Earth, Wind & Fire In Concert (1982 Eagle DVD/Reissue)

 

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

 

 

In their prime, Earth, Wind & Fire was one of the best live bands around and their reign from 1973 to 1979 made them unstoppable, even during the Disco era.  However, things became dicey by 1980 and the band started to retract in scope, as well as add non-musical concepts that did not help what would be a decline in the 1980s.  Michael Schultz (Cooley High, Car Wash) had worked with the band before on the ill-fated film version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978, The Bee Gees/Peter Frampton bomb) where they were the only beneficiaries pulling off a big hit version of The Beatles’ Got To Get You Into My Life.  Earth, Wind & Fire In Concert was taped in 1982 for cable and it is not the band at its best.

 

Songs include:

 

1)     Let Your Feelings Show

2)     In The Stone

3)     Fantasy

4)     Sing A Song

5)     Reasons

6)     Remember The Children/Where Have All the Flowers Gone/Shining Star/Keep Your Head In The Sky/Devotion

7)     Gratitude

8)     That’s The Way Of The World

9)     I’ve Had Enough

10)  Jupiter (The Battle)

11)  Let’s Groove

 

 

The voices are there, but too often, they are all playing and singing these songs too fast, like they have somewhere else they’d like to be than entertaining the audience and that is opposite of what their reputation had been to that time.  Then they add theatrical bits for which the Peter Gabriel Genesis would have nothing to worry about.  The lamest is the band using the power of audience participation to zap away an evil Darth Vader-like figure (talking poor wrestle speak) looking like a Parliament/Funkadelic version thereof, though the outfit maybe be the actual one used in Brian De Palma’s wacky 1974 Rock Opera The Phantom Of The Paradise, with Paul Williams in the title role.  Either way, it is cheap, cheesy and way below them.

 

Then there is The latest album at the time and its ever-annoying title song, Let’s Groove, a terrible disaster that lead to the end of their chart success and along with one of the worst Music Videos ever made (thankfully not included here) a form of professional career suicide that helped Kool & The Gang overtake them before they self-destructed on non-soul wrecks like Joanna, Misled, Fresh, Cherish and Stone Love.  Get Down On It had more edge that Let’s Groove, both 1982 hits, and that is where the nightmare began.

 

Michael Jackson’s Thriller was also the same year, putting the final nail in the coffin of original R&B that Disco had eroded, so you can imagine that this is an odd concert indeed.  Now, reissued by Eagle as the previous company handling the DVD had to fold, you can see for yourself.

 

 

The 1.33 X 1 videotaped image is soft, hazy, shot on analog NTSC videotape and is just not that good.  The DTS 5.1 and lesser Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes do their best to boost he older stereo, with the DTS a little clearer, but the audio is far from the best the band has sounded between a few SA-CD and one HD-DVD so far.  A weak four-frame bio of the band is the only extra.

 

For the band on HD-DVD (a title soon to be issued on Blu-ray) with Chicago, try this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4968/Chicago+and+Earth,+Wind+&+Fire+–+Live+At+The+Greek+Theater+(HD-DVD)

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo