BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Music	None
Rating
Year Released	1993
Running Time	80:48
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Stanley Dorfman
Studio Distributor	Columbia Music Video Sony Music	Starring	Kenny Loggins Michael McDonald Will Ackerman Shanice
Case	Amaray
RPI	$34.95	Music	Kenny Loggins

    Kenny Loggins-Outside From The Redwoods comes without any liner notes, without a booklet and without any on-disc production notes, so the background information I have on this event is merely that which I have been able to glean from watching the disc. As the title suggests, this is an outdoor acoustic concert set in the most amazing forest setting, surrounded by spectacular redwood trees. It is an extremely casual and intimate affair, with the relatively small but fantastically enthusiastic audience seated on the forest floor and Kenny Loggins and his musicians occupying a small stage in front of them. The program is dedicated to Kenny's late brother.

    This event grabs you from the instant it starts and never lets you go. The music ranges from hauntingly beautiful to downright boppy Zydeco, all played with some of the most stunning musicianship that it has ever been my pleasure to witness. A number of guest stars make appearances with Kenny. Particularly notable is Michael McDonald who sings an acoustic version of What A Fool Believes with Kenny that has to be heard to be believed - this is nothing whatsoever like the funky Doobie Brothers version and yet is equally valid if not more so. Also notable is the amazing harmonica and Jew's harp playing of Howard Levy which also has to be heard to be believed. If I had to sum this event up in one sentence, it would be this; beautiful music played beautifully in a beautiful setting. The only slight downer is Kenny's philosophizing, but I can live with that.

    The track listing is as follows;
 

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. This DVD is NTSC formatted, so your hardware will need to be compatible with NTSC in order to view it.

    The transfer is variably sharp depending on the camera in use. Long shots of the stage are particularly diffuse, whereas close-ups of Kenny Loggins are nice and clear. The early parts of the transfer, where it is still daylight, are a little overbright. Areas of white in the image subsequently flare and lose fine detail. Additionally, the black level tends to vary up and down somewhat during the daylight portion of the transfer which is mildly distracting. The black and white levels are more constant once we get into the controlled lighting of the night-time portion of the programme. Shadow detail is passable without being remarkable. There is no low level noise.

    The colours were somewhat undersaturated during the daylight parts of the transfer, most likely as a direct consequence of this portion of the transfer being overbright. When night fell, the colour saturation reverted to a more conventional concert stage lighting configuration, with frequent splashes of highly saturated monochromatic colour on offer. Fortunately, no colour bleed was exhibited by this transfer at all.

    There were some MPEG artefacts visible at times in the backgrounds of images. They consisted of noticeable macro-blocked lines running vertically through the backgrounds of certain scenes. The worst offender was Chapter 7, Will Of The Wind, where this artefact was clearly visible, although it did crop up from time to time elsewhere. Fortunately, no MPEG artefacting affected the foreground of any image.

    There was no aliasing of any consequence and no video dropouts or artefacts were noticed.
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
MPEG Artefacts/Grain
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue and vocals are pretty much always easy to hear, although Kenny Loggins' vocal did tend to get slightly drowned out by his backing vocalists on the odd occasion. There were no definite audio sync problems.

    The 5.1 mix is presented quite interestingly and very effectively. A very wide front soundstage is created, with Kenny Loggins spread right across this soundfield. Individual vocalists and instruments are each placed within this wide front soundstage, each nicely occupying its own particular space in the mix. The nett result of this mixing technique is that every nuance of the performance is discernible in a most pleasing fashion when listening to the mix.

    The audience is deliberately mixed into the front soundstage rather than being restricted to the rear soundstage. This gives the mix an extremely involving feel about it, placing you both up-front-and-close to the stage and mid-crowd at the same time. The audience is obviously enjoying themselves immensely and you cannot help but absorb the enthusiasm which is nicely evoked by this surround mix.

    The subwoofer supported the music excellently and frequently, never becoming at all obvious.
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The video quality is passable.

    The audio quality is superb.

    There are no extras.
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
7th September 2000