Both great and boring.
The Los Angeles Sports Arena was three-quarters full and the sound was as bad as our arena. That was no fun. What was fun was Elvis. His suit was out of the 40's, an oversize jacket and baggy pants and hat. His voice was real good, especially in the slow songs (otherwise the slow songs were pretty boring to me.) He moved with little steps on the stage and ended each song with a different umph from his body.
Only some of the music was fun. It was good but the band just didn't kick into gear for most of the show. It wasn't worth driving to L.A. but ok if it had been in San Diego. The crowd seemed to respond to the energetic moments and pretty quietly enjoy most of the slow tunes.
My favorite tunes were "Lipstick Vogue" (opened with it), "Radio, Radio," "Mystery Dance" and "Peace, Love and Understanding (closing number). Each one of these had a great jumpin' beat. Elvis really got into 'em and I wish most of the show was like those four songs. But it wasn't. I was mostly disappointed because the L.A. Sports Arena's acoustics made it sound like most of the show was being played in a giant garbage can. But Elvis's movement and voice and plain stage presence were fantastic.
He's one of those performers like Iggy, Bowie and James Brown that on stage seem to show different sides of one personality like a diamond. Elvis was always interesting to watch.
The big change was his country singing. The songs sounded a lot like his Almost Blue lp. (This is as opposed to the bulk of his show which, even though he did old favorites, they frequently sounded like they were being performed on a bad quality bootleg. Fortunately he at least got really cooking on those four songs I previously mentioned.) What really got me though was his slow songs, some that were country, others new ones I guess. It was like he'd always wanted to be a romance-type Las Vegas lounge singer and so dang it he was gonna do it. It was actually pretty, his voice is so cool that even these hokey slow songs sounded good. The weird part was hearing it at an Elvis concert and not a Frank Sinatra Jr. show.
To me the difference is that anything F.S. Jr. sings sounds shitty. But even these dumb (to me) country and slow songs that Elvis was indulging in were salvaged by his beautiful voice. And I mean beautiful. He'd grip the mic and let those bittersweet stories out on long sorrowful notes and he moved like he meant every sad story.
He played some eight old hits to open the show then about eight country tunes and broke. Came back and did another 15 tunes or so with some new, mostly slow stuff.
His vocals were somewhat muffled occasionally by the sound system. And I almost never understood what he'd say between tunes though a friend at the other end of the arena did. The keyboardist had three different instruments to play. He banged out a crude version of almost every song and to me it sounded shitty. Two of my friends liked him though so I guess that makes this entire review pointless. Darn.
I hadn't seen Elvis live before and heard of his short and sometimes rude sets. This show was neither. Seemed like he was being a nice guy, especially for his country stuff during which he accepted about three bunches of flowers. By the way, for the country set he brought in some steel guitar player. Anyway, Elvis ended up doin' something like 35-40 songs which was about two hours of show.
It was both great and boring, oh well.
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