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Category:    Home > Reviews > Documentary > Music > Rock > Biography > Pop > Music Industry > Album > Punk > Alternative > Drama > Rap > India > Let The Music Play: The Story Of The Doobie Brothers (2012/Eagle Blu-ray)/Paul McCartney: Live Kisses (2012/Eagle Blu-ray)/Patti Smith: Live At Montreux 2005 (Eagle Blu-ray)/Yessongs (1972/Umbrella Re

Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements (2012/MVD DVD set)/Gandu (2010/Artsploitation DVD)/Gregg Allman – I’m No Angel - Live (1989/Cherry Red/MVD DVD)/Let The Music Play: The Story Of The Doobie Brothers (2012/Eagle Blu-ray)/Paul McCartney: Live Kisses (2012/Eagle Blu-ray)/Patti Smith: Live At Montreux 2005 (Eagle Blu-ray)/Yessongs (1972/Umbrella Region B Import Blu-ray)

 

Picture: C+/C+/C/B-/C+/B-/B     Sound: C+/C+/C/B-/B/B/B-     Extras: B/C/D/B-/C+/C-/B     Main Programs: B/C/B-/B/C+/B/B

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: The Yessongs Blu-ray is a Region B disc, will only play on machines capable of such encoded Blu-ray discs and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review.

 

 

Here now are the latest music releases…

 

 

Gorman Bechard’s Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements (2012) is a remarkably extensive interview documentary on the great 1980s Punk band from Minneapolis that never made it big, might not have wanted to and still left an indelible mark on the Rock genre.  Friends, producers, fellow musicians, music scholars and more are interviewed throughout for what amounts to over two hours of nothing but discussion on the band.  This also is without any of the original music and some vintage footage, plus a nice number of stills.

 

To its disadvantage, you can get a strange impression of the band if you do not know the music and a sense of emptiness results, though as soon as you hear the music or add the music you might already know, it all adds up.  Bechard said he did this consciously and I believe him, but calling people idiots for not liking this and calling that Punk is silly and disingenuous to the viewer, including the claim that they would never be fans of the band anyhow.  Totally false.  Otherwise, it is a fine work, though a very long one and Matt Pinfield even shows up, but it is critic and scholar Robert Christgau who steals the show with his usual dead-on insights on the band and music history in general.

 

Extras include two audio commentary tracks, extended interviews section (including with Christgau), 18 Deleted Scenes two behind the scenes interview pieces (one with Bechard, the other with Producer Hansi Oppenheimer) and four trailers.

 

 

Next is the drama/comedy Gandu (2010) from a director named Q, which was made in India and then banned for not fitting into the usual Bollywood mold and being about sex, drugs, obscenity and anger throughout.  It is included here because of its many music sequences that suddenly interrupt what is there of a narrative as the title character (which is an obscene word) runs around acting wild and wacky, the anti-hero with few places to go.  Shot in black and white, this is shocking for India, but outside of its home country, we have seen all of this before, so any shock or anything new is limited here.  This runs a somewhat long 86 minutes and is good for what it is, but I was not too impressed watching and it did not stay with me.

 

Extras include music clips, two Berlin pieces, another clip on an RV, behind the scene s featurette, trailer and illustrated 12-page booklet inside the DVD Case.

 

 

Gregg Allman – I’m No Angel - Live is really a short 1989 concert of the Gregg Allman Band in action performing 10 songs including the title song, Don’t Want You No More, Demons, Slip Away, One Way Out and more.  It is a good, short 52 minutes long show where Allman is in fine voice and one of his latter shows.  The band is also in fine form.  There are no extras, but it is definitely worth a look.

 

 

Barry Ehrmann’s Let The Music Play: The Story Of The Doobie Brothers (2012) is a remarkable chronicling of one of the great bands of the 1970s.  The Doobie Brothers were a solid Rock band with sensibilities that ranged from Pop to Soul to even Country when they started to have hits.  With talent to spare, they became as significant as Chicago, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles and Earth, Wind & Fire in their time and just kept coming up with more and more hits and when their lead singer Tommy Johnson got ill, Steely Dan backup vocalist Michael McDonald joined them and they became bigger still.

 

Running about two hours, this is a very thorough look at their ascension of their big years at Warner Records, a comeback album at Capitol and how a charity project in 1987 reunited them for good still playing as often as The Eagles.  All the licensed music is here along with rare clips and great interviews throughout.  Like The Replacements, their story is one not enough people know about (despite their massive commercial and critical success) and it is a documentary well worth going out of your way for.

 

Extras include an illustrated booklet with text information and a terrific 48-minutes-long compilation of addition live performances throughout their career.

 

 

Finally getting to record his album of old classic, Paul McCartney: Live Kisses (2012) has the former Beatle & Wings member covering early 20th Century hits like More I Cannot wish You, (Home) When Shadows Fall, We Three, It’s Only A Paper Moon, I’m Gonna Sit Right Down & Write Myself A Letter, My Valentine, Always, Bye Bye Blackbird and others.  These are the kinds of songs that have always informed some of his basic writing sensibilities and he sings them well.  This is all even well recorded (Diana Krall and Joe Walsh are guest artists), but I did not like the black and white faux HD taping of the on camera performances.  It looks fake and still has a color scale.  That makes the quality of the lossless sound being better than a CD version the only reason to get this version of these recordings.

 

Extras include an illustrated booklet the disc comes in with liner notes by Elvis Costello, while the disc adds six versions of My Valentine including some with Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman on camera in some of them, two shorts about the photo shoot and on camera interview with McCartney and Tommy LiPuma about shooting the cover photo.

 

 

Patti Smith: Live At Montreux 2005 has the Punk Rock legend singing her classic hits and a few others in a really good concert where her voice is still pretty much in top mode and showing her great stage presence in the process.  This includes the quintessential Because The Night, Free Money, Ain’t It Strange, People Have The Power and eight others very much worth your time.  I liked the show and fell it has definite rewatchability, plus you will be hard pressed to find her singing reproduced better than it is here.  A paper pullout inside the Blu-ray case with some images and text are the only extra.

 

 

Finally we have the Blu-ray version of Yessongs (1972) which we previously reviewed the import PAL DVD at this link:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11875/ABBA+Essential+Albums+Gold/The+D

 

This is an improved version on Blu-ray that has far more extras than that single DVD including the Steve Howe guitar short Beginnings, Original Theatrical Trailer, 2012 reissue trailer and 58-minutes-long Yessongs 40 Years On documentary featurette.

 

 

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 color digital High Definition image transfer centered in the 16 X 9 frame on Yessongs is the picture winner here with nice color, clarity, moderate grain and depth like never seen before on the film.  The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Brothers (combining sources as varied as low def analog black and white video, low def analog video 8mm film, Super 8mm film, 16mm film, 35mm film and new HD footage) and the 1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Patti Smith are the close runner-ups with some softness throughout each presentation, but looking as good as either could be expected to.  That leaves my disappointment with the 1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on McCartney usually in bad black and white just not cutting it for me.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Replacements and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 black and white image on Gandu are the next best looking here with even more softness and their share of motion blur, plus Replacements has some old analog video footage to boot.  The old color analog 1.33 X 1 NTSC video shoot on Gregg Allman is the poorest of all with aliasing errors abounding and looking like a second-generation copy.

 

 

Then we have the sound.  The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Patti Smith and McCartney are sonically the most competent of all the audio options here, with both also offering simple PCM 2.0 Stereo tracks as alternatives and McCartney also offering lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 that simply cannot match the DTS-MA in either case.  The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on Yessongs and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Brothers are the next best sonic choices with the former still having some sound distortion issues and the latter mixing mono and simple stereo with some multi-channel recording and playback throughout with simple stereo interviews.  PCM 2.0 Stereo is also offered on Brothers and is the only track on the bonus songs.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Gandu is really pushing the limited sound, even when the music kicks in, while Replacements is as good with its simple lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo interviews.  That leaves Gregg Allman the poorest of all sonically as well with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 sound that is barely stereo and down at least a generation.

 

As noted above, you can order the import version of Yessongs exclusively from Umbrella at:

 

http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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