The Drum Pad’s 20th Anniversary At The
Vic Theater – Chicago, Illinois/Allan Holdsworth & Alan Pasqua
featuring Chad Wackerman & Jimmy Haslip/Heads Up (all Altitude Press/MVD Visual DVDs)/Pete York’s Super Drumming – Volume Three (Inakustik DVD)
Picture: C+/C/C/C+ Sound: C+/C/C/C+ Extras: C/C/D/C Concerts: C+
You had
better be the biggest fan of drumming for a wave of recent DVD releases from
Music Video distributors, but unlike any other label in the business, no one
takes care of the musician in you than they do and explicitly so lately. Recently, we saw a nice set of how to play
DVDs form a popular vintage Carmine Appice video series, which you can read
more about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6503/Carmine+Appice’s+Power+Rock+DVDs
Now comes
four more titles in the same vein, but all devoted to drumming. All refreshing alternatives to the tired
drum-machine-driven junk we get too often, we see some of the best names in the
business in action. Except for one title
that is self-explanatory of who stars, here are the stars of the other discs:
The Drum Pad’s 20th
Anniversary At The Vic Theater – Chicago, Illinois features Terry Bozzio, Jimmy
Chamberlain, Mike Portnoy, Chad Wackerman, Jeff Hamilton, Steve Smith, Mike
Mangini and Zakir Hussain. Heads Up includes Gregg Bissonette,
Gerald Heyward, John Blackwell, Jr., Nathaniel Townsley, Sean McCurley, Louis
Santiago Jr., Bill Bachman, C.G. Ryche, Andrew Lloyd, Christopher Coleman and Derek
Winkley. Pete York’s Super Drumming – Volume Three (we missed the first two)
has Louie Bellson, Mark Brezicki, Gerry Brown, Bill Bruford, Billy Cobham, Jon Hisemann, Dave
Mattacks, Nippy Naya, Simon Phillips, the late great Cozy Powell, Zak Starkey,
Ed Thigpen and Pete York, making it the best of the four here. Not to take away from the other sets, but you
can see why it is on a third volume.
Extras on
The Drum Pad’s 20th
Anniversary includes notes and five video clips, the Holdsworth set has no extras but is the only 16 X 9 anamorphically
enhanced (1.78 X 1) , Heads Up has
three bonus performances and Pete York Three
has three interview clips with Pete. Holdsworth and Pete York Three offer Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes and York adds PCM 2.0
16/48 Stereo. The rest are Dolby Digital
2.0 and all have some sonic limits and even muddy bass issues.
Fans will
enjoy all of it, but I found all the sets a bit uneven. However, you can’t go wrong, especially with
the York set and any should be enough banging and clanging to make the
percussion-lover happy.
- Nicholas Sheffo
