Saturday 2 January 2010

Leather, sweat and tears

Just watching the '68 comeback special. You know, the one where Elvis proves he's a good egg.

And he is. However, for all the effort he puts in, you'd struggle to work that out from the audience reaction. It's so strangely polite. You want them to go nuts at the end of the one or two songs where he lets rip in a genuinely thrilling manner.

The version of Lawdy Miss Clawdy is tremendous fun and tingling. The audience reaction is that of a tea dance. It only lacks a polite cry of 'jolly well done'.

Not so much intimate, as inanimate.

But it probably doesn't help that it appears to have been staged in a studio lacking in atmosphere. And design.