A month before the show, fans camped out in front of the Carolina Coliseum to buy tickets for Elvis' performance on February 18th. The box office opened at 8:30 am and four hours later all 20,000 tickets were gone. At the day of the concert many fans as well as a tv crew awaited the king at the airport, but they only got to see his musicians, who were driven to the Sheraton Columbia Inn. The limousine, especially ordered for Elvis, drove away empty. The man himself stayed in Savannah / Georgia, because his private jet had a broken fuel line. He arrived at Columbia's Metropolitan Airport shortly before showtime and was driven directly to the concert venue. The exact box office figures are not known, but it can be estimated that the show generated more than 220,000 USD.

The recording starts with the announcement of "Fairytale". Elvis' voice sounds smoother than on the previous dates of the tour, but at times he's out of breath and his vibrato sounds shaky here and there. For a second one might also think, that he forgot the words. Nevertheless the king appears to be quite motivated.

All the things I have written about "Fairytale" apply to this performance, too. However, the king's good mood manifests itself in his toying around with the melody. The chorus is belted out in impressive style.

Now Elvis announces the title song of his third movie and explains, that his voice was much higher back then. Ironically he adds "...so if you hear me screaming". After a zip of water he performs a very vegasy rendition of "Jailhouse Rock". Elvis also doesn't invest too much energy, but in general it's a nice reminder of everybody's youth and the audience is happily clapping along.

During the announcement of the next song, the king's voice cracks. He makes fun of the squeaking sound and jokingly claims to have swallowed a frog. Then Sherrill Nielsen amuses the audience and the lead vocalist by yelping "O Sole Mio". While the band plays the bridge to "It's Now Or Never" Elvis ironically calls Mr. Nielsen a smart aleck. His own performance is the best of the evening so far. The occasional shakiness of his voice is gone and the chorus as well as the finale are belted out quite spectacularly.

A bit hesitantly Elvis announces "Trying To Get To You". He meets the screams of the people seated behind the stage with "There's the old turn-around-gang" and answers the yell of a lady by suspecting "She's having a baby". The old SUN classic isn't sung with as much power as on his last live album, but still well enough to impress the fans.

The bluesy popsong "Little Sister" also gets a nice outing.

While the previous oldies were presented well, Elvis more or less mubles through this medley. He uses it as background music to bestow his female admirers with scrafs, that have touched his neck for a few seconds before they are thrown into the audience. 

Now Elvis announces to play the guitar and accompany himself on songs like "Are You Lonesome Tonight" and "God Save The Queen". His assistant quickly hands him the instrument and holds a second microphone, so the people can hear the guitar playing of his boss. Unfortunately Elvis sings out of tune and out of tempo and laughs his head off about Mr. Hodge acting "gay". WTF?!?

Instead of the British anthem the king continues with "That's All Right", the a-side of his first single. After the previous performance one might expect the worst, but thankfully Elvis delivers a well paced, motivated rendition of the SUN classic.

After handing his instrument to his assistant the king announces to sing "My Way". He has to to read the first verse from a piece of paper, then he stumbles upon the word "charted" and has the musicians start all over again. He laughs about his mistakes and delivers an impressive grande finale. Nevertheless it's more than obvious, that he's underrehearsed.

In a rare move Elvis announces "Release Me" and dedicates it to someone called "chicken neck". As far as I know the song hasn't been sung on a regualr basis ever since the "Elvis Summer Festival 1973", so the inclusion comes as a surprise. It's a very good, at times almost jam-like performance. 

The actual concert continued with the "Introductions" and a performance of "Hurt". It's a bit of a mystery why the engineer didn't tape the rendition of his boss' penultimate single, but maybe he simply fell asleep during the long and boring parade of solos and introductions of each and every harmony singer. However, "Can't Help Falling In Love" is sung the usual way, the following "Closing Riff" is faded after a few seconds.