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Category:    Home > Reviews > Concert > Pop > Rock > Documentary > Jazz Guitar > Blues > Hard Rock > Counting Crows: August & Everything After – Live At Town Hall (Eagle Blu-ray)/Heart: Live/Jewel: The Essential Live Songbook (Image Blu-rays)/Life After Django Reinhardt (2011/Cinema Libre DVD)/Robert

Counting Crows: August & Everything After – Live At Town Hall (Eagle Blu-ray)/Heart: Live/Jewel: The Essential Live Songbook (Image Blu-rays)/Life After Django Reinhardt (2011/Cinema Libre DVD)/Robert Plant’s Blue Note (Chrome Dreams/MVD DVD)

 

Picture: C+/B-/B-/C/C+     Sound: B/B+/B+/C+/C+     Extras: C+/D/C/C-/C-     Concerts/Main Programs: B- (Crows: C+)

 

 

Now for a new round of music titles you might want to look into and of course, hear…

 

 

Though we have covered several releases by The Black Crowes, this is the first time we have covered Counting Crows.  Their new Blu-ray concert August & Everything After – Live At Town Hall was shot in HD recently as Adam Duritz and company bring the album to life down to the hit Mr. Jones.  I was never a big fan of the band, but at least they were a band who played music and tried to be about something, tried to be who they were and there is more merit to that than ever in an era where most of the music acts are more about acting out than talent.  The concert is good, but not great and hit and miss for the most part, so this is really an affair for fans only.  A paper pullout with brief notes by Duritz and illustrations, plus on camera interview with Duritz and Charlie Gillingham are the only extras.

 

 

Heart: Live taped in 2008 is now the fourth concert the enduring Wilson Sisters have put out on Blu-ray giving them some kind of record in the format and in HD so far.  The previous discs you may also want to see include:

 

Alive In Seattle

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7200/Chicago+and+Earth,+Wind+&+Fire+%

 

Dreamboat Annie: Live 2007

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7990/Heart+%E2%80%93+Dreamboat+Anni

 

Night At Sky Church

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10898/Heart+%E2%80%93+Night+At+Sky

 

 

This Soundstage show is not bad, but does not look as good as the Seattle or Annie discs, but is the best sounding of the four releases to date.  They play music of the same music as before, including their hits, some Led Zeppelin, an Elton John track and it is a good concert, but I wish it were even more different than the other discs.  It can still compete with them.  There are no extras.

 

For the second time ever and the first on Blu-ray, we have Jewel: The Essential Live Songbook which has two concerts, neither of which are Live At Humphrey’s By The Bay which we reviewed on DVD at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/967/Jewel+-+Live+At+Humphrey%27s+By

 

This was also taped in 2008 and features the singer Live At The Meyerson Symphony Center and Rialto Square Theater.  Again, this is for fans only, but I give Image credit for fitting two full-length concerts on one Blu-ray, something we ought to see more often if it does not compromise quality as it does not here.  Extras include a Jewel Interview and Stephenville, TX video.

 

 

Olivier Kowalski’s documentary Life After Django Reinhardt (2011) is a celebration of the Jazz Guitarist on his 100th anniversary by a slew of great guitarists today who give interviews while we get history on the man and his music, then there are many concert segments, but this sadly only lasts an hour.  It is still worth a good look and any serious music fan needs to see it at least once.  A performance of “Minor Swing” by the “Django 100” is the only extra.

 

 

Finally we have Robert Plant’s Blue Note, the latest documentary look at the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, but this program from the great Chrome Dreams series of music documentaries is very much about his early years and heavier influence of many Blues vocalist and the genre in general on his work than you might imagine.  As usual, the makers have licensed a ton of music so you can hear exactly how and it is almost too much about Blues, but that is the program despite much more music including The Yardbirds and newer Rock works.

 

A solid companion to the company’s Zeppelin documentary Origins Of The Species, we have had an interesting mix of titles concerning the band to cover including an earlier documentary with no licensed music, a CD hits set, their feature film on Blu-ray, Down The Tracks documentary and import documentary Dazed & Confused (2008) still not available in the U.S.!  You can see all about those and future Zeppelin titles at this link.

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/new/viewer.cgi?search=zeppelin

 

 

The only extra is Percy Plant, John Lomax & the Leadbelly Connection, worth seeing after you watched the 2 hours, 40 minutes main feature.

 

 

The 1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Blu-rays have some noise and detail issues, but also have some good color, save Crows which tends to have more bad shots than usual.  All have some motion blur, but it is a bigger problem on Crows.  The Django DVD is anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 video, but it is low definition, has more aliasing errors and softness than it should and can even have shimmer issues.  The 1.33 X 1 frame on Plant looks better and has some great archive footage, some of which looks better than expected.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on the Blu-rays are all good, but despite some very slight issues with harsh edges on the highs, the Heart and Jewel mixes are really impressive with wide, open, clean soundstages and good sonic moments.  Crows also has PCM 2.0 Stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, but neither can match the DTS-MA.  The DVDs have Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and problems with location audio and archive audio in both instances, as expected with documentary product.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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