Customer Reviews

Canadian Tribute

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This cd has a collection of great Elvis songs either written or made famous by Canadians. It's a great sampler CD as it contains songs from 1957 up until 1977. But what makes this a must have is the interviews. All of the music can be found elsewhere. But the lengthy interviews and awesome collection of pictures in the cd booklet are worth the price of admission alone. Great cover and back picture as well. Excellent sound. One of my favorite cds! It's well rounded - and like I said the interviews are candid, lengthy, and Elvis is very at ease and honest. This is one great cd! Well worth the extra cost!

In some ways, this thinly-themed rehash of Elvisian excess in a Canuck vein is a fitting honorarium. As tired, exploitive, corny and tasteless as any Presley movie, A Canadian Tribute finds the King of Burgers in the Great White North, first as a long-lashed rockin' rebel for his 1957 tour and finally as a jiggly rhinestoned Vegas alien covering tracks written by CRTC faves like Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot and Hank Snow. The early tracks (Jailhouse Rock, All Shook Up, Loving You) are a shameless whitewash; studio versions of songs Elvis sang while on tour here. But these tired old rockabilly hits beat the flared polyester showpants off the remaining tripe; 11 unlistenable and disgraceful covers of Canadian creations recorded by Presley as he nose-dived in to gruesome decline in the `70s. From mushy-mouthed self-parody (Buffy St. Marie's Until It's Time For You To Go) to lazy, limp and emotionless read-throughs inspired only by contractual obligation (Lightfoot's Early Mornin' Rain, Snow's I'm Movin' On), Elvis' Canadian tribute is a humiliating examination of a grown man's rocket ride back to infancy, complete with dirty diaper delivery, gaga googoo harmonies and spoonfed orchestration as white as freshly bleached bedsheets. Even so many years after his death, this collection serves only to remind how appalling it was no one stopped Presley before he decayed under the bright lights of the big top. Thanks to this latest marketing farce, it's Canada's turn to hold his pills, fried peanut butter sandwiches and black hair dye. A Canadian Tribute? It's Disgraceland.