Elvis’ two Christmas albums were among the strongest of his career, but what if he had assembled an album of spookier-themed cuts? You’ve just crossed over into . . . the edge of reality.
Elvis' Halloween Album
Elvis’ Halloween Album
Side A
Devil In Disguise
Mystery Train
Dark Moon
How The Web Was Woven
City By Night
Side B
Witchcraft
Ghost Riders In The Sky
Blue Moon
It’s Midnight
Edge Of Reality
Elvis Today
If you frequent Elvis sites, you may know Thomas – the world’s greatest Elvis blogger and the man behind Elvis Today. He and his wife recently celebrated the birth of their first child, a baby girl.
As a small gesture to honor this special occasion, I wrote a guest blog. Check it out over at Elvis Today.
Congratulations again to Thomas and his wife on their new family, and thanks for letting me play over in the Elvis Today sandbox.
Suspicious Minds - Viva Elvis Version (2010)
For those in the United States, the Viva Elvis remix version of “Suspicious Minds” is now available for download from iTunes. They’ve knocked this one of out the ballpark, folks. Fantastic job. Looking forward to the full album in November.
Go to iTunes to download “Suspicious Minds” (Viva Elvis Version).
Update: The new “Suspicious Minds” single is also available on Amazon.
Elvis As Recorded At Boston Garden '71
Elvis Australia has posted my review of Elvis As Recorded At Boston Garden ’71, a recent Follow That Dream Records release. The CD features Elvis’ November 1971 concert in Boston. Check it out here.
Sony has unveiled a new website, www.suspicious-minds.com, to promote the November release of Viva Elvis: The Album – which features remixed versions of Elvis classics like “Suspicious Minds.” Five song samples are available there by default. You can hear more if you share the page on Facebook or Twitter. (Hint: Or you could just go to Amazon’s Elvis page and listen to all of the samples.) Two or three of the samples sound amazing, two or three sound like total duds, and the others are probably somewhere in between. We’ll have to hear the whole album to find out for sure, though. It hits stores November 9. Internationally, there will be several different variations available.
Any of you that have made your way to The Mystery Train Elvis Blog via my old pop culture blog, The Film Frontier, know that school (night classes) always takes up a lot of my time during this part of the year. On top of that, I’ve had a couple of challenging projects going on at work as well.
Though I may not be posting here as often as I’d like at the moment, Elvis is never far from my thoughts. I’m usually able to listen to my iPod a bit at work, especially when I’m handling a writing-related assignment. It helps to block out the distractions of whatever else is going on around me and allow me to focus.
Just for fun, I made up a couple of standard playlists to use at work yesterday.
Elvis 1972: The Unreachable Star
Elvis 1973: Part I – The Midnight Train
I made it through the 1972 playlist, which was fantastic – a real testament to the power of Elvis during that year. For 1973, I only made it as far as “See See Rider” before it was time to go. Aloha sounded like so much fun, though, that I decided to watch the 2004 edition when I got home last night.
One of the things I love about Aloha, as well as a number of other Elvis events, actually, is watching his eyes. Particularly evident on the 2004 cut, you can see a “We’re all in on the same joke/Isn’t it crazy that this is going on?” expression of bemusement. Even in this concert, where he is sometimes criticized as being too serious, Elvis never really takes himself too seriously.
After a quick run-through of the obligatory “Hound Dog,” he says, “I was just a baby when I did that song. I was about 12-years-old, had sideburns. I’m lying like a rug, too.” Too bad this line was cut from the 1973 album and subsequent NBC broadcast.
The ability to laugh at himself was one of Elvis’ most endearing qualities, and that’s no lie.
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