good, one really gets the feeling of sitting in the crowd. Unfortunately both tapes ran a tad too fast and Jan Eliasson, the guy responsible for the mastering, didn't correct the issue. I have to admit, that it's not a big problem and if you don't listen really closely or are not too familiar with other concerts from this period, you won't even realize it. But still a professional engineer should have fixed the mistake.

The concert from August 20th is a straight, somewhat business-like performance. On September 2nd Elvis clowns around and acts much looser. Some of the jokes would be repeated during the closing show, but while the man obviously was stoned during his final concert and was a sorry sight to behold, he's in control and doesn't exaggerate the puerility.

For reviews of the concerts just tap here:

CD 1 (August 20, 1973)    CD 2 (September 2, 1973)