Celtic Tides

The Rankin Family: Backstage Pass

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Documentary/Music Video	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1996	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	94:29 Minutes (Not 98 Minutes as per packaging)	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	?
Studio Distributor	Massive Warner Vision	Starring	Jimmy Rankin Raylene Rankin Heather Rankin Cookie Rankin John Morris Rankin
Case	Amaray	Starring
RPI	$39.95	Music	The Rankin Family Various Artists

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	No	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	English	Action In or After Credits	Yes

Plot Synopsis

It's good to see that after being held responsible for producing such crap bands as U2 and The Corrs, Ireland is still capable of producing what could be called good music. This DVD contains two collections of songs by various bands. The first collection to be billed on the front cover, Celtic Tides, is a documentary with a collection of various artists speaking about the recent resurgence of Irish music, with the second, The Rankin Family: Backstage Pass, being a mixture of live footage and interviews. The track listing is as follows:

Celtic Tides

Natalie MacMaster, Cookie Rankin - Drunken Piper
The Chieftans, The Rankin Family - An Innis High
Clannad - Theme From Harry's Game
Altan - Ta Me Mo Shui
Mary Black - Flesh & Blood
The Chieftans - O'Neills March
The Rankin Family - Step Dance
Natalie MacMaster - Jack Daniels
Ashley MacIsaac - Brenda Stubbert
Altan - Boxty Set
Old Blind Dogs - Traditional
Capercaillie - A Cur Nan Goghar As A Chreig
Ashley MacIsaac - Sleepy Maggie
Dougie MacLean - Caledonia
Loreena McKennitt - Lady Of Shalott
Seamus Egan - Seamus Piping
E Horo - Mary Jane Lamond

The Rankin Family - Backstage Pass

Bishop MacDonald
As I Roved Out
Oganaich
Leis An Lurgainn
Fiddle Tune
Eyes Of Margaret
You Feel The Same Way Too
Sir James Baird
The River
Your Boat's Lost At Sea
We Rise Again
Forty Days And Nights
North Country
Fare Thee Well Love
Mull River Shuffle

Frankly, after having listened to the latter performances, I was in perfect understanding of why traditional Irish music is in such a dire state. Still, if you enjoy a good dose of what sounds a lot like bad Country & Western, you cannot go far wrong with this disc. Now all I need to do is try to figure out how it came to be in my possession.

[Addendum March 17, 2001: It has since been brought to my attention that the Rankin Family's music is actually Celtic (ie both Scottish and Irish), and the Rankins themselves are from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The songs themselves are actually Scottish Gaelic. I apologise profusely for the error, and will make amends by subjecting myself repeatedly to the NTSC DVD of Robot Monster.]

Transfer Quality

Video

The first thing that I strongly suspected when I read the back cover of this DVD is that I was about to view a pair of analogue videotapes that had been simply re-recorded onto one DVD. The video transfer leaves me with little to counteract that suspicion.

The video transfer is presented Full Frame, and is not 16x9 enhanced.

The transfer is average in terms of sharpness, although it was a lot better than I was expecting after looking over the cover artwork. The shadow detail in this transfer is close to non-existent, although there doesn't seem to be any low-level noise to further compound the problem.

The colour saturation was a bit of a problem, with the backgrounds exhibiting some noise and false colour. Just to reiterate, it would not surprise me to learn that this DVD was sourced from an inferior analogue source tape. At 39:12 in The Rankin Family - Backstage Pass, the amount of pixelization apparent in the blue background, which also appears to be bleeding into the vocalist in the foreground, is simply appalling. Fans of this band may be able to live with this kind of artefact, but I cannot.

MPEG artefacts weren't noticed for the most part, except for the aforementioned. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some aliasing on musical instruments, but this was relatively minor, and probably inherent in the source material. Film artefacts were mostly unnoticed, except for the occasional white fleck upon the picture that also could have been a sign of age in the video source, as I seriously doubt that this DVD has been properly sourced from film.

Audio

The audio transfer is passable, but completely devoid of life compared to other music DVDs I have looked at recently. There is a single audio track on this DVD: an English soundtrack encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0, without surround encoding of any kind. The vocals varied according to the inherent clarity of the performances of each individual artist during the Celtic Tides compilation, but the Rankin Family's vocals were always clear and easy to understand in spite of the thick Irish accents. Audio sync was not a problem at any point.

The music was a mixed bag, although the second feature on this disc, The Rankin Family, was a generally poppy affair that seemed to have been stripped of any real life. What made this music distressing to me was the presence of that four-bar (c)rap drumbeat in the music that accompanied the opening credits for Celtic Tides, which is a real warning sign to say the least.

Being a straight stereo mix, there was no surround channel usage to speak of on this disc. This is probably just as well, because my surrounds weren't happy with me about previous music videos that I had played through them. The subwoofer, on the other hand, supported the beat with a certain kind of resignation that may have simply been the result of the stereo speakers being connected via the inputs and outputs on the back of the box.

Extras

R4 vs R1

The Region 1 version of this disc only contains the Celtic Tides documentary, which makes it less than ideal for fans of this genre who actually want to see a performance as well as the documentary, which doesn't strike me as being particularly interesting, either. Region 4 is the winner because of the content.

Summary

Celtic Tides was of minimal interest to me, and The Rankin Family - Backstage Page was dull. Your opinion may be different, but when I think of the wild, pagan music of the North, I think of artists such as Adorned Brood, which the artists presented here pale in comparison to.

The video quality is average at best, with some glaringly obvious composite artefacts.

The audio quality is good for a straight stereo mix.

There are no extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output
Display	Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), 4:3 mode, using S-video input
Audio Decoder	Built In (Amplifier)
Amplification	Sony STR-DE835
Speakers	Panasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Philips PH931SSS Rear Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer