Wednesday, 9 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 92
Tuesday, 8 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 91
Monday, 7 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 90
Saturday, 5 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 89
Friday, 4 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 88
Thursday, 3 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 87
Greatest Hits - Smokie
I genuinely had no idea Needles and Pins was not an original song by the Ramones! It is not an original song by Smokie, either, but I have no recollection of hearing their version until now. And it is awesome. I grew up listening to some sort of Smokie compilation on all road trips, but half of these songs I do not remember at all. In fact, it does not feature half of the songs I remember from that tape! Regardless, these are good songs.
Highlights: Needles and Pins, Don't Play Your Rock'n Roll to Me, Oh Carol, Wild Wild Angels
7/10
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 86
Monday, 30 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 85
Monday, 23 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 84
Thursday, 19 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 83
Monday, 16 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 82
Friday, 13 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 81
Thursday, 12 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 80
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Trash...
AKA LOGMAN Does an Oopsie!
So, I spent 24 hours travelling and listening to all this music that I've been working my way through. Which is all fine and dandy. Being that I was travelling, I kept all my scores/ratings and ramblings in notes on my phone. And then the most hilarious thing happened and I had to restore my phone before being able to do a backup. Which meant I lost all my data from the last 6 months - including all the listening history! Now how will I know how many times I listened to ELLEGARDEN and Queen back in December?!?
So I lost about 2 weeks of listening time sorting this all out. Plus all this music I listened to while travelling and getting sorted? You guessed it - I will have to listen to it and rate it and discuss it all over again. Which is a shame, because I am sure my original bLogging would have been super entertaining and full of extremely witty dialogue. For sure...
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 79
Monday, 26 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 78
The FTD marathon continues...
FTD008: One Night in Vegas (10 August 1970) - Elvis Presley
This is actually the opening night of Elvis' Las Vegas residency that was recorded for the That's The Way It Is film (which itself completely rules). It is a great show. I didn't need more rehearsals at the end...
Highlights: I Can't Stop Loving You, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, Patch It Up
7.5/10 for the concert, 3/10 for Elvis doing yodels in rehearsal
FTD009: 6363 Sunset Boulevard
This is another collection of outtakes - this time from 1972 & 1975. This undubbed take of Always On My Mind is stellar. Other than that and a strange version of Burning Love, I am pretty sure I have the rest in similar form; the rehearsals from On Tour are probably included in that set and the outtakes from Today are very similar to the un-overdubbed versions found in that set.
Highlights: Always On My Mind [Take 3], Burning Love [Take 2], See See Rider [Take 2], T-R-O-U-B-L-E [Take 1]
6/10
FTD010: Easter Special - Elvis Presley
A collection of Gospel outtakes. I would say mostly like the masters, but some are slightly different. Like, a couple are a little bit faster and some have less overdubs going on. This version of Saved is bombastic! And I Got a Feeling in My Body is just... wooo!
Highlights: Saved [Take 1], If That Isn't Love [Take 2,6,7], I Got a Feeling in My Body [Take 6,7], I'm Gonna Walk Dem Golden Stairs [Take 2,3]
7/10
FTD012: The Way It Was - Elvis Presley
Rehearsals for That's The Way It Is. And it starts of incredibly poor - not the performances, the recordings. The tape must have been found buried beneath 3 tonnes of mud and lava and dinosaur fossils. Thankfully, things get more listenable after a few songs. I definitely prefer I've Lost You without the horns and whatnot. Oh, there are actual live songs as well
Highlights: I've Lost You, I Can't Stop Loving You, You've Lost That Loving Feeling
6/10
Highlights: Stranger In My Own Home Town [Undubbed Master], True Love Travels On A Gravel Road [Takes 6 & 7], Wearin' That Loved On Look [Takes 3 & 10], You'll Think Of Me [Take 14]
Highlights: Viva Las Vegas [#1, 2], The Lady Loves Me [#9], C'mon Everybody [#1, 2, 3], There's So Much World To See [Alternate Master]
Friday, 23 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 77
AKA More Elvis Marathons
I have a whole bunch of Elvis 'Follow That Dream' releases that are all coming up now, because they are labelled in my iTunes as "FTD0xx:". The numbers will jump all over the place, because I have already eliminated the ones that were later released as part of another set (e.g. FTD001 was the 68 Comeback Special outtakes/rehearsals, which were later included in the 40th and 50th anniversary collections). I would imagine that listening to these now will help eliminate some of them from my library, because I really have enough Elvis outtakes and rehearsal on all my box sets.
FTD002: Out In Hollywood - Elvis Presley
This is all alternate takes of songs from movies. There are no undiscovered gems here. The only thing that really stands out is after singing Lonely Man, the engineer can be heard telling Elvis it was "beautiful" and Elvis thanks him for the compliment. Young Elvis was a rebel, but also hella respectful and genuinely appreciated that people liked his voice. Actually, the real highlight here is an isolated vocal overdub of for You're So Square. Quite fun to just here Elvis' voice like that.
Highlights: King of the Whole World [Take 3], Little Egypt [Take 21], Spinout [Take 2]
5/10
FTD003: In A Private Moment - Elvis Presley
This is all very pointless; Elvis jamming with friends and recorded very poorly (as one would expect), and mostly just quick little bits of songs.
Highlights: Impressive these exist, I'll give them that
4/10
FTD004: The Jungle Room Sessions - Elvis Presley
Now this is actually very enjoyable. I can not believe I still have not picked up the other Jungle Room set that would make this obsolete. I love these late 70's numbers and getting them without the overdubs. And Elvis' "Italian" version of Moody Blue is rather entertaining.
Highlights: Fire Down Below [Instrumental], Moody Blue [Take 3], Bitter They Are Harder They Fall [Take 2-5], Solitaire [Take 3]
7/10
FTD005: Long Lonely Highway - Elvis Presley
Alternate takes of a bunch of fantastic 60s tracks. Including a very different version of Too Much Monkey Business.
Highlights: It's Now or Never [Alternate Take 1]. It Feels So Right [Alternate Take 3], Long Lonely Highway [Alternate Take 1], Too Much Monkey Business [Alternate Take 9]
6/10
FTD007: Too Much Monkey Business - Elvis Presley
This is all so weird I actually had to google to understand what was going on here; in the early 80s, Elvis' long-time producer tried to cash in on things by taking some old Elvis vocals and getting a team of musicians to redo the music in a more "modern" way, and this FTD release is the original album PLUS 10 bonus tracks from the same "sessions". We can mock, but they are still doing this sort of thing with Elvis' songs to this day. Look, I am not trying to say these are the definitive versions or anything, but it is kind of fun.
Highlights: Burning Love, After Loving You, Too Much Monkey Business, Blue Suede Shoes
6.5/10
"Albums" listened to so far: 626
Thursday, 22 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 76
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 75
Friday, 16 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 74
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 73
Monday, 12 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 72
Saturday, 10 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 71
Thursday, 8 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 70
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 69
Tuesday, 6 May 2025
2025 in 2025: Day 68
2025 in 2025: Day 92
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Just because that was so darn long... I must point out that I haven't actually watched much WWF/E programming since 2001 (or was it 200...
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I thought it might be fun to jot down some things as I think of them today. And not just because I have nothing to blog about. Not at all....