Dusty Springfield –
Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1979
(DTS)
Picture: C
Sound: B Extras: C+ Concert: B
Dusty Springfield is one of Rock’s great voices, but her
voice also transcended genre, including into Soul and Country genres. She could also pull off standards with
ease. Dusty Springfield – Live At
The Royal Albert Hall 1979 is a new DVD of her in concert still at her
peak, singing her biggest hits and some other classics. Those tracks include:
1) I Close
My Eyes & Count To Ten
2) We Are
Family/You Can Do It/On Your Knees
3) Lose
Again
4) All I
See Is You
5) This
Will Be
6) Going
Back/I Only Want To Be With You/Stay A While/Just A Little Loving/Some Of Your
Lovin’/The Look Of Love/Wishin’ & Hopin’/I Just Don’t Know What To Do With
Myself/I’m Losing You
7) Son Of A
Preacher Man
8) You
Don’t Have To Say You Love Me
9) Quiet
Please, There’s A Lady On Stage
10) Put Your Hands Together
At her best, the voice is in great form and it is nice to
have Son Of A Preacher Man in such a good, solid, alternate version
since the original has been so often played after Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp
Fiction revived it yet again.
Covers of We Are Family and I Just Don’t Know What To Do With
Myself do not always work, but she usually delivers on her hits. When she gets carried away with the
audience, it cuts into her singing as it does on Look Of Love, but
seeing her happy and laughing has benefits all its own. She was great that night and she even gets
crazy talking about “queens” in her audience, acknowledging her gay audience. Unfortunately, some too offense (in an early
PC moment) and she later gave a written apology. Today, that would have been called too pro-Gay and she would have
been labeled a left-wing subversive, so you just can’t win sometimes.
The 1.33 X 1 shows its age, as shot on analog PAL video,
but it still has some good shots to offer and Springfield is looking good. The sound options include Dolby Digital 2.0
and 5.1 mixes, but it is the DTS that really brings out the fullness and
richness of her distinctive voice, making this one of the best playback sources
of any of her prerecorded material on the market. A 40 minutes plus interview with in anamorphically enhanced 16 X
9/1.78 X 1 video with people who worked closely with Springfield is included
and worth having on here.
- Nicholas Sheffo
