Rare Earth – Rock N
Roll Greats (Documentary)
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: D Concert: B-
Rare Earth is one of those old school Rock bands who has
already lost three of its key members, but this new concert of the band with a
mix of old and new players is part of the Rock N Roll Greats series and
is not bad. It is also very short at 45
minutes and covers most of their classic hits.
It is always a problem when you keep the name of a band and change the
musicians too much. The performances include:
1) Hey Bog
Brothers
2) Born To
Wander
3) Love It
Up
4) I Know
I’m Losing You
5) Get
Ready
6) I Just
Want To Celebrate
That last song is their most enduring hit, now used in TV
commercials. With the proliferation of
“Motown Abuse” (the overlicensing of their music catalog to films, television
and commercial advertisements), the Rare Earth classics were on their
self-named vanity label at Motown, making them one of the first white acts to
have hits at the label (maybe the first).
The band here does the music with an unexpected energy that oddly tends
to reclaim the songs from pop trivialization and includes the more political
and raw lyrics of the originals that are always gutted out in their
exploitation. The vocals are just a tad
off, which is not bad considering the other bands we have heard with their
original members sound much worse.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image was shot on
digital High Definition video, but has some detail problems here and there, but
is otherwise not bad though far from the best HD tradedowns to DVD we have
seen. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is
weak, but the 5.1 is better, though it is barely above Pro Logic surround. This is part of a series of DVDs from the
same concert that offers no extras, but seems to vary in quality for DVD to DVD
for whatever reason. Fans of the band
will be somewhat surprised and others might get a kick out of this one, so to
them, it is worth your time to take a look.
- Nicholas Sheffo
