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Long familiar to fans via bootlegs and viral videos, Nirvana's
historic headlining stand at England's 1992 Reading Festival finally sees
authorized release in this DVD and CD package, presenting the complete Aug. 30
set from start to finish. For an iconic band whose actual life span was brief,
Reading has long been cited as both zenith and milestone, a creative peak that
also punctuated their rapid elevation from club denizens to festival
headliners.
The concert, clocking in at more than 90 minutes, punches
through signature songs dominated by "Nevermind," the commercial
breakthrough released the previous year, while playing off the young trio's
conflicting emotions regarding their newly minted stardom. That ambivalence
begins with front man Kurt Cobain's infamous entrance via wheelchair, wearing a
hospital gown, lampooning rumors about his frail health; in a mordant pantomime,
he collapses onstage before launching the show in earnest with a blistering
performance of "Breed." What follows is a furious, squalling set that
juggles bruising rock firepower with the underlying lyricism of Cobain's
writing.
The no-frills stage craft focuses solely on the music, and a
careful video restoration matched to audio transferred from multitrack masters
erases memories of murky bootleg albums and shadowy video excerpts that preceded
this release. The companion CD reproduces all but one of the songs on the full
concert DVD, which joins the ranks of the best rock concert documents ever.
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| Béla Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart |
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Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck "brings the banjo back to Africa"
in this visually ripe, frequently moving documentary directed by his
half-brother, Sascha Paladino, tracing Fleck"s mission to explore the African
heritage of an instrument long identified with white Southern musicians. For
Fleck, a bluegrass veteran who long ago cast his stylistic net far beyond
Appalachia, the solution was a pilgrimage from Uganda to Tanzania, Gambia and
Mali, taking the time to immerse himself in local musical traditions.
Soft-spoken and self-effacing, he spends more time listening than talking before
he gently insinuates his own instrument into the diaspora of styles that emerge.
Whether playing with un-self-conscious Ugandan villagers or Malian idol Oumou
Sangare, a true diva of world music, Fleck is an empathetic collaborator as he
threads his way from jubilant communal music-making to the piercing melancholy
of Ms. Sangare's singing. World music fans will be mesmerized, although the
gentle pace and the putative star's deference to native cultures may seem
underwhelming to more casual viewers. Look (and listen) closely, however, and
you'll find deep feeling in this vital music as well as in Fleck's emotional
investment.
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| Duran Duran: Hammersmith ’82! |
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Another entry in the DVD/CD combo category, "Hammersmith
'82!" is a sleekly packaged memento tied to the recent deluxe reissue
for "Rio," the sophomore album that clinched Duran Duran's ascendance as
global pop heartthrobs for the mid-'80s. At the time of the original concert,
the Birmingham quintet was already a homeland sensation but had yet to break
through in the United States, where it would take remixes, a dance floor focus
and MTV to break the band. From the delirium triggered here, however, it's
obvious that the "Fab Five" had found their fan base with their stylized,
fashion-forward pop-rock vision, one audibly modeled on Roxy Music and Bowie,
and tailored for music videos. Modern-day fans may swoon at the one-two opening
punch of "Rio" followed by "Hungry Like a Wolf," and savor a crisp audio mix
that nevertheless sounds, at times, oddly detached from the live
action.
Video quality for the concert footage, presented in a traditional
4:3 aspect ratio, is also comparatively grainy, although it's a safe bet that
disappointed videophiles will be far outnumbered by Duranies reliving their
early MTV-fueled fantasies. The concert performances, duplicated on the
companion CD, are augmented on DVD with six of their best-known music videos
from the "Rio" era plus Top of the Pop performances for "Hungry Like a Wolf" and
"Rio."
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| ZZ Top: Double Down Live -- 1980 * 2008 |
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This two-disc set takes its title from the Texas trio's most
recent tour, but on DVD the net effect is closer to one-and-a-half down, and
tied more to the past than their present despite that connection. The first disc
serves up a generous 1980 set driven by stripped-down, tongue-in-cheek blues
rock tuned to a steady rumble through early staples such as "Tush" and "La
Grange," then customized with a self-mythologizing humor ("Cheap Sunglasses,"
anybody?) they'd soon kick into overdrive (and often overkill) with their MTV
era crossover. At this juncture, though, lead singer and guitarist Billy Gibbons
and his front-line partner, bassist/vocalist Dusty Hill, confined the visual
shtick to untrimmed beards and some loosely synchronized footwork, letting the
focus stay on their sturdy playing. The video transfer betrays the lower
resolution of its original source, but the overall camera work and audio are
fine.
Disc 2, however, updates the band to no advantage with a
comparatively slapdash array of recent live performances and documentary clips.
If the newer material was intended to confirm that ZZ Top is still in the game,
it feels more like a holding action that true fans will find superfluous, if not
a crass attempt to wring a few more pfennigs from the customer. To paraphrase
one of their loopiest hits, featured on both discs, the 2008 material is closer
to bad than nationwide.
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| Little Feat: Skin It Back |
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Captured on the 1977 European tour that yielded one of rock's
greatest live albums, "Waiting for Columbus," this concert taped in Essen,
Germany, confirms Little Feat's abundant talent while illustrating the
constraints in translating rock to the boob tube in the era before MTV. Fans of
the Southern Californian band will recognize its most celebrated lineup, the
sextet fronted by canny, charismatic singer, songwriter and guitarist Lowell
George. Feat 2.0 had expanded the original foundations of its founding quartet
with a swampy, second-line pulse spliced from New Orleans funk onto Chicago
blues, an equation that invited their typecasting as a "Southern rock" band
despite their Los Angeles origins.
By the time of this tour, however,
George was retreating from his role as Feat"s auteur, allowing other members to
dial up jazz and even classical elements in their often dazzling instrumental
mix. That sophistication is undercut here by uneven camera work and lighting,
and the audio mixes, while typical of that era, can't approach the celebrated
(and still state of the art) standard achieved on "Columbus." Less
obviously, the program demonstrates from hindsight how '60s and early '70s
stars would be marked for extinction in the MTV age through their focus on
musical craft and indifference to fashion. Granted they could (and still can)
play rings around the hair bands and synth poseurs yet to come, but they weren't
born for video.
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