So You Wanna Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	83:10 (Case: 85)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Robert Garofalo
Studio Distributor	Classic Pictures Stomp Visual	Starring	None Given
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	None Given

    Firstly, let me point out for the record that I am a fan of the music of the late 60s and early 70s including many of the artists appearing here such as Cream, The Who, Canned Heat, Ike & Tina Turner & The Byrds.

    This DVD is a compilation of a variety of mostly British artists appearing on German television between 1967 and 1972. Most of the footage included is from the show The Beat Club and much of it is lip-synched rather than live. There are a smattering of live performances which are very welcome, but unfortunately of variable quality. The big plus is that the music has been remastered into DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1.

    The only track on the entire disc which really got my enthused was the last one, Ike & Tina Turner doing Proud Mary live. Other performances of good quality included The Moody Blues, Canned Heat & Richie Havens. Unfortunately, to my taste most of the rest was either bad live performances or even worse lip-synching. Cream & The Who looked extremely unenthusiastic about being there and The Byrds were stoned out of their minds. Most of the artists are obviously important artists of the time, however others are less interesting such as Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger.

    The music was interspersed with archive news footage of the era including Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Apollo 13 and Woodstock. To my mind this was annoying and added nothing to the proceedings.

   Generally speaking, this disc would be of most interest to people who lived through the era and are interested in any footage of their favourite groups.

Video

    The video quality ranges from atrocious to good mostly dependent upon the age of the clip.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was mostly black and white with a few later clips in colour. Generally they were fuzzy and included many old fashioned effects such as strobing and making the picture look like a negative. The later colour clips such as Canned Heat or Ike & Tina Turner were much better. There was a lot of white bleeding into the black in the black and white clips.

    The colour when used was not too bad. The colours were slightly over-saturated but generally pretty good. One clip, Richie Havens, used a strange colour effect of covering the entire picture in coloured dots 

    There were significant artefacts as you would expect from archival footage including microphony (examples at 5:28, 17:56, 48:40, 52:10, 62:40 & 72:42), tape tracking marks at 22:10 and blotches, blots and specks throughout.

    There are no subtitles.

    This is a dual layered disc and my PC tells me that the layer change is somewhere in track 14 but I can't find it, so it must be well done.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is the star here but don't get too excited. Also please note this disc is extremely LOUD and may frighten neighbourhood animals if you do not turn your sound system down below your normal listening level before putting the disc in your DVD player. I ended up playing this disc at 15-20dB lower than my normal listening level after peeling myself off the back wall of my television room.

    This DVD contains two audio options, a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s and a DTS track encoded at 768Kb/s. As these tracks would have originally been in mono for TV of the day, some excellent work has gone into remastering these tracks for Dolby Digital and DTS. However, although all speakers and subwoofer are used during playback, noticeably directional effects are few, which is the fault of the mono source rather than the remaster.

    Vocals were generally clear and easy to understand with the exception of the live track by the Spencer Davis Group. This track seemed to be badly mixed, with the vocals struggling to be heard above the instruments.    

    The surround speakers were used quite a lot to add surround presence to the music, without really standing out.

    The subwoofer was used constantly during the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu included a track selection function but precious little else.

    This movie is available in Region 2 and Region 1 in exactly the same format.

    The video quality ranges from atrocious to good.

    The audio quality is very good considering the source.

    The disc has no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall