El vis Cos tello - Imp erial Bed room LIVE!

various sources & venues 1981-2016

sbd, preFM, FM & audience recordings

sound quality: (Ex to VG)

-none officially released-

click on image for enlarged view

A Classis Albums Revisited project

of The dB's Repercussion Blog

ROB SEZ: The upcoming 40th anniversary of this masterpiece's release (July 2, 1982) prompted me to fulfill a 20-year dream: to re-create the album, with the same running order, using only live versions.  For the longest time, I assumed it was a fool's errand. There are numerous live recordings of the better-known album tracks. But a couple of the songs have seldom been played live. When they were, the only historical remnant was typically a crappy audience recording. Fortunately for me, there are lots of EC fans out there, posting their gems here & there. A coupla years ago, I made a key discovery: the remarkable El vis Cos tello Wiki. After stumbling onto this fabulous fan-run site, I was finally able to do proper research. Over several years' time, I began compiling candidates for this compilation, listening to hundreds of different recordings, culling them for the very best versions. Fast forward to the past several weekends, when I found some extra hours and started to bring this together. SO: how'd I do? Give it a listen and please leave a comment. (Wanna nominate a better recording you think belongs on the comp? Find the email address at the very bottom of the blog's home page, and please get in touch.) One more thing: the odd spacing & spelling for this post is my attempt to evade the record / publishing company 'bots...

Stay tuned for a related share coming next week.

HOW I CHOSE THE RECORDINGS: I wanted to find that magical intersection between great performances and great (or at least good-enough) sound quality. If a live version more or less copied the studio version on an average night, I just kept looking. I was listening for that something extra: a transcendent performance, a revelatory acoustic version, an unusual arrangement, or an Elvis & Steve duo version that laid bare the beating heart of the song. Because EC with The Attractions has never been surpassed as a live combo, I tended to give the 1980s shows (and '90s reunions) a closer listen. Most of the recordings I finally picked are EC with The Attractions, unless otherwise noted in the comment file tags. I would love to have used only soundboard, preFM or FM recordings, but they were not available in all cases. When I could find nothing of higher quality, my Plan B was to locate the best-sounding audience recordings with a strong performance. In one case, I had to punt: the only live versions of "Boy With a Problem" I considered were from a so-so performance in 1982 and a brief soundcheck run-through that same year. Neither one was good enough. So I went to my "secret source" for a previously unreleased demo version. But hey, the demo sounds like it was recorded live, so maybe it's not really cheating...

FULL DISCLOSURE: I used lossless captures of lossy sources for tracks 7 & 12 since they were the best quality recordings I could find. All the other tracks are from lossless sources.

FLAC

MP3@320