music concerts

Simon and Garfunkel - The Concert in Central Park
$9.98
Hit the spot with memories of my teen angst and truly beautiful poetry by Paul Simon with music to match. Great to see Simon and Garfunkel together. I have already enjoyed this many times over.

New Orleans Concert - The Music Of America's Soul [HD DVD & DVD Combo] [HD DVD]
$9.99
I purchased this DVD thinking it was a quality video (HD DVD) of New Orleans music. It was not. The production work was very poor and the sound was not the quality one would expect from an HD DVD (for an HD DVD I expected much better quality and attention to detail). I was even disappointed in the performances of the musicians. I am sure the producer of the concert could have found better talent to perform on his stage. This DVD was a great disappointment. In short,I do not recommend this concert or DVD. If you want to hear good New Orleans music, I suggest you save your money and travel to New Orleans.

Legends: Live at Montreux 1997 [Blu-ray]
$24.98
The disc of this show with this band and performance is decent enough to keep, BUT.

This is a Blu-ray disc, the audio MUST be flawless, and is not.

This Blu-ray disc has abundant problems of audio. Video seems fine. The harshiness of the audio recorded from the sax and the electric guitar are overpowering an otherwise balanced piano and bass. The accoustic guitar of Clapton was almost silent in one of the songs, and he was playing most of the song while the camera was filming the silent strings, absolutely ridiculous that a final production was made of these discs without any audio engineer fixing it before the final or dropping the song from the content.

Unfortunately this is a loosely done audio mix show but it is not worth the effort to try to return it, the content is valuable enough to keep it as a good memory.

However, I will think twice about buying anything else from the Recording Label and/or from Live at Montreux series. The reason I say that is because I bought another Life at Montreaux "Ray Charles" Blu-ray disc that shows even worst audio problems to the point of having to trash it.

To keep my comment in perspective, my home theater has about $100K of hi-end audio and video electronics, my system is of excellent quality, and I work with the audio/video industry, but I am not reviewing these products representing the companies I am associated with, they are for personal use, I am just making others aware before they order.

Rush: R30 [Blu-ray]
$24.98
According to the Power Windows website, this reissue of R30 will include the eight songs that were omitted from the original release. Geddy Lee has stated that he thought it was a mistake to have omitted them in the first place. This reissue coincides with the Blu-ray release. While it would have been nice if they had just had the complete concert on the original release, it is nice to see they are finally releasing it now. It will be interesting to see if they include any more bonus features as well, or even include the ones from the original release.