Doobie Brothers, The-The Captain and Me (DVD-Audio) (1973) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Booklet Lyrics Gallery-Photo Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1973
Running Time	42:08 (Case: 167)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ted Templeman
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Tom Johnston Patrick Simmons Tiran Porter John Hartman Michael Hossack Jeff Baxter Bill Payne Malcolm Cecil Robert Margouleff Nick DeCaro
Case	DVD-Audio Jewel
RPI	$32.95	Music	The Doobie Brothers

    This is the Doobie Brothers' "mock" dictionary definition of themselvdes, taken from their web site:

Doobie Brothers n. ('Hind. dub; Sans. durva, a kind of pasture grass; L. frater; G. bruder, Sans. bhratar; AS. brothor, male sibling')

1. Music group known for blues based songs with a rock edge, often with lush vocal harmonies (see also rock 'n' soul).
2. Assemblage of musicians specializing in country based rock featuring instrumentation such as violin and finger-picked acoustic guitar combined with electrical instruments and drums.
3. Musical entity recognized for incorporating sophisticated jazz stylings into "popular hit" songs.
4. "Rock" band, origins circa 1970, with reputation for exciting live performances and skilful musicianship.

    The "Brothers," who are of course not actually blood siblings, are a Californian pop/rock band that rose to prominence in the 1970s. They had a loyal following in Southern California, particularly amongst Hell's Angels, but decided to split up in 1983. They reunited in 1987 and still plays at various oldies/revival gigs and have even released a new album or two.

    The Captain And Me is the third album by the band on the Warner Bros. label and launched a number of successful hits including "Long Train Runnin'" and "China Grove."

    The band line-up for this album is:

• Tom Johnston - vocals/guitars/harmonica/Arp synthesizer
• Patrick Simmons - vocals/guitars/Arp synthesizer
• Tiran Porter - bass guitar/vocals
• John Hartman - drums/percussion/vocals
• Michael Hossack - drums/congas/timbales

    In addition, the band is supplemented by the following musicians:

• Jeff "Skunk" Baxter - pedal steel guitar (Steely Dan guitarist and subsequently became a member of the band)
• Bill Payne - piano/organ (Little Feat keyboardist)
• Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff - ARP synthesizer programming
• Nick DeCaro - string arrangements

    To be honest, I found the songs all pleasant enough, but a bit dated. Of course, if you are a fan, this will be a very pleasant trip down memory lane.

Video

    Like most of the Warner DVD-Audio discs released to date, the video content on this disc is in full frame NTSC. Each song has a submenu that allows you to view lyrics as well as photos (the same set of photos for each song).

Audio

    This is a recent DVD Audio release, and features what I consider to be the ideal set of tracks and layout for DVD Audio discs. Basically, this is a dual sided single layered disc, with both DVD Audio and DVD Video surround mixes on one side, and DVD Audio and DVD Video stereo mixes on the other (totalling four separately playable versions on the one disc). Furthermore, the menu arrangement and extras are very similar to one another so no one loses out no matter what equipment they own or their stereo vs. multichannel listening preferences.

    Surround side, DVD-Audio content:

• English MLP 96/24 5.1

    Surround side, DVD-Video content

• English dts 5.1 (1536Kb/s)
• English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)

    Stereo side, DVD-Audio content:

• English MLP 192/24 2.0

    Stereo side, DVD-Video content:

• English Linear PCM 96/24 2.0 (4608Kb/s)

     Let's start off with the stereo side. I found the audio quality of the MLP 192/24 2.0 track somewhat disappointing. Although some aspects of the sound exhibit better fidelity and resolution than a typical CD (particular high frequency transients and clarity), the overall sound seem to be somewhat grainy and muddled. The audio quality seem to epitomize everything that was bad about recordings in the 1970s - shrill, strident and "transistorized." The recording also seems to lack significant low frequency content.

    The Linear PCM 96/24 2.0 track on the DVD-Video portion is not any better, and if anything sounds even fuzzier.

    By contrast, the MLP 96/24 5.1 track shows an improvement, mainly in terms of additional bass, and increased clarity from separation of instruments across more channels.

    This is a very aggressive surround mix, which leads me to suspect that the recording may have been originally recorded in quadraphonic. Instruments are positioned across both front and back channels, but the centre channel is only used as a filler between the front left and right channels.

     The subwoofer is used to enhance the low frequency content of the music.

     The opening track, for example, features keyboards and percussion in the rear channels and at one stage has a synthesizer rotating in a clockwise direction across all channels from 1:20-1:30. The background vocals seem to come from directly behind me, or perhaps in me, which created a weird sensation as if I was one of the band.

    Track 5 seem to feature some wind noises coming from the rear channels.

    The full bitrate dts 5.1 audio track (1536Kb/s) on the DVD Video part of the side sounds very similar to the MLP track - in fact, I am not sure I can reliably distinguish between it and the MLP 5.1 track (except perhaps that the dts track offers less clarity for the extreme high frequencies). Finally, the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track (448Kb/s) is also similar but slightly harsher and recorded at a softer level (dialog normalization -4dB).

    There is some rather annoying phase shifts in the high frequencies in the Dolby Digital 5.1 track which are not present in the MLP 5.1 track and barely noticeable in the dts 5.1 audio track.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    All the extras are contained on the DVD Audio portion of the disc. The DVD Video portion has no extras.

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static. When you play each song you can also page through the lyrics as well as an accompanying black and white photo still.

Song Lyrics

    Each song is accompanied by a number of stills containing lyrics.

Gallery-Photo

    This is a set of eighteen colour and black and white stills of the band.

Booklet

    This has 14 pages of black and white photos, song lyrics, cast and crew credits.

Credits

    This is a set of four stills listing musicians and production team.

    This disc appears to be identically featured across all regions.

    The Captain and Me is vintage Californian pop/rock from The Doobie Brothers.

    This dual sided disc contains a full selection of audio tracks, including MLP 96/24 5.1 and MLP 192/24 2.0 on the DVD Audio portion, plus full bitrate dts 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Linear PCM 96/24 2.0 on the DVD-Video portion. The quality of the audio is only average, though, reflecting the dated quality of the recording master.

    Extras are minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall