Foreigner-All Access Tonight: Live in Concert (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Anim & Audio Booklet Bonus Track-I Want To Know What Love Is - Night Of The Proms
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	84:38 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Justin Bourgerie
Studio Distributor	Foreigner Films Warner Vision	Starring	Lou Gramm Mick Jones
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Foreigner

    After a long hiatus from the live scene, this DVD documents Foreigner's 25th Anniversary 2002 "World Tour" (note the liberal American use of the phrase "World Tour" - in reality, this tour took in principally just the USA, Canada and Mexico). As a fan of much of the Foreigner discography, I was very much looking forward to popping this DVD into the player and giving it a spin. Unfortunately, after watching it, I can honestly say that I wish they hadn't bothered with this DVD in the first place.....

    For starters, it's a bit rich implying that Foreigner have been around long enough to warrant a "25th Anniversary Tour" - they haven't. Let's put a few things into perspective here. Yes, Foreigner as a group has been around for many years, but certainly not 25 years as a continuous group or line-up. Yes, the band did originally form in 1976 and they released their first self-titled album in 1977. But the band went through several line-up changes and then broke up completely after only 10 years (in 1987), after releasing their 6th studio album. They reformed again after a 6 year break in 1992 - again with a new line-up - but managed to release only one more rather forgettable studio album in 1993. Since 1993, the band has released no new material at all and there has been minimal touring. It is a fact that all of the great songs and albums that we all associate with the name Foreigner was released over a short 10-year period, from 1977-1987.

    Next, take a look at the group line-up for this "25th Anniversary Tour" and note the fact that most of the band members you see performing here are not original Foreigner band members at all - in fact they were not even around when all of these great songs were written and released!  The only original Foreigner members here are the aging Lou Gramm and Mick Jones. Keyboardist Jeff Jacobs and bassist Bruce Turgon only joined the group in 1993 (they contributed to only the very last album, of which no material is featured in this concert), whilst saxophonist Thom Gimbel (joined 1995) and drummer Denny Carmassi (joined in only 2002) have not contributed to any of the Foreigner catalogue at all.

    OK, so line-up aside, there are still many many Foreigner fans out there who are no doubt eager to have at least some live concert performances of all of these great Foreigner classics in their DVD collection. So then, how do the performances in this concert tour stack up? In a word, woeful...... Have you ever seen one of those concerts of aging rock stars, obviously now past their prime, but still trying to "rock on" and relive the old days when they were younger and fitter and more energetic? Well, this is one of those concerts.

    The concert it has to be said is largely let down by Lou Gramm. Whilst Mick Jones too has clearly aged since we saw him last in those Foreigner video clips of the 1980s, he is certainly not yet past it in terms of his guitar-playing ability, as evidenced by some truly terrific guitar performances in this tour in songs like Dirty White Boy and Juke Box Hero, among others. No, Mick Jones acquits himself quite well indeed in this tour. The problem is that Lou Gramm is clearly past it and (sorry to say) should have stayed at home!  Just about every song has had to be dropped down a key or two for him to be able to sing them at all in this tour and, even then, he clearly cannot hit the notes required to deliver the material with any sense of the strength or dynamics that we expect as Foreigner trademarks. And I hate to say it, but while I'm at it, the man has about as much "front-man" appeal for a live concert as a block of wood!  For goodness sake, move around a bit and try to be a bit more animated and excited about it man!... The rest of the band members acquit themselves well enough, but it ain't the original band members performing their own material.

    On top of the sub-optimal live performances we see here, add a tour that includes a very cheap concert stage setup, a very boring concert light show, some bootleg-quality concert filming production standards (only one camera was used and it was not professionally directed or operated - see discussion below) and finally add in some very boring "filler footage" of the band as they check into motels or sit around backstage and - dear oh dear - I'm sorry to report, but what we have here is a very disappointing live concert DVD indeed.

Video

    The recorded and presented aspect ratio is 1.29:1, full frame (it appears to have been a 1.33 image, very slightly cropped).

    This is, by the director's own admission in the short booklet essay, not a professional concert filming at all. Rather, the idea of taking a digital video camera on tour with the band to record the events of the 25th anniversary tour was deemed "a good idea at the time", but was not thought through and consequently no professional film director - or even camera operator - was employed for the job. So it was left to friend of the band (?) Justin Bourgerie to not only hire the camera, but operate it and produce and direct the resultant footage himself.. Add to this the fact that only one camera was used, more often than not stuck in a fixed position at the back of audience, and you cannot expect the quality of a professionally-produced live concert DVD.

    As a result of the non-professional nature of the shoot, what we have here is footage of quality that is less than your standard, professionally-produced, concert film. The video transfer is marred by very poor resolution for all of the back-of-audience footage (the good majority of the material). Focus is frequently out for this footage. The close-up footage taken on the stage fares somewhat better. Thankfully there is no low level noise to mar the video transfer, however shadow detail is very poor throughout - this is possibly more just a reflection of the poor stage lighting employed for this tour than the DVD transfer itself, but is still quite evident at 15:25, 53:35, 62:05 and at numerous other places.

    Colour is inconsistent in this transfer, being sometimes nicely saturated, but more often than not very harsh, particularly with the overly-bright lighting on the band members' faces - but again, this could be stated to be simply a reflection of the poor stage lighting presentation in this concert, rather than a fault of the DVD video transfer itself. In any event, the problem does seem to be exacerbated in all of the distance back-of-audience shots. Skin tones suffer under the this harsh concert lighting, however at least black levels are quite solid - this is just as well, given that many 1.33:1 full frame images throughout this footage are bordered by overly large expanses of nothingness at the top and bottom of frame ("hmmm... now where is the 'zoom' button on this video camera again?...").

    MPEG artefacts include some minor pixelization in some poorly lit scenes (example at 15:25). Film-to-video artefacts are restricted to only two distracting instances of aliasing, at 14:28 (Jeff Jacobs' shirt) and 67:00 (Bruce Turgon's shirt). What appears at first glance to be an instance of chroma noise at 19:37 (in the red background) I will put down instead to a by-product of the harsh stage lighting. No film artefacts (that is, source artefacts from the digital video camera) are noted.

    There is no subtitle stream available and the DVD is single-layered.
   

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The DVD contains three separate audio tracks: a default Dolby Digital 2.0 mix (at 192Kb/s), a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (at 448Kb/s) and a dts 5.1 mix (at 768Kb/s). I reviewed all three audio tracks.

    Whilst Lou Gramm's rendition of many of the Foreigner classics leaves much to be desired on this tour, the vocal quality in the DVD's audio transfer itself is perfectly fine in the mix, being perfectly clear and audible throughout.

    Audio sync is problematic on this DVD. One of the main problems impacting audio sync is that the audio you are hearing for many songs is in fact taken from a different concert to the married visual - that is, you might be hearing the performance of Dirty White Boy as taken from (say) the Denver show, whilst the visual you are watching for the song has been taken from the performance of Dirty White Boy in (for example) the Los Angeles show. This is as admitted by the project's director in the booklet essay, done for some tracks in an attempt to match up the best available footage with the best available audio performance of that particular song. Sometimes this is pulled off well enough in the editing, but for some tracks the mismatch in vocal sync or drum sync is particularly obvious. The worst affected tracks for this are Head Games, Feels Like The First Time and Urgent. In addition, the sync is clearly out in the first track, Long Long Way From Home, with the visuals preceding the audio by half a beat; just look at the drummer or the ending of the sax solo and you'll see what I mean.

    The concert mix, as reflected in the DVD's audio transfer, is a bit of a mess and is in turn a reflection of the amateur nature of the concert production. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is sufficient as far as the source material allows, delivering all vocals and instruments across the range well. The best thing to note about the audio transfer (all three audio tracks) is some very nice clean bass in tracks like Double Vision, Cold As Ice, Fool For You Anyway and Juke Box Hero (although the bass does become a bit muddied in Urgent). The concert mixing itself is far from great in terms of the instrument levels. Many times the guitar solos could have been mixed in louder and other main gripes include the use of way too much drum echo in Fool For You Anyway and Hot Blooded, and the fact that the keyboards are mixed in way too loud in Feels Like The First Time. In addition, I noted virtually no stereo separation or directional placement of instruments at all across the front soundstage in this mix. Both vocals and instruments are delivered using all three of the front channels. There is very minimal use of stereo panning or directional placement in this DVD.

    Surround channel use is limited to the sound of the crowd in between songs and some echo effects during the songs to help draw out the soundstage. However, there is no directional placement for the surrounds at all and the overall use of the surround channels is as uninspiring as the use of the front channels.

    The good news is that the subwoofer does get a very healthy run in this DVD, with all three audio tracks showcasing the sub handsomely for bass guitar and kick drums. All three audio tracks are quite deep recordings.

    In terms of differences between the three audio tracks, I would say that whilst there is not a huge difference to separate the Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts 5.1 mixes, the dts mix does display notably better clarity and separation and also has more pronounced and cleaner bass. In comparison to both surround mixes, the stereo mix provided a rather flat soundstage (note the comment above about poor use of stereo in the front channels) and also seemed to be lacking marginally in the high end in comparison to the other two tracks.

    No sound dropouts or pops are noted in either of the three audio tracks. Note that the concert's opening sequence - presumably meant to be the sound of a spaceship landing - does sound overly harsh and loud on all three audio tracks, but this is not a fault of the audio mixes, just the poor mixing and production quality of this concert DVD.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    One fault with menu navigation is when accessing the "audio setup" screen, you cannot see which of the three audio track options (Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 or dts 5.1) is highlighted. Try pressing the "menu" button on your remote control and the highlight may appear, allowing you to then use the cursor buttons and see what you are selecting. Otherwise, the only way to select between the audio tracks on this DVD is to use the "audio" button on your remote control directly.

Booklet

    A fold-out 6-page booklet that includes some nice colour pictures from the Foreigner 25th Anniversary "World" Tour. More importantly, the booklet contains a short essay written by the project's reluctant producer and director Justin Bourgerie, outlining the story of the DVD, including why the project was conceived in the first place (basically Foreigner realised they possessed virtually no official concert footage of the band from the past) and how it came to be that this 25th anniversary tour was filmed in such an ad hoc fashion. The essay basically explains and apologises upfront for the fact that this is not a professionally-filmed or professionally-produced concert DVD. This information is very helpful to put the DVD in its proper context before you watch it.

Bonus Clip: I Want To Know What Love Is (5:45)

    Unfortunately, the quality of the video transfer for this bonus clip is a complete mess, and notably worse than the main feature. The footage appears to have been shot on analogue video and comes with very soft resolution and poor colour saturation. All three audio track options are available for this bonus clip and the audio quality is fine for all.

    The video quality for this DVD is very much limited by the quality of the source material.

    The audio transfers are of satisfactory quality, but quite uninspiring mixes.

    There is only one bonus clip as an extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall