Muddy Waters – The Rolling Stones: Checkerboard
Lounge Live Chicago 1981/Ozzy
Osbourne: Speak Of The Devil Live From Irvine
Meadows ‘82 (Eagle DVDs)
Picture: C Sound: B/C+ Extras: C+/C- Concerts: B-/C
Here are
two concerts of interest to at least fans, but do they make good DVDs?
First we
have a collaboration concert, Muddy
Waters – The Rolling Stones: Checkerboard Lounge Live Chicago 1981, which concentrates on Blues
classics and so, Waters never has to jump into any Stones hits. If you love Blues, you’ll likely enjoy this
more than I did, but not being as much of a fan this was only so
enjoyable. Still, the songs are purely
performed (they don’t seem forced or phony like more than a few such shows I
have had to cover before) including 15 songs on the DVD (only 10 of them are on
the bonus CD) include Baby Please Don’t
Go, Hoochie Coochie Man and Clouds In My Heart. 31 years later, it all seems far more distant
than in the time they were recorded, but it is a collaboration (should we call these
duets) that works because they meld well and The Stones are true Blues men
too.
Extras
include a colorful booklet inside the DVD case with informative text and two
bonus songs: You’re Gonna Miss Me When
I’m Gone and Black Limousine
(from the Hampton Coliseum, 1981).
Then we
have Ozzy Osbourne: Speak Of The Devil
Live From Irvine
Meadows ‘82 from, his early solo period from the tour promoting that
huge-selling album. Black Sabbath was no
more and he was suddenly a hot solo commodity years before he became an
irritated victim of reality TV. However,
he seems a bit bored here and though he gives a good vocal performance, it is
not the best concert. In addition, he
would not stay as interesting as the solo years continued, but you get 14 hits
(including Iron Man) and it is at
least a time capsule of his work and the period when Rock (unbeknownst to it)
was in its last prime years.
The only
extra is a colorful booklet inside the DVD case with informative text.
The 1.33 X
1 image on both discs are both sourced from professional analog video sources,
but Stones looks a bit more refined
as compared to the bleeding colors and softness of Ozzy, yet both are softer than expected and you have to consider
their age when viewing. This is also why
there will be no Blu-ray editions.
The sound
in both cases come in DTS 5.1 mixes that can show the limits of their
respective recordings, but do sound better than the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and
Dolby 2.0 Stereo mixes also included in both cases. In addition, the Stones CD sounds netter than any track selection on Ozzy where age is much more of a
problem overall and the DTS on Stones is the best of the mix choices here.
- Nicholas Sheffo
