Film Review - Led Zeppelin Celebration Day

I am in a ‘guys book club.’ Here is the way it works – we rotate months, someone picks a theme and a book to go along with it. We don’t read the book and we gather at some place that matches the theme to have a night out. Great concept, huh? We’ve “read” The Killer Angels (paint ball), Rat Pack Confidential (Portland Supper Club crooner night), and Adult Paparazzi - Nude Bowling Issue (bowling – maybe a few of us looked at this book too).

My night was in October, so of course I suggested we all ‘read’ Hammer of the Gods and attend as our event, the one-night-only theater screening of the Led Zeppelin film “Celebration Day.”

For those of you unaware, this is a two-hour concert film that captures the sights, sounds and smells of Led Zeppelin in 2007 when the band reunited for its first full-length concert since 1980 and its third reunion including the atrocious Live Aid appearance and the slightly less than atrocious Atlantic Records 40th anniversary show.

In those latter mini-gigs, the band was woefully under-rehearsed and mainly Page was the weak link. I’ll never forget them getting totally lost in the middle of Kashmir (the song) in the Atlantic records set.

For this 2007 concert, they were incredibly polished, confident and kick ass. I thought the weak link would be Plant, but he sounded great, despite the fact that the band tuned a handful of songs to a lower key to accommodate his voice.

But from the opening chords of Good Times Bad Times, the 16-song set picks up speed like Felix Baumgartner from 125,000 feet (minus the spinning) and just really never stops.

The set list was perfect – a good mix of songs they “had to play” per Plant, such as Stairway, Dazed and Confused, Whole Lotta Love and Rock and Roll, and deep cuts like For Your Life, In My Time of Dying, Trampled Under Foot and Misty Mountain Hop.

The film was all concert – no backstage or backstory, and showed precious little of the audience. It was all about the band and the interplay between all of the musicians

Thankfully John Paul Jones gets as much screen time as Page and Plant (unlike most of the concert videos of Zeppelin), as he is the true secret weapon of that group. In this concert film, you get to see how much he really does in that band.

Jason Bonham did his homework and was fantastic. Page does not quite have his chops back to 70s level but he was impressive nonetheless. If this band had indeed toured, he would have risen to a sick level of playing. But he is clearly confident and digging playing these tunes with his old band again.

In fact there are a lot of smiles all around, nicely captured by the film crew. It’s a real joy to dig this classic band kick ass one last time.

Celebration Day comes out on November 19 in various DVD, CD and Blu Ray formats will extra goodies like footage from the rehearsals. But I have to say, just the two hour concert is worth it.

I found this official video of Kashmir from the film. All of my book club buddies agreed that this song in particular blew everyone away. See what you think:



Here is the full set list:

1. Good Times Bad Times
2. Ramble On
3. Black Dog
4. In My Time Of Dying
5. For Your Life
6. Trampled Under Foot
7. Nobody’s Fault But Mine
8. No Quarter
9. Since I’ve Been Loving You
10. Dazed And Confused
11. Stairway To Heaven
12. The Song Remains The Same
13. Misty Mountain Hop
14. Kashmir
15. Whole Lotta Love
16. Rock And Roll

DVD Review – The Rolling Stones – Some Girls Live In Texas ‘78

As the Stones ponder their 50th anniversary next year, they are re-kindling interest in the band by releasing a deluxe version of their 1978 album Some Girls, remastered (again) and with a full second album’s worth of songs rescued from the cutting room floor. I will review that release soon – but I’ll tell you now that it’s pretty great.

The group also issued a DVD shot in 16mm film of an intimate concert mid-way through the 1978 American tour that I have been watching pretty much non-stop for the past week, called Live In Texas ’78.

The Stones are in top form at this show. The film catches the band on probably its last tour before it got into the big shows with the over the top props and ramps into the audience and all of that. Here it’s a tight five piece with two keyboard players augmenting the sound. And while the band did do some stadiums on the 1978 tour, this show was at a 3,000-seat theater in Fort Worth, Texas.

The set list is exciting. They kick it off with Let It Rock by Chuck Berry and then slide into some older, familiar tunes like All Down the Line and Honky Tonk Women. But then they soon hit the new material, which was from the mostly punk-inspired Some Girls album. Here the band really hits its stride. Jagger straps on a Strat for When The Whip Comes Down and we see Keith cue the bridge when the time is right. Throughout the night, the Stones perform like they still have something to prove. And new band member Ronnie Wood has clearly added some fire to the lineup.

The band does seven of the ten songs on Some Girls, only omitting Lies, Before They Make Me Run and the title track. This is the last tour where they did so much new material live – and per a 2011 interview with Jagger in the DVD bonus goodies, this was unique even on this tour – they did all that new stuff on this night because it was a small show. A big highlight for me is the live version of Just My Imagination – not punk inspired, rather just groovy and rockin.

Despite the tightness of the group, the arrangements on many of the new songs are loose, with solo sections in different places than the album, and Jagger adding extra lines like in Miss You. In fact despite the fact that Miss You was the big single at the time, the song is pretty much an extended jam with Jagger again on guitar, so Keith and Woody take loads of solos, sometimes at the same time!

There is all sorts of shit in this film you’d never see in a concert film today, like a roadie mopping up a spilled drink by the drum riser during All Down The Line. And the hole on the ass of Jagger’s pants that is covered with duct tape during the first few songs but then is gone and it looks like his underwear is hanging out of the hole all night.

Or in Far Away Eyes, when Mick starts the song on piano but after a verse is having problems with it so he moves to the organ and just picks up where he left off. And…why are Bill Wyman’s middle two fingers bound together? That’s another weird little thing on this film. Regardless, he plays great. I always thought he was fairly mediocre but this music shows off his chops. Even on a slow burner like Beast of Burden his parts are moving and melodic. Good stuff.

Where the Ladies and Gentleman film from the Exile tour showcased Mick Taylor pretty much noodling through every song, this concert showcases the emerging guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. Wood is rock solid and is just playing, instead of all the mugging he does these days.

In fact none of the band is mugging. Again, somewhere after this tour they became sort of caricatures of themselves in concert but here they are the real deal. Jagger’s voice is still in that really throaty mode, which he got out of later. It’s evident in Beast of Burden, which is a more aggressive delivery than on the album.

And let’s not forget Charlie Watts – rock solid and probably in his prime here.

After seven new songs in a row, the band shifts back to familiar ground with Love In Vain, an incendiary Tumblin Dice, another Chuck Berry cover, Happy (with Keith on vocal of course) and then the one-two punch of Brown Sugar and Jumpin Jack Flash.

The bonus tracks are interesting but probably only worth one viewing. The aforementioned Jagger interview is good. The band’s 1978 Saturday Night Live performance is on here – all three songs – and it’s just as I remember it. Terrible. The mix sucks, Jagger’s voice is gone and the performances are just poor overall. But Jagger and Dan Aykroyd doing a mock appearance on the Today show is a keeper.

You got a Stones fan you want to dazzle this Christmas? Get them this DVD, and Ladies and Gentlemen. They’ll love you forever.

DVD Review - Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones

The Stones are like cockroaches - they seem to have been around forever and just won't die. Despite the fact that their last truly great album was put out in 1981.

But every few years they churn out a new collection of tunes and hit the road to smash touring records yet again. There are glimmers of greatness - the Shine A Light movie for example has some really cool moments. And if their recent albums were pared down from 15 tracks to the 10 strongest, they'd be pretty good.

But honestly, the band jumped the shark once Keith cleaned up. Coincidence? No idea but I am reading his autobiography and we'll see if I can glean any tidbits for you all.

My favorite era of the Stones is the Mick Taylor era. So I was majorly geeked to get the recently released Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, a concert film from the 1972 Exile on Main Street tour.

This DVD reminds me of why I fell in love with the band in the first place. Charlie and Keith are the tightest rhythm section around. Bill Wyman pumps out some great bass lines. Jagger is at his full-throated screaming pilled-up best. But the real star of the show is Mick Taylor, who basically solos throughout every song, adding those tasty, tasty licks that seem so effortless but add incredibly to the music.

Highlights are the roughly 10-minute Midnight Rambler, Tumbling Dice, Gimmie Shelter and an unreal version of Love In Vain. In his book, Keith talks about how the young pre-fame Stones just wanted to 'be black guys' and play the blues. Later of course they got into other areas but the blues was always their fallback, and Love In Vain is top of the pile here. It does not hurt that Taylor gets two solos - one one slide and one not.

Even tracks like Dead Flowers - a song that seems like a bit of a novelty on the studio release - shine, as Keith and Mick share the mic for the harmonies and Taylor adds tasty leads throughout.

The bonus features include the band rehearsing stuff from Exile to get ready for the tour. That is worth the price of this DVD alone. Unreal.

Watching this DVD made me reach back into the bootleg community and score copies of live shows from 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975 and 1976. There are some real gems out there, people. This band was tight in the 70s, despite the stories of addiction and debauchery. Especially look for the March 1971 Leeds, the October 1973 Brussels, and the July 1972 Madison Square Garden shows. All very good.

And get this damn DVD - it's great! Here is a clip:

DVD Review - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live

A Christmas gift I just cracked open this week was Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live, a four DVD set that features numerous induction speeches, reunions, all-star jams and band performances over the 25 years of the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

The problem with this set is how it is positioned. According to Eric Clapton, hall co-founder Robbie Robertson cajoled Clapton into supporting the hall by saying "Magic happens here."

Well, maybe.

The magical moments touted in the promo for this set all revolve around the all-star jams that inevitably happen at the end of the evenings. "Where else can you see Mick Jagger jam with Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Paul McCartney?"

Well, nowhere else. But the problem is, those all-star jams are train wrecks, every time. They pick a three-chord song that everyone can hack along to. They have 25 guitar players onstage - all huge stars who could rip killer solos under different circumstances but here are all sloppy side-men at best.

A bunch of mega-stars cramped onto a small stage, with no one in charge and no one calling the shots. Of course the singers don't know the words to other stars' songs so you get Springsteen with that apey grin of his looking at Jagger like "Man isn't this awesome?! Hey what's the next line?" Paul Shaffer tries his damnedest to conduct this behemoth into something slightly organized.

Yeah it is awesome - for Bruce. But the rest of us, not so much. So don't buy this for the all-star jams 'cause it's a bunch of hype.

OK I got that off my chest. Now for the good stuff and there is a lot of it.

Predictably the good bits happen when things are a bit more organized. For example, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne with George Harrison's son rip out a fantastic version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Prince (yes, Prince) on lead guitar at the end. I posted that video a while ago here and it is truly, dare I say, magical.

Santana with guest Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac) is unreal. They do Black Magic Woman - a song I grew tired of about 20 years ago - but with Gregg Rolie back on vocals and keys, and Santana doing his usual job of leading his slaying band through a blistering arrangement. It's something I will watch again.

Eddie Vedder fronting the Doors is very cool, as is ZZ Top's set - yep, ZZ Top. In their own words "35 years, the same three guys playing the same three chords." But they are excellent and get two songs on the set where most bands just get one.

Springsteen's set with the E Street Band is high energy and is probably a real treat for Bruce fans, as it's when the group got back together with Bruce after a very long hiatus. Robbie Robertson playing The Weight with Rick Danko and Garth Hudson (and guest Eric Clapton) is nice, but it would have been better had Levon Helm shown up.

An excellent-sounding Crosby, Stills and Nash are joined by Tom Petty, who does a fantastic Neil Young impression on guitar for For What It's Worth. AC/DC deliver a nice Highway to Hell, and Metallica destroys the place with Master of Puppets, complete with two bass players onstage - Robert Trujillo and the man he replaced, Jason Newsted.

Good as they are, the Metallica bit underscores another issue I have with these shows. They are not in a concert hall. They take place in what looks like a banquet hall. The whole floor is loaded with round dinner tables with tuxedo'd industry luminaries and Yoko Ono seated, and anyone else who ponied up $15,000 a head or whatever.

That is a rough crowd to play for. Only a few performers are able to get everyone out of their seats -- a feat in and of itself became some of the attendees look old enough to require help to stand upright from a seated position. I wonder if that is why REM's Peter Buck literally throws his amp offstage at the end of Man On The Moon - a weird moment and not magical at all.

There are a lot of cool behind the scenes bonus clips like John Fogerty walking Springsteen and Robertson through old CCR songs he hadn't played in years. Cool footage of Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart talking to Paul Kantner, Jack Cassidy and Jorma Kaukonen before the Jefferson Airplane takes the stage. To say Kaukonen looks nervous is a vast understatement! Someone get him a bag.

The bonus footage also includes many complete induction speeches such as Pete Townsend lobbing insult after insult as he inducts the Stones. Or Paul McCartney inducting John Lennon, looking very out of place as he takes credit for everything from the Beatle haircut to introducing John to Yoko. But I watched all the bonus footage too, because I love shit like this.

One last gripe -- no matter how good Springsteen is, he is the Phil Collins of the R&R Hall of Fame. Meaning, he is ubiquitous and jams with - oh, everybody. Let's vary it up a bit, huh?

So in sum -- I will watch about half of these performances again and the other half I will skip. If you can get this set at a discount, it's worth it for the handful of great moments. But don't buy the hype - it ALL ain't magical.

DVD Review - The Joshua Tree Bonus DVD - 1987 in Paris

Got the remastered The Joshua Tree box set as an early Christmas present to myself. Take that Santa!

It has a second CD of unreleased nuggets and a bonus DVD. The remaster sounds great, and the bonus disc is pretty cool too, but I was not as blown away as I was with the Unforgettable Fire bonus CD. The only two great bonus tracks are Spanish Eyes and The Sweetest Thing, and the latter has been released in other places.

But man, the DVD alone is worth the money.

First up, there is a 30 minute or so featurette about the band in America on the Joshua Tree tour. It’s kind of a precursor to the Rattle and Hum movie, which I am not a huge fan of. But this documentary is a bit more real, with some of what looks like Super 8 footage, and loads of shots of them hanging around in dive bars in Arizona and Texas. There is a great segment where they are onstage in some shithole bar, drunk, just farting around making stuff up. There is some great rehearsal and concert footage as well.

It’s a compelling watch. They are not mega-superstars yet, but damn close. And it feels like they know it. But they are also still Irish kids in their 20s freaking out on how massive America is.

But the real standout on the DVD is the concert from July 4, 1987 in Paris at the Hippodrome, which looks like it’s full of a city’s worth of people. It’s an ocean of hands. Here, I was blown away by how good of a live band U2 was during this era. I always slagged them in high school as not being good musicians but once again I stand corrected. The band is solid and most refreshingly rocking.

Edge totally kicks ass. His guitar tones are biting and he often carries the whole band musically. This was the era where Bono would wear a guitar that he never played. He also is doing his crazy LiveAid stuff like jumping into the filming pit and running around where the roadie has to chase him with his cable so he has a mic the whole time. I guess cordless mics were not reliable yet. And if you want to see how Edge plays Bad, they zoom in on his hands a few times. Nice for the guitar players in the audience!

It’s so great to hear the band do nothing but stuff from the first five albums. To hear them do I Still Haven’t Found What I'm Looking For before they had played it a million times, or stuff like Trip Through Your Wire or Party Girl, which I can’t imagine stayed in the set list past this tour.

The band is in its prime. The songs are great. They are still playing with passion and fire, but they are also about to the top of the top and are therefore very confident and are stretching a bit.

I was actually shocked at how rocking they were. I am so sick of With or Without You but the song was so new at the time, this live version almost makes me want to hear it again. Bono in particular sings it like his life depends on the performance, instead of singing it because they can’t NOT play the song at a concert anymore.

Interesting to see Edge play piano, on for example October, Running to Stand Still, and The Unforgettable Fire. And for the closing song, 40, Edge plays bass and Adam Clayton does a nice Edge impression getting some good echo-drenched chordal work in. Who’d have thunk it?

There are great gorgeous performances of The Unforgettable Fire and Bad. New Years Day and Electric Co have a really fresh energy. New Years Day shows what a tight, rocking band they were back then. I am always impressed when Edge jumps from the main piano riff to his guitar solo without missing a beat.

It’s also cool to see how the band takes some of the heavily overdubbed songs from Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree and plays them as a three piece. For the most part it works really well with a couple of exceptions. Pride (In The Name Of Love) does not sound quite as huge as it should.

I’ll tell you what there is very LITTLE of on the DVD – Bono going off on political tangents. Rather, he is smiling a lot, posing like a rock star and kicking major vocal ass. Again, I feel like they are still a bit hungry but also on that total precipice of an insane level of fame. They are not yet jaded or laden with the ‘social responsibility’ that came with being good famous, rich Christians. One notable exception - I can see those fighter planes!

But in general, at this concert U2 is not concerned with saving the world. They are more concerned with rocking the house. And I am really glad someone got it on film.

Here is a clip of Bad from the DVD:

Sort of DVD Review - David Gilmour at Royal Albert Hall

This is a "sort of" review because a buddy loaned me just the bonus DVD and I have not seen the actual concert DVD. This bonus DVD is loaded with songs from other gigs on the tour and a very good film about the On An Island tour in general. I wanted to suggest watching this bonus DVD for a few reasons:

--There is a very interesting encounter with Roger Waters that is captured on film. This is after the Live 8 reunion but they sure still don't seem very comfortable around each other.

--The film reinforces what I already thought, which was that On An Island is a return to pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, mood-wise. The tour is also a showcase for Rick Wright, who plays better than ever and is shown in the most light-hearted manner I have ever seen in a film. He always seemed cautious and guarded but not here. Given that he dies the next year, it's a bittersweet observation but still worth watching.

--The guest appearances are very interesting. David Bowie, Nash, Crosby etc. Makes me want to watch the actual concert to see how they performed. The backstage stuff in the bonus film is fun. Bowie is a kick.

--Gilmour comes off as a very cool dude. For example, at some point on the tour, people start futzing around with playing wine glasses at a restaurant. One thing leads to another and some of the band plays the keyboard parts to Shine On on wine glasses at a festival gig in front of thousands of fans, as a dare by Gilmour, and it takes a life of its own from there.

Gilmour also decided to bust into On The Turning Away at a show, but fails to tell the rest of the band, some of whom have never played the song before. Hearing a bootleg of it recently, it's classic. Gilmour forgets the end of the second verse and starts laughing on the mic. Come to think of it, like Iron Maiden with A Matter of Life and Death, Gilmour decides to do his whole new album live on this tour, despite the fact that everyone wants to hear old Floyd hits. He busts out oldies like Echoes, Fat Old Sun and Wots...Uh the Deal. Good for him. Very few bands have the balls to do that. Porcupine Tree is doing it now with their new album The Incident.

Anyway, this has been out for a while but if you haven't seen it and you dig Gilmour or old Floyd, check it out. It's a good bookend with the Live at Gdansk CD/DVD from the end of this same tour, which I reviewed here.

DVD Review - Iron Maiden Flight 666

Despite the Iron Maiden Flight 666 filmmaker's contention that Iron Maiden is a private group who hasn't granted behind the scenes access to film crews, I feel like the band has released a number of excellent documentaries.

My favorite being Iron Maiden: The Early Days, and the Classic Album series episode on the making of the Number of the Beast.

But I have a new favorite, and (wait for it)...it's Iron Maiden Flight 666. This nearly two hour film documents the first leg of the band's 2008 worldwide tour bringing the rich Powerslave era show to 5 different continents over a month and a half via the band's plane, Ed Force One. Piloted by singer Bruce Dickinson.

There a few unique angles here. It is the first time any tour has combined the band, crew and gear on one vehicle (the plane) for travel. Usually the band and crew travel separately, mostly for logistical reasons.

And I am pretty sure it's the first time the lead singer flew the plane...

Putting the tour together this way enabled the band to visit countries it had never (or rarely) played in, like India, Costa Rica and Argentina. In the film, Dickinson says they told the booking guy to string together all the countries that the accountants have always said they couldn't play, because they were too out of the way and would therefore cost too much.

The story of how the tour went from a crazy idea to reality is really interesting.

But then there is the whole story of how fanatical the fans in these countries are. Especially India, Central and South America, who don't get a lot of big name touring bands rolling through. These fans go absolutely bugshit and the live scenes from these shows are unreal. A bonus DVD has a complete concert from the tour. But each song is filmed in a different country. People love their Maiden and it's an emotional watch.

There is some behind the scenes stuff too, like what the guys do on their rare days off (golf, tennis and soccer), and there are short segments on each band member, as told by their bandmates. And the obligatory, "Iron Maiden has sold more than 70 million albums with no radio or TV support, blah blah."

If you are a fan of Maiden, rock, or even just rock documentaries, this is a must-add to your collection.

Scream for me, Santiago!

DVD Review - Rush Snakes and Arrows Live

Spring finally sprung in Portland and this weekend we had weather in the mid 80s with full sun. But sadly, I spent all day Sunday on my back in bed with some kind of stomach bug I caught from my oldest son (thanks, Alex).

The one semi-productive thing I did all day was to crawl out of bed long enough watch the Rush live Snakes and Arrows DVD I got for Christmas but totally forgot about.

I have been going over the numerous Rush bootlegs I pulled off the Web. I mostly opted for pre-1980 tours, where they were in screaming good form, but still very raw. You know, the tours where they would still do all of 2112 and Hemispheres in the same gig.

So watching this Snakes and Arrows DVD with all of those old bootlegs in the back of my head, I have to say the band has for sure returned to the power of their early years. The new songs are so riff-heavy, and even older stuff like Digital Man and yeah even Mission, are far heavier than their originals.

But it's a rawness with the precision that only comes with being as good as Rush and playing for 30 years. The whole first set, Lifeson plays every song on a Les Paul. It's so refreshing to hear how pummeling a song like Limelight can be when its played on a Gibson instead of the various Fenders, PRS' etc that he's used. The dude is a total master.

Geddy's voice sounds great, and aside from the newer stuff, there seems to be far fewer pre-programmed sound bites humming along in the background. The DVD is also filmed from a musician's standpoint. Many, many closeups of fret work and drum fills shot from above the drum kit. Need I say that Neil is flipping sick on those drums?

There are also some hilarious bonus features - little "You-Tube worthy" skits featuring Geddy Lee as the Scottish "Harry Satchel" driving a delivery truck looking for chicken, when Alex Lifeson as a gut-bustingly ODD Mountie pulls him over.

I don't care if you already have the 3 DVD re-release of the 80s live videos, Rush in Rio and R30 - If you are a fan, get this DVD.

Oh and if you haven't seen this yet, dig this 1979 performance of La Villa Strangiato. This is the kind of stuff I am digging up in my quest for bootlegs:

DVD Review - The Who at Kilburn 1977

The Who at Kilburn is actually a double DVD with two concerts. One DVD has the Who live in 1969 at the London Coliseum and the other is the advertised 1977 gig filmed on a soundstage for the movie The Kids Are Alright but scrapped by the band due to the performance quality.

Both of these concerts are amazing and are a must have for any fan of the Who. Let’s start with the 1969 show. This is actually the second DVD and is cited as ‘bonus material’ on the box. I think that highly undersells what you get with this set. Yeah, the film quality is not that great – it’s similar to the footage of Young Man Blues in The Kids Are Alright movie. It’s dark and since the concert was never intended to be released on film, there are moments of blackness on the stage and funky camera angles.

The first song looks kind of like a fan video on YouTube. Then the other cameras kick in and we have multiple angles and close ups. But who the hell cares? This DVD captures the Who on the cusp of their prime. The band had only been performing Tommy live for a few months. They are broke, young and hungry. They are not yet mega-stars and indeed it was just before this period where drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle were going to quit the band and join Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in their new supergroup.

Put simply, the 1969 show is The Who at their very best. Moon is in full tilt, twirling his sticks and generally putting on the most incredible show. I have never seen anyone play drums like that before or since. Pete is in the white boiler suit playing the Gibson SG, Daltry in the fringe jacket, etc. If you like Live At Leeds, the 1969 DVD is basically that album on film.

Note that to see the whole of Tommy and A Quick One you need to access the bonus features on this DVD. There are a lot of camera and audio gaps, so it looks like the directors wanted to keep Tommy as a whole out of the main DVD program. A bit confusing, but if you get annoyed that Tommy picks up near its completion in the main concert, just access the bonus features!

In general, the Tommy stuff is out of control and other high points are Young Man Blues, and a totally heavy Happy Jack. And a final note – the band’s vocal harmonies are prevalent and very tight in this period.

Then we also get the 1977 Kilburn show, which is really the focus of the DVD.

This is the same band 8 years later, but are they really the same? They are now rich and famous. Punk is in full force and the Who are seen by some in this new movement as dinosaurs of the same ilk as Yes and ELP. The band has nothing left to prove but is still trying to remain relevant.

Compounding this problem is that Keith Moon, a central power in the Who's live show, is a shadow of his former self. The last 14 months, he has been in California, partying and not playing drums. He is overweight and is lacking the confidence on display in the 1969 show.

Sure enough, the first thing Daltry says onstage is that the band hasn't played in more than a year so he's not sure what is going to happen.

Having said all of this, I don't think the band disappoints. Yeah, there are a few train wreck moments where Moon comes in at the wrong place, and one spot where Pete gets totally lost. But it's great to see the band this raw and this human.

I actually feel like Moon is more on the ball in this show than he is at the show filmed six months later that was used in The Kids movie (Baba O'Reilly and Won't Get Fooled Again). On this latter show, Townshend is certainly more on the ball. He is smiling and clowning during the songs in the Kids film.

In the Kilburn film, he is surly. He does not look happy to be onstage and there is a classic moment where he goes back to turn his amps up and a roadie interferes. Pete throws a tantrum and shoves his Hi-Watt amps backwards off the speakers. The hair stood up on my arms when he did that.

The song choices are great in the Kilburn concert. Some of the standouts are My Wife, Dreaming from the Waist, Shakin All Over and a really rough keyboard-less version of Who Are You, which the band was just learning.

Despite the weird energy onstage, the band is seriously on fire. Yeah it's raw, but it's LIVE. Daltry's voice is still raging, and Entwistle does not disappoint either. I still found myself focusing on Moon. Even though he was not up to his prime, he is still unreal. And frankly, a pissed off Pete is a great Pete live.

These two concerts could not be more different from one another. In 1969, you have a young, hungry and broke band, still really trying to prove itself. In 1977, you have a bloated supergroup trying to prove it is still valid. It is fascinating to watch live footage from both of these periods.

Here is the trailer:

Classic Album Series - Deep Purple Machine Head

Last night on VH1 Classic, I caught the Classic Album Series episode on the making of Deep Purple's Machine Head album. It was their breakthrough release that had Smoke on the Water, Space Truckin' and Highway Star - all Purple staples - as well as the lesser known but very killer Pictures of Home, Maybe I'm A Leo and Lazy.

The recording of the album is laid out well in the song Smoke on the Water, but is re-told in much more detail in the hour long episode. The band was looking for a place to record its next release, and they wound up in Switzerland to record at a casino, using the Rolling Stones mobile studio truck to capture the sound.

One of the really cool things the Stones did in the 70s was to embrace this idea of the mobile recording studio - a truck that had all of the recording equipment (board, tape decks, associated gear) - that could be set up literally anywhere, effectively turning that spot into a recording studio. Want to record in a field? Roll the truck up and you're set.

So Purple just had to find the right location. But the casino that they booked burnt down during a Frank Zappa show the night before they were supposed to record (check the lyrics in Smoke on the Water for the details).

They wound up in the Grand Hotel in Montreux, which was shut down for a few weeks and they took it because it was the only thing available. It was gray and dingy inside, and they wound up setting up in basically a hallway. To get back to the truck to hear playbacks, they had to go all the way to the other side of the hotel, including walking on parts of the roof outside, over scaffolding, through the snow etc., so they tended to trust their producer Martin Birch's ear and not bother.

They had three and a half weeks to finish the album so they were under the gun. All the songs were recorded live with no overdubs. If they made a mistake, they did the song over from scratch.

All five of the Purple members are interviewed in the show, which is interesting because guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has been on the outs for more than ten years, replaced by Steve Morse, who apparently is much easier to get along with.

The stories behind how some of the songs were written is the key to the whole episode. People brought in bits and pieces and they were all built upon. Keyboardist Jon Lord shows how he gets his MEAN Hammond tone - instead of running the Hammond through the rotating Leslie speaker that everyone uses, he fed it into a Marshall amplifier. When you hear those keyboard parts isolated, they sound like heavy guitar parts.

In fact I realized that Jon Lord is the key to that band's sound. The editor of Guitar Player Magazine is interviewed in the show and he notes that the difference between Purple and other heavy bands of the era like Sabbath and Zeppelin was that Purple had a heavy full-time keyboard player. He's right! Outside of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman (and maybe The Band's Garth Hudson), who else was playing keyboards like this back in the late 60s/early 70s?

The album (and this episode) also highlight that Deep Purple was primarily a live band. They excelled at jamming and playing off of each other - sadly a lost art today.

In fact, when I saw the reunited version of this Purple lineup in the 80s, I noticed that they did more jamming onstage than I had ever seen.

One funny personal story comes to mind. My friend Bill and I saw the band at the Shoreline on the House of the Blue Light tour (where Bad Company opened). During one of the jams, Blackmore was messing with the tuning on his guitar. He then worked something out with bassist Roger Glover where they traded instruments in a jam (in front of about 20,000 people).

He handed his guitar to Glover and started playing Glover's bass over by Jon Lord while the two watched Glover move to center stage to take a solo. After noodling for a minute, Glover looked at Blackmore with a "what the hell" look and Lord and Blackmore started laughing. Basically Blackmore had thrown his guitar totally out of tune and then handed it to Glover, who had no idea. Nice practical joke in front of a sold out crowd!

Anyway, I am not sure if VH1 cut any parts out of the episode to fit it into an hour slot, but what I saw was very enlightening. To give an example of how killer the band was in the 70s, check this out:

DVD Review - The Who Tommy Live

I recently got the triple DVD set "The Who - Tommy and Quadrophenia Live."

Honestly, I bought it for the Quadrophenia disc (which I have not watched yet and will review separately). I saw the "Who Review" tour in 1989, from which this Tommy performance is taken. I remember hovering over my stereo to capture the New York tour premiere, which was simulcast live on the radio and was the band's first full performance of Tommy in more than 15 years.

It was a mind blowing experience. Remember, Pete's hearing was reportedly totally shot, so when Daltry started the show with "Can we have a little quiet?" I thought he was going to ask the crowd to not be too over the top due to Pete's ears. Which would have been a deal breaker. But he instead said, "Like Keith Moon used to say, 'Have a little respect. It's a FUCKING OPERA!'"

And with that, the band launched into the Overture.

Now, I saw the band twice on this tour and was NOT a big fan of the giant lineup - four horn players, three back up singers etc. Lame shit. But that lineup actually lent itself really well to Tommy.

So, back to the DVD. The band played Tommy all the way through only twice on this tour. The New York show I just mentioned, and a show in Los Angeles, captured on this DVD. At all the other shows on this tour, including the ones I saw, they did a stealthy portion of Tommy, but not the whole shebang end to end.

The trouble with this DVD is that the LA show had guest stars. Steve Winwood doing Eyesight to the Blind; Patty LaBelle doing Acid Queen; Billy Idol doing Cousin Kevin. Phil Collins as Uncle Ernie; Elton John as Pinball Wizard. Blech. I so would have preferred the New York show on DVD, where there were no guests.

So I was kind of underwhelmed by this DVD for all of those reasons: not a big fan of this lineup, the guest stars, Daltry's horrible haircut and earring.

But then I noticed that there was a DVD bonus option of running commentary by Daltry and Townshend from 2005. The concert plays in the background and these two pop up on screen to talk about all sorts of things. This bonus feature saved the disc for me as we hear all sorts of nuggets about the tour, how Pete wrote Tommy, etc. Some examples:

--Pete admits the whole 1989 tour was put together so they could make mounds of cash.

--Daltry hated the big band format as much as I did, and Pete admits it wasn't really a rock show, but more of a music revue doing Who tunes. He was very insecure musically and added all of those band members to help him out.

--They had no idea if Elton John was going to show up to that LA show until he appeared onstage. He missed rehearsal and soundcheck. And you can hear the difference in Pinball Wizard as they lowered the key dramatically for him.

--Townshend asked bassist John Entwistle to write the Tommy songs about child abuse (Cousin Kevin and Fiddle About) because he couldn't touch those topics due to his own experience of abuse as a child.

--Daltry hated the guest stars at the LA show as much as I did because they took the best songs to sing and he was sort of relegated to stand around in the back a lot.

--Pete talks about the writing of Tommy song by song as the concert unfolds. It is fascinating to hear him go over the storyline in such depth and to hear what his thought process was. I learned a lot. For example, he talks about how the piece reflects a lot of what the Europe post-war generation was going through (Roger Waters explores this throughout his career as well), and how that related to the Vietnam era, etc. Lots of good info.

So, in all, I'd recommend this disc as a pretty good live version of Tommy, but more so for the insight you get from Daltry and Townshend throughout.

Looks like the Quadrophenia concert from 1996 has the same commentary option. But I saw that tour as well and am really jazzed about seeing the live version, so I have a feeling I will like that DVD more overall. They lumped the non-Tommy and Quadrophenia tour songs on a third DVD, which I have not watched yet.

DVD Review - Help!

Being the good rock and roll dad I am, I have exposed my kids to the classics, as appropriate (KISS, Maiden, The Stones – you get it).

In terms of The Beatles, which is easy listening for everyone, they have heard most of the bands’ repertoire in the car and at home, and even own some of their own CDs.

We got Yellow Submarine when it was re-issued on DVD a few years ago, and a recent fave has been A Hard Day’s Night. I thought that the movie they would really enjoy was Help! But as hard as I tried, I could not find it on DVD. It was crazy to me that it hadn’t been released, but lo and behold, the only copies available were crappy bootlegs.

But now it has finally been reissued, all cleaned up and with a bonus disc. And it has become an instant favorite of the boys. They actually agree on wanting to watch it, which is a small miracle over here.

I had not seen the movie in many years. It used to run on TV about once a year when I was a kid (like The Wizard of Oz and Jesus Christ Superstar), but since then it’s been tough to find a showing.

The movie itself looks fantastic. They did a bang up job cleaning up the original, but more on that later.

The plot is actually pretty bogus. You can see how The Monkees’ managers based that whole band and television series on this movie. There are a couple of very Monty Python-esque moments too, years before MP was around.

The shots of the band miming the songs are pretty cool, though, and I remember the in-studio version of “You’re Gonna to Lose That Girl” from when I was a kid. It hasn’t lost its magic. It’s a great clip.

The bonus disc is a nice addition. You have interviews with the director, Dick Lester, and many of the actors, who fondly reminisce about making the film. No big surprises unless you didn’t already know that the band couldn’t remember its lines, never for a second thought they were real actors, and smoked truckloads of weed while making the movie.

The Beatles are still having a lot of fun in this period, obviously. They are a bit past the moptop stage and are about to get into the Rubber Soul – Revolver era, which is my favorite. It’s fun to see them on the cusp of that.

The other great piece of bonus material is an overview of how the film was restored. The production company that did this work goes over the whole process, from getting the films in shape, digitizing them and then how they fixed all the imperfections without altering the intent of the director. It’s pretty fascinating. The work was painstaking and they’d only get perhaps a minute of the film restored in a whole days’ work.

But it was well worth it, as the movie really pops off the screen. It’s a fun flick, as well as a historical document of where the Beatles were at in 1965.

Video clip of "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" from Help!

DVD Review - Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll

At some point when I was a teenager, I went backwards from my comfort zone of 60s and 70s music to check out the founders of rock and roll. I guess it was because I was such a Beatles and Stones fan and I knew that their big influences were 50s rockers like Chuck Berry, Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc.

I mean, I loved The Beatles' version of Rock and Roll Music and The Stones' version of Carol, so why not check out the originals?

Even though my knowledge and appreciation of that music genre was pretty limited, I fell in love with the movie Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll when it came out in the late 80s.

This was the movie that chronicled Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday gig in St. Louis and how Keith Richards put together an all-star band to help him do the thing right. I was captivated by these two generations of legends stuck together on the same project, chronicled warts and all in the movie. I also really liked Chuck Berry as a personality.

So imagine my pyched-ness when I got the four DVD re-issue of the movie. Yep, four DVDs. That’s one movie and three discs of bonus features.

The movie itself is fantastic. I am not even going to review it here beyond pointing out that when I first saw it, I was proud (as a musician) to be part of something started out of such passion, challenge and perseverance. Despite the oddity and enigma that is Chuck Berry, here is a guy who had a vision and made it happen despite severe challenges (mostly race-related). Talk about an uphill battle.

The movie chronicles Chuck’s career but in the context of the whole rigmarole of getting this gig together despite Chuck’s apparent attempts to sabotage it and create problems for everyone!

My favorite part of the film is Keith Richards holding himself back from smashing Chuck’s face as Chuck keeps telling him he’s playing the guitar part wrong on Carol, a song the Stones did way back in the mid-60s! That and when Chuck in the middle of a song in the 60th birthday gig comes up to Keith announcing he’s going to change the key next verse and Keith says ‘no’ with a face that only a zombie could love. I could watch that movie every week…

But where this package shines is in the bonus material.

On the first of three bonus discs, we get a boatload of behind the scenes rehearsal footage.

For a musician who has been in more rehearsals than he cares to remember, I think one of my favorite things is to watch other people rehearse to see what the vibe is, and how they go about doing it. That is why I liked Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster so much. The movie was about them trying to write and record an album in the midst of total personal hell and it was fascinating. And you got to see them play a lot.

This bonus disc has 45 minutes of rehearsal footage, inter-spliced with really insightful commentary by the director and some of the musicians. We see Chuck Berry, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton having a jam with Chuck being the total ringleader. We see Chuck go through some old standards, quiet and pensive, playing on his own until he picks it up a bit and pianist Johnnie Johnson joins in.

Actually, one of my favorite parts is watching Johnnie Johnson. My GOD what a great piano player he was! This guy co-created the genre with Chuck. No doubt about it. Without Johnnie Johnson, Chuck’s stuff would not be nearly as compelling and driving. And they found Johnnie Johnson driving a BUS in St. Louis before he got this gig. His return to fame here is beautiful justice, captured on film.

The other part of this bonus disc is an hour documentary about making the film. By the end, you get the message that the producers came to really despise Chuck. Basically, because he had been ripped off so thoroughly over the course of his career, Chuck tries to wring money out of everyone at every chance possible. This led to him re-negotiating his contract every day of shooting, and not showing up until he received large sums of cash, basically extorting the producers as they tried to make a movie about him.

My favorite bit of this is when he takes off to do a gig at a state fair after springing it on the crew last minute. They tag along and film him in the airport and at the gig. Very cool footage of how Chuck operates. And then due to this side gig, he has no voice for his birthday gig – the cornerstone of the movie. He later has to come to LA to overdub his vocals to the movie, for which he charges the producers yet another sum of cash!

On the second bonus disc, we get a first-hand look into why Chuck is so jaded about money and the man. This disc has Chuck, Little Richard and Bo Diddley sitting around a piano, talking for an hour about how they founded rock and roll, and the racism and rip off’s they had to persevere through.

It’s a hell of a glimpse into history of not only rock and roll, but race relations. The very valid point is made that rock and roll helped break down the barriers between black and white because the kids back then gave less of a shit about black or white. It was the older generation that tried to keep enforcing the color line. And DESPITE that, these young kids (Berry and co.)with everything to lose persevered. I totally take that for granted now but these guys are veritable heroes in terms of race relations.

The third disc also has very cool gab session between Robbie Robertson and Chuck as they go through Chuck’s scrapbook of photos, ticket stubs, posters etc. At first Chuck seems pretty guarded but Robbie is such a cool dude, he has Chuck yapping away in no time. We learn all sorts of stuff, such as about why he’d play first on the bill instead of headlining and who were his musical influences.

We also learn that when Chuck was in prison for three years as a teenager, he found solace in poetry. The last bonus bit on disc 3, called “Chuckisms” has Berry reciting, from memory, wads and wads of poems. Not four lines here and there, but more than five minutes of straight from memory poetry, over Robertson strumming slow chords on an acoustic. Chuck’s face is alight as he rakes these lines from his brain. It’s totally captivating and I found myself thinking again, this guy is an enigma.

This poetry stuff is the missing piece as to where Chuck’s lyrics came from. Check out the lyrics to a 50s era Chuck Berry song. No one told stories like this in rock and roll music back then. It was all about “Whomp Bomp a LuLa” and “Great Balls of Fire.” Chuck’s stuff is downright intellectual! How did he sneak that past everyone? Amazing.

Disc four has more than 3 hours of interviews with many of rocks other founding members that were edited down for the movie - Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison etc. The Jerry Lee Lewis interview is worth the price of the box set alone…

Anyone with 10 free hours (maybe a band on a tour in a bus?) should pore over this four-disc set and see where rock and roll really came from. The rest of us can hit it piece by piece in all of our free time (ha), but it’s worth it.

CD and DVD Review - Heaven and Hell at Radio City

Anyone who read my posting of the Heaven and Hell show earlier this year knows what I think of the Dio-led version of Sabbath. For those who need a reminder, I think it's one of the best hard rock lineups to ever grace the earth. Forget the Ozzy led Sabbath. Just forget it. That version is a whole other thing, great in its own way, and yes, OK they co-founded heavy metal. But the Dio era Sabbath built on those roots and just sledge hammered it out of the park.

The Mob Rules. Heaven and Hell. Children of the Sea. Falling Off the Edge of the World. The Sign of the Southern Cross. Die Young. Neon Knights. Need I go on? Forget about it!

In terms of the show I saw earlier this year, these guys were in fine form, clearly pleased as a cup of Jesus Juice to be playing these classic heavy duty tunes. Not to rest on their laurels, they also played three songs from their 1992 overlooked reunion album Dehumanizer and two of the three brand new songs recorded for the Dio Years compilation CD. Much to my amazement these non-classic numbers fit in with the classics like a hand in a well broken-in studded leather glove.

Now the band's performance at Radio City Music Hall from this tour is out on CD and DVD and needless to say I bought both and whole heartedly recommend that anyone with even a cursory interest in Sabbath or hard rock go out and buy them right now.

I started with the CD. It's excellent. The same set list I saw, plus Lonely Is the Word. Nothing really to say about the CD except it is an accurate sonic snapshot of the kick ass tour. Dio's voice is soaring and powerful, he hits all the notes and just delivers. Iommi and Butler are playing better then ever. It's all there.

These guys sound like they have something to prove and are out to convert the masses, when really they could have just trotted out and farted through it all. They didn't. Oh, and Dio's scream at the start of The Mob Rules made the hair stand up on my arms. I'm not kidding. I actually laughed at how killer some of this stuff was. Iommi plays a LOT of guitar on this tour and the CD performances are blistering. And I am still amazed at how good Geezer is on this stuff.

The DVD is a must have as well. Same audio, obviously, but the company that filmed the thing really understands how to do it right. From a musician's standpoint, you can't beat it. There are loads and loads of close ups of Geezer, Iommi and Appice actually playing. For example, I am thinking, "Here comes that killer Geezer Butler bass fill at the end of the verse in Die Young," and bang, the camera is on his fretboard and you see him do it. Very nice.

I am so sick of DVDs that don't show the band PLAYING. Paul McCartney is the worst offender. His live DVDs are shot after shot of the audience singing along. Kill me now, man.

No, we get to see the prosthetic tips of Iommi's fingers blaze through the riff in Falling Off The Edge of The World. We get to see how fast poor Geezer has to play for all 5 minutes of Neon Knights. We get to see Appice trot out his fills in the new songs. Lots and lots of close ups.

Now if you don't care about this crap, there are loads of shots of the stage from all angles, and plenty of Dio devil horns. That's the one thing - he didn't hold back on his use of the 'horns' and at some points he is a little bit campy. Heavy metal, but campy. Heavy metal campy!

It's the one area where I have a critique of the band. Dio is a little bit on the edge of Spinal Tap with some of his antics and his overall look. My buddy Dave said it best when he said "The whole wispy hair elfin thing just isn't really doing it for me." But, hell, it's Dio. What are ya gonna do? He's always been true to himself, so good for him. I'll accept it.

Side note: You know how Johnny Depp based his character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies on Keith Richards? I think they based Gollum in the Lord of the Rings on Dio. I'm just saying...

Back to the DVD. The audio is great. Geezer is mainly in the left speaker and Iommi is to the right. If you unplug one of your speakers you can hear the other guy shine. I suggest you unplug Iommi's side and bask in the insane talent that is Geezer Butler.

But you will also note when you take Iommi's side out of the mix that there are a lot of keyboards and even some guitar in the background that is being supplied by someone offstage to help fill in the sound. We actually meet this guy in the bonus material. His name is Scott Warren and he's been playing with Dio for years.

The bonus material is pretty good. You get the story of how they got back together and how much they love this music. Iommi says about five times that he was sick of playing the same 10 songs with Ozzy for eight years, and even notes that when the Ozzy reunion started, the shows were two hours but slowly whittled down to an hour or less. He clearly savors this version of Sabbath.

Which makes me wonder what is next? They could easily crank out another album. Or maybe they will let it go for a few more years. For sure there is no bad blood between these four. One can hope they'll do another tour at some point. I'll be there. In the meantime, we have the DVD!