Forty years ago today, Dec 3, 1968, NBC aired the Elvis Presley Special sponsored by the Singer Sewing Company. It has since become known as the ’68 Comeback Special, or just the ’68 Special. It has stood the test of time as one of the most iconic performances of Elvis Presley’s career. It re-ignited his singing career and also started him touring and performing live concerts for the first time in seven years. This is how the televised special became known as the Comeback Special, Elvis was returning to touring and making rock-and-roll records.

As I said, the ’68 Special has become iconic, not just for Elvis fans, but for the man himself. One of the more famous images of him is decked out in his all-leather suit strumming his guitar.

This special marked the first time Elvis had “gone electric” during a musical performance. In all previous performances he only played acoustic guitar.

Another iconic image of Elvis is in his all-white suit, standing in front of the immortal red ELVIS letters singing “If I Can Dream”

Although it aired on Dec 3 1968, the special was actually filmed in July 1968. Elvis had just returned from his honeymoon with Priscilla. While the Special was wildly successful, many people don’t realize that the original concept of the show was completely different.

Originally, the Special was conceived as a straight up Christmas special with Elvis singing nothing but Christmas carols. Director Steve Binder, however, saw the special as an opportunity to rescue Presley’s career from mediocre movies and soundtrack albums. Elvis was very open to this program change, but his manager kept complaining about the lack of Christmas songs. Even after the concept change, the special was going to be fully scripted and recorded without a live audience. But during rehearsals, the director enjoyed how Elvis would “loosen up” by goofing around and singing with his friends. The director asked Elvis if he would consider doing a live performance portion of the show. At first Elvis was concerned because he hadn’t performed live since 1961, seven years prior. However, after the director agreed to let his friends sit in with him on stage (as well as original band mates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana) Elvis felt comfortable enough to give it a try. The live performances were filmed in four 1 hour shows. Two of the shows were the sit down “informal” sessions and two of the shows featured Presley standing and playing guitar by himself. These four shows came to be known as the Burbank Sessions and are considered the precursor to the “unplugged” shows that would become popular on MTV many years later.

The live concert shows would be edited together with scripted song and dance performances including a medley of Presley’s gospel hits, a semi-autobiographical number featuring the song Guitar Man and the aforementioned “If I Can Dream” performance.  Due to the last minute inclusion of the live performances, many scripted song numbers had to be removed for the Dec 3 broadcast.  One deleted number took place in a bordello to the song Let Yourself Go (see picture below).

Another was a performance of the song A Little Less Conversation that was remixed and released as a single in 2002 as well as becoming the theme song to a popular NBC show, Las Vegas. NBC would subsequently air two versions of the Elvis special.  One included a performance of Elvis singing Blue Christmas, the only seasonal song the director would approve, and another version that replaced Blue Christmas with a performance of Tiger Man.  All of these missing performances were later collected and released on the ’68 Comeback Special 3-disc Deluxe Edition DVD. On this DVD you can watch the special as it originally aired in 1968, or you can watch each of the four 1 hour shows in their entirety as well as many of the rehearsals for the live action segments.  To celebrate the release of the ’68 special DVD, several movie theaters had a special 1 hour showing of footage from the DVD. My wife and I found a theater in North Alabama that was showing it and we went. It was pretty awesome. Needless to say, I have this DVD set.

The special would become the highest rated TV special of the year and would succeed in revitalizing Elvis’ failing Billboard chart status.  Elvis would go on to do sold out shows in Las Vegas and begin his touring Elvis Presley Show concerts that would win him fans throughout the ’70s until his death in 1977.  RCA released the soundtrack for the show in 1968 including most (but not all) of the songs on the album NBC-TV Special.

Different configurations of the soundtrack performances would also be released over the years. Bootleg versions of the entire ’68 Special performances were available for years under the title “The Burbank Sessions”. A definitive CD collection of the Special’s performances has yet to be released. I personally bought Memories: The 68 Comeback Special because it has the best track list and audio mastering.

This is one of my favorite Elvis performances and it’s amazing to think that the special is 40 years old today.

Get a lot more info on the Special as well as pictures, videos and downloads at the official Elvis 68 Special website.

I love looking around stores during Halloween. The aisles are decorated with cardboard haunted houses, pumpkins and pics of gouls, ghosts and monsters. It’s so much fun to walk around the Halloween sections of retail stores like Target, Wal-Mart and your local grocery store to see the scary versions of some regular favorites that come out every Halloween. Companies also seem to release new Halloween themed items every year. Here’s some of the coolest stuff I noticed while shopping around this Halloween season.

You can click the individual pictures for a bigger size.

I love Reese’s Cups. LOVE them. They are top of my list of snacks including Cheetos and peanut M&Ms. During Halloween Reese’s will release different shaped cups (bats, pumpkins, skulls, etc). The package says DOUBLE sized and, man, they aren’t kidding. This is one giant brick of peanut butter in a thin layer of chocolate. It’s like carrying around a small child. It easily weighed as much as my head. I had trouble finishing it. If you decide to get some of these, make sure you bring along a car trailer or a pack mule. You aren’t going to get a box of these home on your own.

Ahhh, another seasonal favorite for me, Pumpkin Mix M&Ms. Yes, this is just regular M&Ms dressed up as black and orange pumpkins, but I LOVE M&Ms and the packaging is always too cool to pass up (check out Yellow carving a pumpkin that looks like Red). I buy them every year (peanut are my favorite followed closely by peanut butter).

Gummy candy in the shape of human limbs seems to be pretty popular this year. The one on the left even comes in its own coffin. Nothing quite like candy that makes you feel like a cannibal. They make these things extremely realistic. Just sitting there looking at them I got a little queasy. Great, great idea, I’m glad companies are embracing the macabre during the Halloween season, but I’d be lying if I said these things don’t creep me out. Like chopped up midgets in a bag. Yikes.

The monster cereals are back in full force at this time of the year. You can see them here and there during the year but they really get a boost during the holiday season. You especially see more of Boo-Berry during this time of year. I’ve loved these cereals, mostly Franken-Berry, since I was a kid. Does anyone remember the two other flavors that were discontinued? Both flavors of cereal had multiple fruits in it, much like Fruity Pebbles. One was a werewolf and one was a mummy. Give up? Well the werewolf was Fruit Brute and the mummy was Fruity Yummy Mummy. The only difference between the two was that Fruit Brute had lime marshmallows and Yummy Mummy had vanilla marshmallows. I think Fruit Brute was replaced by Yummy Mummy because the werewolf was considered too scary. Aren’t they SUPPOSED to be scary? They are monster cereals.

This isn’t really Halloween themed, but I found it with the Halloween candy so I’m including it. It’s a gift pack of Elvis Presley Pez dispensers. You get three different Elvis heads; Army Elvis, ’68 Special Elvis and Vegas Elvis. Very cool packaging and display. I approve.

I want to go ahead and vote these the WORST candies in the history of Halloween. For me, there was nothing more dreaded than seeing someone reach into a bowl of generic orange and black wrappers and dump a fistful of this crap into my bag. The look on my face would have been the same had you dropped a trial-sized package of floss or a severed head into my treat bag. I was appalled and horrified. I wanted to slap this person and challenge them to a duel with pistols at dawn. Awful, generic tasting, bland peanut butter chews of death. That’s this candy’s new name. You may disagree, but you’d be wrong.

There are a few items I’ve read about elsewhere but I have yet to find even though I’ve been looking high and low for them. They are:

One of my favorite blogs, Branded in the 80s, found this nugget of black and orange gold. I have never seen this before. I knew Cap’n Crunch released a Christmas Crunch every year during the holiday season but this is more than awesome, it’s uber-awesome. I’ve scoured the stores looking for this but have yet to find it. I fear that my time is almost up.

How mecha-awesome do these Ghost Dots look? I first saw these on X-Entertainment’s Halloween Countdown but they turned up again on Branded in the 80s (in the same article as the above super cereal). I love regular Dots, but the idea that these dots are mystery flavored is just too much to take. SO. F’N. AWESOME. I have to find these things before Halloween is over.

I saw a cool article on Wired asking people to send in some of their best carved pumpkins. They call it Show Us Your Geeky Jack-o-Lanterns. Here are some of the best. You can click the pics to go to the article for the full size picture.

Mozilla Firefox logo

Cylon from BattleStar Galactica

Puss in Boots from Shrek

The Death Star!!

So there’s my roundup of all things Halloween. It really creeped up on me this year (pun intended). I had at least one other article planned but had to scrap it at the last moment.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween!

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I have always loved Halloween. I dressed up every year until I was in 8th or 9th grade. It was so much fun wearing costumes and hanging out with my friends going from house to house getting candy. Things have certainly changed. Today, the costumes are infinitely better but you can’t go out in your neighborhood to trick-or-treat anymore because of various nefarious individuals that may (or may not) live in your area. These individuals would love nothing more than to fool you into eating an apple with a razor blade stashed inside. What sick individual gives out apples for Halloween anyway? If that happened when I was a kid that guy would have gotten his own version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that involved nothing but toilet paper and raw eggs. Giving apples for Halloween is just WRONG, people. Write that down.

Anyway, my family was pretty good at documenting our holidays. I was going through some old photos and found some of my all-time favorite Halloween costumes. I have more pictures than this, but I may save those for another time. So, without further ado, here are some of my favorite costumes that I’ve worn throughout the years. Enjoy!

You can click each of the pictures for a bigger version.

Year Unknown – Spiderman. Yes, this is it! The Ben Cooper Spider-man costume. It doesn’t get much more vintage than this. Obviously I’m “shooting my webs” at a villain off camera. Classic, classic costume. You can find these on eBay now for anywhere between 20 and 100 bucks. Check out the boxed version of this costume here.

Year Unknown – Peter Criss (drummer for KISS). How about them jeans and JC Penney’s belt? That’s so rock-n-roll, man. I never really listened to their music, but I LOVED the whole KISS makeup gimmick. I loved they dressed up and spit fire and had these gaudy knee boots. It was awesome. And for some reason, my favorite was always Peter Criss, the drummer. I was walking home from school and found a large drink cup with a picture of Peter Criss on it and told Mom that’s who I wanted to be for Halloween. My mom was great, she used the cup as a guide for all the makeup. She did a great job, didn’t she? Years later she would do the same thing for me when I was a werewolf. She painted on wolf-like features. It was awesome, I wish I had a picture of it.

Year Unknown – Random Pirate. The costume turned out great didn’t it? My mom was great at making costumes out of crap we had around the house. Dig those funky yellow running shoes! So pirate-y. That ginormous sword was borrowed and I only held it for the picture. There was no way I was carrying that monstrosity through the neighborhood trying to collect candy. Check out my younger brother as Big Bird. Yes, yes that is embarrassing. He’s gonna love that. You can see another pic of this costume here.

1989 – Billy the Kid. In this picture I’m trying to mimic the famous photo of the real Billy the Kid seen here. This was the last year I actually went out and trick-or-treated in costume. I was in eighth or ninth grade in this pic and my friend Steve and I had a few teenagers try to steal our bags. We decided that this should be the last night of Halloween fun for us. Very sad. You can see a closer pic here (and the detail of my stubble/sideburns). I don’t know if you can tell, but I was going for the Billy the Kid look from the movie Young Guns (1998) where he was played by Emilio Estevez.

2000 – Dracula. I had always wanted to be Dracula (or a vampire) for Halloween and never did. So when Steph and I decided to throw a costume party I thought it was the perfect time to bust out a Dracula costume. Turned out pretty good, I think. I’m standing here with my friend Jason who came as Michael Myers from the movie Halloween.

2004 – Vegas Elvis. Having always loved Elvis, I had also always wanted to dress up as him for Halloween. Talking with Steph about it, she thought she might be able to, with her mom’s help, make an Elvis jumpsuit for me. I thought it was a great idea, so we went to the fabric store, picked out a pattern and some colors and Steph and her mom went to town. Turned out better than anything I could have imagined. This costume gets so many compliments from so many people. Great, great job by my wife and my mother-in-law. I’m standing here with my friend Himal who’s dressed as Clark Kent/Superman. He even customized a Daily Planet (check out his left hand). Great costume!

There are several other costumes I can’t seem to find pictures for. The aforementioned werewolf is the most notable. I wore a few ripped t-shirts and jeans and my mom painted hair and wolf features onto my face with makeup. I really liked it but I can’t seem to find any pictures of it. I was also Jason Vorhees one year using a costume from my friend Jason (Collier, not Vorhees). Jas may have a picture of that. I’ll see if I can find some of these. Hope you enjoyed them.

I have another article I think I’m going to post for tomorrow on candy (appropriate topic, don’t you think). Until then,

Happy Halloween everyone.

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My wife and I are big fans of Elvis. We even named our kitty Presley after him. For our second anniversary we traveled to Memphis, TN and toured Graceland (which I had never done). On the way back we stopped in Tupelo, MS and visited “The Birthplace”, Elvis’ boyhood home. I have read Volume 1 of Pete Guralnick’s two volume biography of Elvis. Amazing. It’s amazing to see the history Elvis created and lived through. Elvis lived an amazing life, yet he died so tragically.

Let’s celebrate the man and his iconic image, not linger on the circumstances of his death. Let me see what pictures I can dig up here of my wife and I and our dealings with all things Elvis related.

You’ve seen my Elvis Avatar from an earlier article.

I also created this M&M avatar of Elvis. Somewhat goofy, but I like it.

Here’s a picture of a commemorative Elvis statue outside the Neal Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. This is the venue that Elvis filmed his famous “Aloha from Hawaii” concert in.

Dale Earnhart Jr. is going to drive a commemorative Elvis car for the singer’s 30th Death Day anniversary. I like the color scheme.

I mentioned earlier about trying the Elvis Reese’s Cups with Banana Cream. Well, there’s a whole website devoted to it.

Here is the two volume Elvis biography I mentioned earlier by Pete Guralnick. I’ve read Volume 1 which covers his birth through him leaving for the Army in ’56-’57. Volume 2 picks up after the Army until his death.

Last but not least, below are some pics of me in my Elvis Halloween costume. Steph actually made this Elvis jumpsuit with her own two hands (and some help from her mother). It’s AWESOME.

Pretty BAD-ASS, isn’t it? I love it. It’s always a hit whenever I bust it out.

As I said, the wife and I are big fans of The King and love to listen to his music and read about him. Visiting Memphis and seeing Graceland and going to “The Birthplace” were a lot of fun. If you ever get the chance, do it. I actually want to go again.

So, in honor of the 30th Anniversary, Memphis is holding it’s annual Elvis Week with activities, concerts and games. It’s also Elvis Month on TV Land, so if you get that channel on your cable system tune in to check out Elvis movies, concerts and specials.

Long Live the King, baby.

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