At a time when grunge was battling hair-metal for rock and roll supremacy, the Black Crowes were a welcome breath of fresh air on the American rock landscape. Shake Your Money Maker debuted in 1990 and was fueled by the scorching cover of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle", which propelled the album all the way to number four on the Billboard charts. Comparisons to the Faces and early Rolling Stones were immediately flung around, and some went as far as to call the Crowes a cheap imitation. Front man Chris Robinson channeled Rod Stewart's raw, blues-rock vocals effortlessly, and the band's twin guitar attack of Rich Robinson and Jeff Cease invited obvious Richards-Woods comparisons.
It didn't take long for the Crowes to really find their own groove though, as 1992's The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion saw them adding a full-time keyboardist and replacing their original lead guitarist with the technically superior Marc Ford. The music became more jam-based, and even added new elements of gospel, blues, and Southern rock to create one hell of a sophomore follow-up. Each succeeding album would be completely different than the last, and the career spanning set list on this DVD vividly presents this band's amazing diversity of styles.
Freak 'N' Roll...Into The Fog was recorded in August 6, 2005 during the Black Crowes' sold-out, five-night reign at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Auditorium. The stage was beautifully decorated in a sort of ancient Egyptian motif, with hundreds of electric candles and burning incense swirling all around. This all looks amazing thanks to an incredibly sharp, high-def, widescreen presentation. It is one of the best I have seen. The audio is nearly as impressive, and gets flaunted right from the start with the stunning opener "(Only) Halfway To Everywhere", which blows away the Three Snakes And One Charm version, thanks to the extra muscle infused by the four-piece Left Coast Horns.
The rest of the set was an impressive one. The killer opening number was followed by a couple of The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion's best tracks, "Sting Me" and "No Speak No Slave", which only sprayed fuel on the crowd's fire. Every one of their six studio albums were covered by at least one song, with the first three albums getting the most play with three songs each. The acoustic instrumental "Sunday Night Buttermilk Waltz", which was included as a bonus track on the enhanced version of Amorica, was also performed along with covers of Willie Dixon's "Mellow Down Easy", and The Band's "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down". Some obvious omissions were "Twice As Hard", "Thorn In My Pride", "A Conspiracy", and "Good Friday", but it is pretty hard to bitch seeing that they played for over two hours.
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