You gotta follow that dream

The summer of 1999 saw the launch of the collectors label "Follow That Dream" with the title "Burbank 68". In the eight years since then the label has produced 66 releases (61 CD's and five books with CD's). That's an average of over eight releases a year. That's an incredibly release schedule when you think about it.

Compare it with the really "dry" years 1978 to 1986 when only about 25 Elvis-releases from RCA saw the light of the day (that's three albums a year). And many were compilations with mostly old material, like "The Rocker" and "Always On My Mind".

In those days it was a long wait for a new Elvis record, and an album like "Elvis: The First Live Recordings" or "Elvis - A Golden Celebration" was a big happening, indeed. Nowadays it's a totally different story, only last year ten new FTD-titles were made available to the fans.

Still, it's not easy to please everyone. Ernst Jorgensen and Roger Semon, the men who put together the FTD-releases, have constantly been criticized for not releasing the right material, bad mixes, poor artwork on the covers and so on.

And certainly, I don't agree with everything they do either. But the amount of unreleased material that they have made available is really awesome, and I for one only have to think back to the 80's to realize how lucky the fans are to have them.

But I do admit that I’m curious as to why the FTD-titles are being released so close behind each other. My bet is Ernst Jorgensen is afraid the financial backing can disappear any second and that it's therefore best to put the records out as fast as possible. Keep a-movin, move along…