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