Five For Fighting – Live: Back Country Special Edition (DVD/CD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Concert: C+

 

 

I was never a big fan of Five For Fighting, but always respected the ambitions of singer/songwriter/musician/leader John Ondrasik and so when we saw Live: Back Country Special Edition was coming out, were curious what we’d get.  Essentially, it is a concert with some added parts about his sincere concerns over those fighting overseas and is not a bad collection, as these tracks show:

 

 

1)     Freedom Never Cries

2)     World

3)     California Justice

4)     The Riddle

5)     65 Mustang

6)     NYC Weather Report

7)     Two Lights

8)     I Just Love You

9)     If God Made You

10)  Easy Tonight

11)  Superman

12)  100 Years

13)  Road to Heaven

14)  Nobody

15)  Policeman's Xmas Party

 

 

Plus the DVD offers Music Videos for Superman, Easy Tonight, 100 Years, The Devil In The Wishing Well, The Riddle, World, then you get making-ofs on The Devil In The Wishing Well, The Riddle and World.  Mini-featurettes "Two Lights" Dad interview, WhatKindOfWorldDoYouWant.com Charity Videos and a Five For Fighting Photo Montage round out the extras.

 

If you are a fan or just curious, it is a comprehensive enough set, though some diehards will complain of missing pieces they would have liked to see.  However, the content is solid overall.  Performance of the concert is another issue on the DVD.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is shot in HD of some kind but has all kinds of digititis troubles and makes watching it a little annoying.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 is very limited in soundfield, as are the 16bit PCM 2.0 Stereo versions on both discs, with the DVD (48kHz) and CD (44.1kHz) also sounding too compressed for a new presentation.  Why it sounds this problematic or looks this problematic fort that matter is odd, but that is the weak point of this set.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo