A few of the songs come too close to Broadway productions for my taste. This is still supposed to be a rock concert, and too often Gabriel lets the production overwhelm the music. Nearly every song requires some kind of set change, and choreography. Along with the tree and phone booth scenes, you also get helmet cams ("Digging In The Dirt'), a raft ("San Jacinto'), steam vents ("Steam"), and the band disappearing into a giant suitcase before a huge dome covers the entire stage at the end of "Secret World". I love a good stage show as much as the next guy, but the production should enhance the music, not the other way around. They do get it right most of the time, but if I was deciding on whether to by the Us album based on some of these performances, I may have passed.
The problems with the audio on this DVD is attributed to a few different factors. In their attempt to re-mix and re-master the original audio tracks, the producer simply got carried away. The result is some ultra-slick, over-produced audio tracks that have lots of painfully obvious overdubs. The resulting sound is not terrible, especially the DTS track, but it does not come close to capturing the true live atmosphere that was experienced by those at the show. It just doesn't sound very live, and never quite connects with the performance. This is one DVD where the DTS track is drastically different and superior to the Dolby 5.1 track, as it is far more dynamic and involves the surrounds to a much greater extent. The bass response was also slightly more pronounced on the DTS track, but both were still lacking, which is a crime when you've got Tony Levin plucking the strings.
The reason that all of the super-choreographed groups and "singers", such as Destiny's Child, Britney Spears, and Backstreet Boys, who jump around the stage all night surrounded by their dance troupes, all make me want to jab a red-hot soldering iron into my eyes and eardrums, is because they are always out of breath and can rarely give a good live vocal performance without the saving grace of a recorded vocal track. The overdubs and lip-synching were fairly obvious in a few places on this DVD (check out "Solsbury Hill"), which can be a real bummer when you are trying to get immersed into the live experience. I don't automatically dislike the use of recorded vocal tracks, they can be effective in recreating harmony or background vocals when they are impractical to reproduce live, but not just because you want to be able to prance around the stage without having to worry about hitting all of your lead vocals.
Article comments
1 - Mark Jochim
Very nice review; and don't worry about it being "late" (I just read a Blogcritics review of a film first released in 1961).
I enjoy this DVD much more than [i]Growing Up Live[/i] because it was a much more cohesive show (although that one's great, too). As for the heaviness of the [i]Us[/i] and [i]So[/i] material, that was mainly the decision to promote those albums at the time. His shows during that period definitely included more of the older songs such as "Shock The Monkey" and "Games Without Frontiers" (which were both released on his earlier concert video, [i]POV[/i]. "Biko" was a less frequently-played song on that tour and "D.I.Y." wasn't played at all (I think the last time it was performed live was in 1983). I'm not sure why "Red Rain" was left off, though, but I think the songs included do flow perfectly and I don't miss anything left on the cutting-room floor.
2 - Mark Jochim
Oh, yes. Peter hasn't done any of his Genesis material during his solo shows since 1978 (he used to perform "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" and "Back In NYC") -- unless you count the 'Six Of The Best' reunion show at Milton Keynes in Oct. 1982. For that matter, Phil Collins never performs Genesis songs in his solo shows (well, "Behind The Lines", but he re-recorded that for his first solo LP), nor does Mike + The Mechanics. They all like to keep the solo material and band material separate and feel that if they don't have the rest of the guys playing with them it would be cheating the songs and their history.
Only Steve Hackett plays plenty of Genesis material during his solo shows and has re-recorded a number of the earlier band songs as well (check out his 'Genesis Revisted' 2-CD set for most of them).
3 - Paul Roy
Mark,
Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford never did any Genesis songs with their other bands, but atleast they still got together AS Genesis every so often until finally breaking up a few years ago (or did they?). When Steve Hackett performed a few Genesis classics on his Once Above A Time DVD they were incredible. I'd just like to hear Gabriel do some because alot up us were never fortunate enough to see the Gabriel-era Genesis live.