The Sounds Of Purple (Paice Ashton Lord/Ian Gillan Band/Glenn
Hughes/Steve Morse/Umbrella Entertainment/Region Zero/PAL)
Picture:
C/C-/B-/C Sound: B-/C+/B/C+ Extras: B-/C+/C-/C+ Concerts: B-
PLEASE NOTE: These DVDs can only be operated
on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0 PAL
format software and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment
at the website address provided at the end of the review.
Just when I thought we had seen a higher number of Deep
Purple DVDs along with spin-off projects from many members solo and in other
bands, four more concert titles have turned up and none of them are ones we
covered before. To see those and learn
more about the band and some of those side projects, try this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/new/viewer.cgi?search=DEEP+purple
The Sounds Of Purple collects these four concerts and
they are as good as anything we have seen to date on DVD:
Paice Ashton Lord Malice In
Wonderland Live 1977
A fine
concert of the short-lived band is from Sight
& Sound In Concert and runs just over an hour. This is what was left of the band at the
time. A great offshoot, they did not
last long, but are very impressive allover the place here.
Ian Gillan Band Live At The
Rainbow 1977
Nice to
see an earlier performance of the band and a really impressive concert that by
a narrow margin is my favorite of the set here, showing what happened to the
other part of Purple once they imploded.
In both cases, the energy is high and these alone are must-owns for
fans.
Glenn Hughes Live In Australia
2006
With the
best fidelity of the four discs, the concert is not bad and though he has
trouble with his covers of Nights In
White Satin and A Whiter Shade Of
Pale are uneven, things works out.
Steve Morse Cruise Control 1992
This
includes two concerts, a solo show and Dixie
Dregs Live At Toads Place, the latter of which is in DTS and the first of
which is from New York City. They are
both fine concerts, make for a fine pairing and geez, can he play guitar!
The 1.33
X 1 image on Malice is from a
second-generation copy of the PAL taping with aliasing errors and detail issues
throughout, though color cam look good. Gillan also is shot in 16mm and is from
an older analog video copy. Hope film
copies can be found of that and the Lifespan,
documentary for HD playback down the line.
Both Morse shows are taped
and are not first generation by any means, but still watchable. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
Hughes is the best of the DVDs, showing how good such an HD shoot can look in
PAL video above and ahead of NTSC, putting it in a zone between DVD and
Blu-ray, a format this should be issued in.
The DTS
5.0 on Malice is a little better
than the Dolby Digital 5.0, but purists might go for the Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo, which has less mud to it. For Hughes, the DTS 5.1 outdoes the two
Dolby options with ease. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo mixes on Gillan
are even because the audio here is so dated.
Morse has two concerts in
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, while the Dregs show adds DTS 5.1 and Dolby 5.1, but
again, the audio is too old.
Extras on
Malice includes text on the band and
on the documentary Lifespan, which
is also included here in its entirety in an old analog video copy of the 16mm
production. Gillan adds Ray Fenwick and Japan Tour interviews, audio clips
dubbed Rarities sets to a video montage and trailers for four more Rock DVDs
from Umbrella. Hughes extras include
text and stills, while Morse extras
include PDF DVD-ROM image section, stills for both concerts and a really good Guitar Show interview.
As noted above, you can order this PAL DVD import
exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
