Neil Young-Road Rock V 1 (DVD-Audio) (2000) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Booklet Music Video-Fool For Your Love; Walk On Lyrics-(DVD-Audio) Discography-(DVD-Audio) Credits-(DVD-Audio)
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	65:25
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Neil Young Ben Keith
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Neil Young Ben Keith Spooner Oldham Donald "Duck" Dunn Jim Keltner Astrid Young Pegi Young
Case	DVD-Audio Jewel
RPI	$32.95	Music	Neil Young

    Neil Young's style is a mixture of gentle folk rock combined with heavy guitar oriented rock. Born in Canada, he played mostly folk but then moved to Los Angeles and formed Buffalo Springfield - a Californian folk rock group that achieved some respectability. After quitting the band (several times!), Neil embarked upon a solo career and started playing with a local band called The Rockets, which he renamed as Crazy Horse. He released his first self-titled solo album in 1969 but it was Harvest (1972) that made him famous. He was also at one stage associated with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Neil kind of wandered a bit in the late 1970s and 1980s but had several successful comebacks. In recent years, he has worked with bands such as Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam.

    Road Rock - Vol. 1 is a live album containing selections from two concerts held at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado in September 2000. It features Neil on guitar, piano and vocals plus:

• Ben Keith (guitar, lap slide, pedal steel, vocals)
• Spooner Oldham (keyboards)
• Donald "Duck" Dunn (bass)
• Jim Keltner (drums, percussion)
• Astrid and Pegi Young (vocals)

    The inclusion of Astrid and Pegi provides a clue as to why the album is sub-headed "Friends and Relatives." Zeke Young is also credited as an "audio recordist."

    In addition, Chrissie Hynde is the guest guitarist and vocalist on "All Along the Watchtower."

    There are only eight songs in this album, but boy are they long! The opening track (Cowgirl In The Sand) is a whopping 18 minutes long, and in addition we get an 11 minute version of Words and a 10 minute version of Tonight's The Night.

Video

    Like most of the Warner DVD-Audio discs released to date, the video content on this disc is in full frame NTSC.

Audio

    There are only three audio tracks: Dolby Digital 4.0 (L-R-LS-RS) (448Kb/s) on the DVD-Video part of the disc, and MLP 96/24 5.1 and MLP 96/24 2.0 on the DVD-Audio part of the disc.

    I've had quite a few people telling me they weren't impressed by the audio quality on this disc, so my expectations weren't very high when I put the disc into my DVD-Audio player's tray and pressed play. It turned out to be better than I expected but this is by no means a great recording that will blow your socks off, even by live performance standards.

    Don't expect the pristine clarity of a studio recording. But, do expect the kind of manic thrilling "energy" that can be found only from a live rock concert that makes the studio versions of the songs sound tame and clinical by comparison.

    First of all, the MLP 2.0 track. The recording sounds like it was taken from the soundboard mixed together with audience noises. The overall sound is rather harsh, with high frequencies that seem out of phase and a lack of really deep low frequencies.

    The MLP 5.1 track sounds very similar to the 2.0 track, but with the addition of rear channels, which mainly contain audience noises plus musical ambience. The centre channel and subwoofer are silent.

    The Dolby Digital 4.0 audio track is sonically very similar to the MLP 5.1 track, although it is a bit louder since dialogue normalization has been set to +4dB.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This is a fairly minimal disc. All the extras are in the DVD-Audio part of the disc - the DVD Video section only includes the Dolby Digital 4.0 audio track and the two music videos. Curiously, though, the DVD-Video section has the same menu introduction as the DVD-Audio section, and tantalizes us with what the DVD-Audio menu looks like before reverting to a bare bones menu.

Menu

    Full frame but includes intro animation.

Booklet

    This is a single long sheet of paper folded into four pieces. The "outer" side features the album cover and back cover, plus musician and production credits. The "inner" side contains lots and lots of photos taken from the concert tour.

Lyrics-(DVD-Audio)

    Curiously, these can only be accessed in a separate sub-menu instead of being associated with the songs.

Discography-(DVD-Audio)

    This is presented as four stills listing (in text) Neil Young's albums, including solo albums and those with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Credits-(DVD-Audio)

    This is a set of three stills providing musician and production credits.

Music Video-Fool For Your Love (3:43); Walk On (4:16)

    Both these are footage from the concert, no doubt taken from the DVD Video of the concert (Red Rocks Live). The video is surprisingly 16x9 enhanced and the audio is Dolby Digital 4.0 (L-R-LS-RS). There is a fair amount of Gibb's effect ringing.

    This disc appears to be identically featured across all regions.

    Road Rock Vol. 1 features selections from two performances by aging folk rocker Neil Young at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado in September 2000.

    Audio tracks include MLP 5.1 96/24 5.1 and 2.0 on the DVD-Audio section and a Dolby Digital 4.0 track on the DVD-Video section. The audio quality is mediocre, but reflects the quality of the source, which is a live performance.

    Extras include two music videos which are songs from the concert.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall