Phil Collins – Going Back: Live At Roseland
Ballroom NYC (Eagle Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C- Concert: D
Back in
1982, Phil Collins did a remake of The Supremes’ classic You Can’t Hurry Love that was so bad, Diana Ross (before sadly
backtracking) stated at a concert before she sang it that “some guy named Phil
Collins” stole the song and she was going to steal it back from him for
them. It was a horrible, shallow
sound-alike of the #1 hit original, but with a terrible, goofy vocal and was
somehow a hit. It was not even as good
as anything Billy Joel did on An
Innocent Man when he was trying to recreate the sound and feel of songs
from the 1960s. Collins trashed a
classic and it began a hit run of some of the worst songs ever made.
Decades
later, as he has been forgotten, fallen out of favor, is not talked about much
(save when he insults dead musicians and/or singers not here to defend
themselves or over any false rumors of a Genesis reunion) and has not had a hit
in decades, he has decided to finish what he started in 1982 by disemboweling
as many Motown classics as possible. The
result is one of the worst Blu-ray concerts to date, Going Back: Live At Roseland Ballroom NYC.
To kill
the suspense (but sadly, not this release), here are the classics he chose to
absolutely ruin:
1) Intro: Signed, Sealed, Delivered
2) Ain't Too Proud To Beg
3) Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)
4) Dancing In The Street
5) (Love Is Like A) Heatwave
6) Papa Was A Rollin' Stone
7) Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer
8) Jimmy Mack
9) You've Been Cheating
10) Do I Love You
11) Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever
12) Going To A Go-Go
13) Blame It On The Sun
14) Ain't That Peculiar
15) Too Many Fish In The Sea
16) You've Really Got A Hold On Me
17) Something About You
18) The Tears Of A Clown
19) Nowhere To Run
20) In My Lonely Room
21) Take Me In Your Arms, Rock Me A
Little While
22) Uptight (Everything's Alright)
23) Going Back
24) Talking About My Baby
25) You Can't Hurry Love
26) My Girl
Even with
three of the former Funk Brothers (Bob Babbitt, Ray Monette and Eddie Willis),
the band that originally played on all the Motown classics, cannot save this
and Collins is not inspired by any of this whatsoever. He just moans and croaks out each vocal
performance like he is the center of the world and is somehow the greatest
singer of his generation, but you never believe one word he sings for a
minute. Michael McDonald just did two
albums too many and even more concerts of the same and he is a far superior
singer, yet his covers were also awful and misguided. Collins makes McDonald sound like Marvin Gaye
and Isaac Hayes with how boring he is from start to finish here. This is a desperate revival and Collins was
not even smart enough to pick some other sets of classics McDonald had not
already addressed, no matter the particular songs.
Yet, this
is part of a sad trend where older singers with no more hits try to have more
hits with hits that are not originally theirs to begin with. Diana Ross tried an album of this and it went
nowhere, McDonald was too successful with his covers, Rod Stewart is doing
songs from the 1930s and 1940s (!?!?) and Barry Manilow is doing Rock
classics! Yet Collins manages to put out
a worst product than Stewart or Manilow.
Wow!
Yes, it
is that bad. Unless you are a diehard
Collins fan or like train wrecks, Going Back is not even worth thinking of
going back to. Hopefully, this is the
last you’ll hear of this.
The 10801
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition has some good color throughout, but is softer
and has more motion blur than a new production like this ought to, while the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes both have problems with
more compression than should be there and soundfield limits that are odd. The PCM 2.0 Stereo is even weaker. Extras include an unenlightening interview
with the singer and painful rehearsal footage that show in detail how he fails
to do these songs well at all. Oh, and
beware of his new studio album doing more of the same.
- Nicholas Sheffo