Michael Bolton – Live At The Royal Albert Hall (2009/Eagle Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture:
B-/C+ Sound: B Extras: D Concert: D
What can
you say about a singer that ripped off great Black Male Soul singers and would
not admit to it unless he had to pay royalties, took the romance out of Pop
music and is one of the reasons the music industry imploded on itself when it
decided to push music acts with no substance or point to make top dollar before
that strategy backfired? Well, if we are
talking Michael Bolton, you can star
with those points and do an entire essay on the negative effect he has had on
the art form.
After a
not-long-enough absence from the scene, he is back with a hideous new concert Live At The Royal Albert Hall and it
has to be one of the worst uses of that hall in British history. However, despite an educated populace, enough
fans actually paid extraordinary amounts of money for tickets to hear Bolton croak through 19 songs, many of which were not his
and never will be. The trail of audio
terror not so cleverly disguised as music includes:
1)
Soul Provider
2)
Said I Loved You But I Lied
3)
Hope It’s Too Late
4)
To Love Somebody
5)
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay
6)
You Don’t Know Me
7)
Summertime
8)
Fly Me To The Moon
9)
That’s Life
10) Murder My Heart
11) When A Man Loves A Woman
12) How Can We Be Lovers
13) Steel Bars
14) Time, Love & Tenderness
15) Can’t Touch You There
16) Crazy Love
17) Georgia On My Mind
18) How Am I Supposed To Live
Without You
19) Just One Love
Yes,
unlike Celine Dion, he actually butchered two
Frank Sinatra classics. When you’re this
bad, it becomes like a bad version of Name
That Tune, as he also mutilates classics from The Bee Gees, Ray Charles, Otis
Redding and the late, great, underrated Laura Branigan. How Am
I Supposed To Live Without You was her hit first, it is her song and even
by having the bigger hit, he never eclipsed her superior version for one
moment.
As you
can tell, I am not a fan of this so-called vocalist, but somebody still may be,
so before I really tell you what I think, let’s look at the performance of the
two versions being issued of this… concert.
The 1080i
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot all in High Definition and has
some good color (there is a joke there somewhere about Bolton stealing from
real Soul singers, but this is the technical section), but you do get motion
blur, a tiny bit of staircasing and some other flaws throughout. The anamorphically enhanced DVD covers some
of those flaws, but is much softer.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray is better than the
Dolby Digital 5.1 or PCM 2.0 Stereo offered in both editions. The DVD has regular DTS 5.1 that is also
better than the Dolby and PCM options, but is a tad less smooth than the DTS-MA
lossless on the Blu-ray.
Extras
include an interview, two lame Bonus Tracks and superfluous Concert
Countdown. Does this mean he is taking a
rocket ship away from earth when this is all over. If so…
10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5…
- Nicholas Sheffo
