Ehwmatt wrote:Ok here it is, song-by-song... gonna be relatively long, bear w/ me. First, a few general comments:
Audio: Sounds good... not awesome like the Rush DVDs or Birtles Shorrock Goeble - Full Circle Live, but nothing to get picky about either. Just solid all-around. Backing vox seemed to be very much in the background... but maybe that's just me. No complaints about the audio here.
Video: Looks great, no complaints at all. They sure do avoid filming much of Ross's craggy mug though... he's barely on there at all! I did find a few of the Neal angles to be darker than the other angles of the other band members like a few have pointed out... but nothing terrible. The angles on Deen when he's singing are great.
A couple of comments to the comments. Recorded and filmed well. You can tell they put some money into this one. Manufactured cheap however. Even in SD, the RED cameras should be downright impressive. With a 6Mbps bitrate, you aren't getting what they paid to film this. Basically, in plain English, the transfer is pretty poor. It would have looked a lot better on a dual-layer single dvd, but it wouldn't be $10 then. Hard to be picky about the value for money, but hopefully, this will get a Blu-Ray release, as the dvd release could have been a LOT better.
As far as the audio goes, acceptable without being mind-blowing. Not bad, but not great. The 2001 dvd sounded better. Would like the audience and backing vocals slightly higher in the mix, but that's Kevin Shirley for you. It tends to work against itself with the low audience parts in the sections where they are trying to work the crowd. You can't hear the response, even though you can read lips and know it was there.
Ehwmatt wrote:Setlist: A very satisfying setlist, lots of new stuff, some classics like WYLAW and Edge of the Blade etc. I wouldn't have minded seeing a few more pre-1980 tracks on here and perhaps Higher Place and Chain Reaction, but this is a good collection of songs.
One More or Higher Place would have been nice also, but that's being picky. There's some nice deep cuts with 7 new songs, and 25 songs total. Hard to complain too much here.
Ehwmatt wrote:Ok, song-by-song breakdown:
2. Never Walk Away - One of my faves from Rev. Arnel sounds horrendous on this song though! Shocking, considering he's the one who recorded it. Strained, diction issues all over the place, and pitchy. The Rev DVD version is far superior. 3/10
yep. Too much adrenalin will do that. He sounds much better starting with song #2. Hard to blame him for getting hyped to the max for this concert, but that's inexperience showing. Kudos to them for leaving it as is. Most bands would have cut it or overdubbed or something. Nice to get a warts and all performance in this day and age.
Ehwmatt wrote:6. Keep On Runnin - Not a favorite of mine, but I really enjoyed this version with Deen taking vocal duties. I'll listen to it again. 8/10
Pretty good. Deen's straining a bit here for whatever reason, but he's pretty solid overall both vocally and on drums.
Ehwmatt wrote:22. DSB - Absolutely dreadful! Arnel sounds like he swallowed a bag of nails on the first couple lines. They REALLY did make this 100% live
. It really sounds terrible. Arnel trying to adlib over the extended outro comes off as a drunken karaoke attempt too. Adlibbing and improvising on the melody/words are just not Arnel's strengths, not even close... I guess that's where not being a native speaker really kills him. That was Augeri's arrangement and he owned it. This is not good. 0/10
I think you are hearing pure Arnel and very little Perry on this one. On the Revelation dvd, that was one of his first shows and he was sticking pretty close to Perry. A year later, a lot of his vocal melodies and phrasing has changed. He's singing the song, not copying Perry. Some will like it, some won't.
As far as the adlibs go, I think he's getting better, but hasn't had much experience at all with it. Beyond that, you just have to accept that Arnel isn't going to deliver a studio copy of melodies every time when singing live. He improvises a lot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Perry certainly didn't stick to the studio version either. Most people get better over time, and I'm seeing improvement.
Ehwmatt wrote:24. LTS - I won't even watch this song, I hate it. No rating.
Not my favorite either by a long stretch, but it actually came off pretty good. Sometimes, it sounds dragging. This time, it was pretty good. I still maintain the massively sped up version from the Frontiers & Beyond concert (Philly '83) was the best rendition as it actually had some life.
Ehwmatt wrote:Side note: It's a hell of a long concert and I don't wanna get greedy, but would it have killed them to include some extras? They were over there for two weeks... what about a tour documentary? A tour of Neal and Jon's music rigs? An interview with the band? Don't put it past these guys to try and milk us and come out with a special edition of this DVD, especially if it's ever going to come to Blu-Ray as well.
Like I said, cheap release from the Walmart side of things. Easy money in, easy money out. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of documentary or variation thereof got filmed at some point. It just wasn't going to get released on a $10 bare-bones concert. Still, hard to complain with a long, uncut set with few--if any--overdubs.
Overall, it's better than the Revelation dvd as Arnel hadn't quite gelled with the band (5th show or something?!? No real surprise...). It's also certainly better than the somewhat lifeless 2001 dvd. Augeri had some great shows. That wasn't one of them. Crowd was dead also. A pro-shot Arrival tour video would have been much better. I'd still like to see the Generations dvd, for the 1st half of the show if nothing else, but that looks pretty unlikely.
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and the crowd certainly liked them. Nothing to be ashamed of here.
