The Beach Boys-The Lost Concert (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Menu Animation & Audio Discography
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	21:32
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	None Given
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Brian Wilson Carl Wilson Dennis Wilson Mike Love Al Jardine
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Brian Wilson

     In 1964, a "mega-concert" was organised, featuring three of the biggest artists of the day - The Beach Boys, Lesley Gore (It's my Party, Cry Me a River), and a little British group known as The Beatles. The Beach Boys - The Lost Concert is an all-too-brief trip back in time. Running for just under twenty-two minutes, this disc presents us with original concert footage from one of the all-time great pop bands. The footage had been assumed lost forever, until it was unearthed thirty-four years later, in 1998. The footage was originally filmed live, to be aired on closed-circuit TV to packed theatres of screaming fans.

    I have long been a passive fan of the Beach Boys - their harmonies are unmistakable, and despite some occasional lightweight tunes, they produced some genre-defining music during their career. They managed to produce both infectious pop smash hits such as Fun, Fun, Fun and Surfin' USA and wonderful ballads such as In My Room and God Only Knows - both types of music are presented in this brief set, along with some tracks I had never heard before.

    Overall, this presents an interesting diversion, and reminds you of just how talented these guys were. Unfortunately the material presented is not exactly extensive, and as a package is unlikely to be good value for money to anyone other than the most die-hard Beach Boys fan.

Video

    The overall video transfer of this disc is acceptable for such an old - and lost - piece of footage. The cover claims that the footage has been digitally mastered, and generally it shows.

    The footage is presented full frame at 1.33:1 which, given its age and intended audience, I would assume is the original aspect ratio. It is therefore not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is sometimes a little grainy, but not unacceptably so. Shadow detail is pretty good and blacks are solid with no low-level noise evident. Gray scale is good, with a wide range of shades evident.

    The transfer has no major MPEG artefacts, but posterization can be seen, particularly on the faces of the audience, and occasionally the band. Film-to-video artefacts appear in the form of mild aliasing throughout - for example on the band members' shirts and the drum microphone stand. Edge enhancement is apparent quite frequently, with a marked halo around microphone stands and the trousers and boots of the band members.

    The transfer is surprisingly clean with no major film artefacts present - I assume that this is due to the effort expended on the remastering.

    There are no subtitles present.

    This is a single layer, single sided disc (DVD 5).

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The overall audio quality of this disc is acceptable given the age of the source material and the limitations of the original recording process.

    There is only one (mono) audio track available which is Dolby Digital 1.0 recorded at a mere 192 kbps.

    The lyrics were generally clear and audio synch was never a problem. There was however a muddy feel to some of the tracks, while others sounded quite clean. Being used to a thumping bass track in modern recordings, there is a generally "hollow" feel to this recording. There is also some distortion evident, and some clipping - particularly on some of the falsetto singing.

    The surround channels and subwoofer are silent.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are very few extras on this disc.

Menu

    The menu is functional, featuring video clips from the concert. It allows the selection of songs or the discography.

Discography

    This consists of five pages of text, detailing the recording history of the band, and includes the solo recordings of Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Mike Love.

    The Region 1 disc appears to be identical to the Region 4 release.

    The Beach Boys - The Lost Concert will probably be a must-have for serious devotees of this outstanding band. For the casual listener, there is little incentive to purchase this disc given its short running time (21:32) and almost non-existent extras.

    The video quality is acceptable for its age and history.

    The audio quality is acceptable for the age of the recording.

    There are minimal extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall