Queen-The DVD Collection: Queen on Fire: Live at the Bowl (1982) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Music |
Booklet Interviews-Cast-Interviews with Brian May, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury Featurette-Additional concert footage, Tokyo and Vienna concerts Gallery-Photo-Slide show of concert stills |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1982 | ||
Running Time | 103:37 (Case: 170) | ||
RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (46:23) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Programme | ||
Region Coding | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | Gavin Taylor |
Studio
Distributor |
EMI Music |
Starring |
Brian May Freddie Mercury Roger Taylor John Deacon |
Case | Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual | ||
RPI | $34.95 | Music | Queen |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Full Frame |
English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (1536Kb/s) |
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Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.33:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles | None | Smoking | No |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
But what makes this particular concert so sought after by fans? What's so special about this 1982 concert? Well, firstly, this concert catches Queen at a unique stage of their career, a period for which previously precious little information or official product release has been available. In June 1982, Queen were riding high with their 10th anniversary successfully behind them, arguably seeing the band at this point at the very peak of their live performance career, and also on a high after having been the first international rock group to have toured and successfully conquered the virgin rock territory of South America in a mammoth 1981 tour that took in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico.
All in all, t
OK, so all well and dandy for Queen fans, but so what about the rest of the rock enthusiast/DVD-buying audience? Is this a good Queen concert to see and buy on DVD or not? Or am I better off just sticking to my Live At Wembley DVD release that has all the hits live? Well the answer to that, even if you are not a die-hard Queen fan and even if you already own Live At Wembley, remains a resounding and emphatic "yes".
This 1982 concert showcases Queen "on fire", at their very peak. If you want to know why Queen at their best were considered to be the undisputed greatest live rock act in the world, then this is the concert you need to see. OK sure, being a 1982 concert, this set list does not include all of Queen's popular hit material, including the singles from 1984's "The Works" album and 1986's "A Kind Of Magic" album. But what this concert does have instead is a more varied set list, including several rare and lesser-known songs that will give you a much better appreciation of the extent and breadth of the variety of Queen's live material. Further, this concert boasts some blistering live renditions of almost all of your favourite Queen classics. In particular, the version of Bohemian Rhapsody played in this concert is, in my opinion, nothing short of the very best live version of this classic I have ever heard (I know, a big call!... and I've heard a few live versions in my time!!). Ditto in my view the versions of several other songs in this concert are up there among the best live renditions I've heard, specifically those of Somebody To Love, Save Me, Under Pressure and Fat Bottomed Girls. Somebody To Love in particular showcases Freddie's amazingly strong vocal talents in full flight. Other standout tracks in the set list are Play The Game, performed with gusto and just a little bit of aggro by Freddie, Now I'm Here, with some phenomenal guitar work, the hard rockers Tie Your Mother Down and Sheer Heart Attack. And then there is of course the aforementioned tight and rocky "Hot Space" tracks, that I'm sure will manage to get even those of you who have never even heard these songs before rocking along. This is indeed Queen live at their peak.
Live At The Bowl and "Hot Space Tour" Trivia:
1. Flash (taped intro) 2. The Hero 3. We Will Rock You (Fast) 4. Action This Day 5. Play The Game 6. Staying Power 7. Somebody To Love 8. Now I'm Here 9. Dragon Attack 10. Now I'm Here (Reprise) 11. Love Of My Life 12. Save Me 13. Back Chat | 14. Get Down, Make Love 15. Guitar Solo 16. Under Pressure 17. Fat Bottomed Girls 18. Crazy Little Thing Called Love 19. Bohemian Rhapsody 20. Tie Your Mother Down 21. Another One Bites The Dust 22. Sheer Heart Attack 23. We Will Rock You 24. We Are The Champions 25. God Save The Queen (taped outro) |
The video transfer is surprisingly crisp and detailed. It is in fact a better quality transfer than last year's Queen Live At Wembley concert DVD release, despite the fact that the Wembley concert footage was recorded 4 years later than the Live At The Bowl concert. Most thankfully, the Live At The Bowl video transfer does not suffer from several of the annoying source issues to have plagued the Wembley concert DVD - such as poor resolution/definition and colour bleed (see my Live At Wembley review for full details). However there is still one inescapable and very annoying source artefact in common with both DVD transfers, and that is the highly distracting streaking affect across the source image from bright lights, due to the 1980's technology tube cameras used to record these concerts. This is, as I said, an unavoidable source issue.
The presented aspect ratio is 1.33:1 full frame, as the footage was originally recorded for the purpose of broadcast on UK TV.
I was quite surprised at the quality of this video transfer, particularly after the disappointment of the Live At Wembley transfer. I was expecting for 1982 recorded-for-TV source footage (in addition to which note there was also an extra 47-odd minutes worth of the original concert footage edited out of the TV broadcast, and so this had to be salvaged from some dusty BBC archive) that what we would get is a somewhat grainier and indistinct image. But that's not what we get at all. Whilst the DVD cover and booklet information doesn't provide any detail, I would suspect that some substantial work must have gone into digitally restoring the original concert footage. If this footage was shot using 1982-style analogue video camera technology, then you certainly wouldn't know it to watch this DVD. Specifically, I note that there appears to have been substantial restoration of all the close-up camera coverage of the stage and of the band members (this forms the vast majority of the feature), whereas only the other lesser-used camera angle footage, such as shots of the crowd (in low light) and the far away, back-of-crowd camera angle footage, are notably grainier and less well defined.
All the close-up stage footage in this transfer is very crisp and sharp indeed, with very minimal grain/video noise and a pleasing amount of image detail on offer, so that the footage really does belie its age and source. As stated however, this principal stage/band footage is interspersed with some poorer quality (but very brief) shots from other camera angles that is less well defined. Surprisingly, given the source, there appears to be virtually no low level noise issues to worry about, other than one culprit - some shots earlier on in the concert, angled up from behind the band members looking up into the sky at dusk, evidencing low level noise under the low light conditions. Shadow detail is not great in this transfer, but this is somewhat to be expected in a night-time concert shoot, as image elements tend to be either brightly lit under the harsh concert lighting, or else not visible at all in the complete darkness.
Colour is also much better than I would have expected from this source material. (I have seen previous VHS copies of excerpts of the Milton Keynes concert footage, with much lesser quality colour.) All colours in the stage lighting, the band's costumes and other elements really come to life in this DVD transfer and again seem to belie the age and quality of the original source material. Great stuff.
And the news keeps getting better. This disc has been carefully and painstakingly mastered to DVD. There are no MPEG or compression artefacts at all. The material is given plenty of room on the DVD, with an average bit rate of 8.95MB/s. Nor are there any film-to-video artefacts to note - not even the slightest aliasing on my set up.
Unfortunately though, as expected, the transfer does fall down in one key area - source artefacts. Still, it can at least be said that it's really only one specific source artefact that we have to complain about here (unlike the Live At Wembley transfer, where there were several), and that is the streaking effect from the old technology tube video cameras of the day. These old tube cameras do not like bright lights being shined into them at all. When they are, the cameras simply burn out that part of the camera frame, leaving a nasty residual ghosting of the image, which is then exacerbated by an annoying streaking effect across the image, burning in further, whenever the camera continues to zoom or pan.. And once an image is burned into a particular camera, it remains as a notable residual burn whenever we later return to that particular camera angle, noticeable even for subsequent static shots. Thank goodness camera technology improved from the 1980s. Some of the worst examples of this annoying burn/streaking effect can be seen at/from 4:28, 18:39, 19:36 and 25:10, but these are just the major examples and there are many others.
As stated, this source artefact is completely unavoidable - I doubt there would be anything that could be done to eliminate the effect even in digital restoration. On a positive note though, I note that there is next to no evidence on this DVD of another very annoying source artefact that you would expect of 1980s camera technology - that of microphony. I have seen microphony ruin many 1980s live concert footage, Live Aid being the most recent and most prominent example, and it was also a detracting issue for the Live At Wembley shoot. Thankfully though, despite the fact that it was recorded several years prior to these two examples, the ugly microphony bug does not rear its ugly head for Live At The Bowl. All in all then, there is very little to complain about with the overall quality of this DVD's video transfer.
There are no subtitles available for the feature. This is a lost opportunity to include song lyrics and therefore widen the audience appeal of this concert.
The disc is RSDL-formatted, however the layer change was so well negotiated on my player that I didn't even notice it. I had to look up the layer change point using software later, and located it at 46:23, a quiet spot just before the start of Save Me.
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Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
The audio transfer is an absolute ripper - easily the best Queen concert DVD mix yet. It is perhaps a little unconventional in the mixing, but it certainly delivers the goods in spades.
As with the previous Queen DVDs, this release comes with a default LPCM 2.0 track (at a bitrate of 1536 kb/s) and a dts 96/24 5.1 track (at the maximum bitrate of 1536 kb/s). By providing an LPCM 2.0 track instead of just Dolby Digital 2.0 and by providing dts 96/24 5.1 instead of just Dolby Digital 5.1, Queen continues to fully embrace the dts format and continues to provide the highest possible quality audio mixes available at the highest possible bitrates. This is done again, however, at the sacrifice of providing 100% flexibility for the DVD-buying public, so note as with all other Queen DVD releases that if you have older equipment which is not dts compatible, then the surround mix on this DVD will be unavailable to you.
Note also that the dts track on offer on this disc is in fact the higher resolution format 96/24 mix, offering, for appropriately equipped decoders, 24-bit sample depth (instead of the more usual 16-bit) and 96 kHz sample rate as well (instead of 48kHz). This offers a superior audio resolution, previously only to be found on DVD-A dts tracks. If your decoder is not 96/24 compatible, then the track will simply play at a downsampled/standard 48kHz dts instead. (My review is of the upsampled 96/24 audio track.) Note that Queen has pioneered the inclusion of dts 96/24 mixes on DVD-Video, with Queen's Greatest Video Hits 1 in fact being the very first offering of this higher level audio format on a DVD-Video release (as stated, prior to this, dts 96/24 tracks were only to be found on DVD-Audio releases). Live At The Bowl is now the third in the Queen DVD Collection to receive a dts 96/24 mix, behind Greatest Video Hits I and Greatest Video Hits 2. Note also that both The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and Live At Wembley included only standard resolution dts 5.1 mixes, making Live At The Bowl the first ever Queen concert DVD (and more widely, possibly the first ever live concert DVD-Video release?) to receive the benefit of this higher resolution audio format.
On to the evaluation of the audio track and, as with Live At Wembley, the most immediate and pleasing impact of this new concert DVD mix is in the optimisation of the concert mixing levels across the vocals and all instruments. Inappropriate mixing levels of vocal versus instruments, or of guitars being too low in the mix, or of the employment of over-aggressive surround sound re-mixing drowning out the original concert sound are all issues that can and have brought many a live rock concert DVD unstuck. The first effort at Queen concert DVD re-mixing, on the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, was not the best, marred by over-aggressive surround reverb. The next re-mixing effort, the Live At Wembley mix, was far superior, with mixing levels across vocals and instruments tightened up and the use of the surround channels much better handled. Well, I can happily report that the re-mixing effort on the third Queen concert DVD, Live At The Bowl, is even better again than the Wembley concert mix. There is absolutely nothing you could complain about in the quality of this concert mixing, with vocals maintained very clear and distinct throughout, highlighting the sheer power and delivery of Freddie's voice, guitars mixed up well to an appropriate level, delivering real bite and highlighting the unique sound of Brian's home-made axe, the bass guitar notes clear and driving, and the drums (for the most part) crisp and punchy in the mix. A big tick for the concert mix levels here.
The DVD's audio transfer has to handle a huge dynamic range in this concert, from Freddie's quieter reflections in between songs and the poignancy of the 12-string guitar in Love Of My Life, through to the aural assault of the trademark Queen "wall of sound" in tracks like Sheer Heart Attack and We Will Rock You (Fast). It is quite evident when listening to the mix (and appreciating that the source material they had to work with was only 1982 stereo recording tapes) that some considerable time and effort has been invested by Queen audio engineers Justin Shirley-Smith and Kris Fredriksson to clean and tweak every single note and nuance in the original source tapes through Pro Tools, and the clarity of each and every component of their resultant re-mix is just amazing, given it is a 22 year old source recording. Well done yet again gents. The resultant DVD audio transfer delivers across the spectrum, from faithful driving bass to clarity in the midranges to nice tight percussion. There are no audio clicks, pops or dropouts and audio sync is spot on. Again, a big tick here.
Next we move onto the surround mix and the first thing you notice is that the use of the 5.1 audio channels in the mix is a little unconventional. Firstly, the centre channel is virtually unused throughout this concert. I had to check both my DVD player and my pre-amp settings to confirm that the centre channel is indeed active in this dts 5.1 mix, and it is. However when you put your ear up against the centre channel you realise that whilst the channel may be "on", next to no audio information is being directed to the centre channel for the duration of the concert mix. Instead, all vocals and all instruments are directed to the front mains, and the overall (presumably intended) effect of this is to broaden the front soundstage and to provide a "wider" concert sound. Unusual, but it seems to work. There is also perhaps not quite as much use of stereo panning and specific front localised placement in this mix as I might have expected, however again the overall mix across the front soundstage remains very clear and strong and full of impact.
The surround channels are used effectively and constantly to provide great, immersive audio. Again perhaps a little unconventionally, I noted the sound of the crowd in this concert is mixed almost equally across the front speakers as the rears, rather than the usual approach of weighting the crowd more to the rears. This has the effect of orienting the viewer more "middle of audience" rather than "near front of audience", as is more common, but again, this seems to work just fine in the mix. Certainly the balance of front-to-back weighting remains a touch forward as a result of this mixing, but still quite naturally so, and the viewer is neatly cocooned in the soundstage from the beginning to the end of the concert. The rear channels themselves are used mostly to replicate the venue acoustics. This means that by themselves the rear channels sound quite muddied and indistinct if you put your ear up to them, but as part of the overall mix they contribute well to provide that live concert feeling very effectively. The rears are also used on occasion to provide some localised directional sound effects, for example the vocal echoes and guitar repeats in Now I'm Here, the second and third repeat echoes in Brian's trademark guitar solo (the mixing here is a big improvement, getting the localised echoes right, compared to the Live At Wembley mix) and the improvisation section of Get Down, Make Love. A big tick for the use of the surrounds.
Finally, we have subwoofer use to report on, and yes it does not let us down either. The sub is employed constantly and with much impact throughout the concert to provide much added punch to Roger's kick-drum and added growl to John's bass guitar notes. Great stuff.
Dialogue | |
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Overall |
As with all previous Queen DVD Collection releases, considerable effort has again gone into giving us a comprehensive extras package, with some great archival material unearthed.
All menus are animated, presented in the appropriate aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (i.e. commensurate with the feature) and nearly all come with audio underscore. All menus are nicely themed and easy to navigate.
An interesting feature of disc 1 is in respect to launching straight into the feature with the default audio track, unless you elect to change. When you play the disc, the feature concert footage proper starts up, playing with the default audio track, being the LPCM 2.0, and with a temporary truncated menu screen superimposed over the bottom of the screen for about 2 minutes. From this sub-menu you have the option to either change the audio to dts 5.1 and continue watching the feature, or to go to a main menu for more options. However be warned that if you do nothing, then after only a couple of minutes this temporary menu will disappear and the DVD will assume you want to continue watching the concert with the default 2.0 audio.
The DVD comes with a 20-page booklet with some great photo stills from the concert, plus all details of the DVD set.
Apart from a basic audio set-up screen and a song select (i.e. chapter select) screen, the only “extra” to be had on disc 1 is a “Jukebox” option. This is an interesting inclusion; it allows you to programme up to five songs from the concert in any order (repeating selections if desired), and then play those chapters of the DVD in the programmed order. A bit of a gimmick, maybe, but it does allow you to boil down to your own top 5 “highlight” performances from the concert and just play these songs, if you so desire.
The extras are broken down into 3 sections: "Interviews", "Tour Highlights" and "Gallery". All extras are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and with LPCM 2 channel audio. The Interviews extras also come with the option of 7 subtitle languages, including English.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
This disc has been released in identical format around the world. Opt for the Region 4 release for superior PAL resolution and price.
One for both die hard Queen fans and all rock enthusiasts alike. This is Queen live at their peak, with a set list that incorporates truly standout performances of many of their much-loved classics, along with a variety of blistering hard rockers, some great ballads and some interesting lesser known material. The release of this very rare concert on DVD is to be applauded.
The DVD specs and packaging effort is the usual par excellence from Queen/EMI, giving us the highest quality bit rate transfers for both video and audio. The video source material appears to have been digitally restored and the resultant transfer belies its age and source. Similarly the highest resolution audio formats in both surround and stereo mixes showcases the very best in Pro Tools restoration and concert re-mixing standards. The extras package is also comprehensive and provides added context to the feature.
Easily the best Queen concert DVD effort to date, I now have a new entrant in my top 10 DVD listing.
...So what are you waiting for?... Just hurry up and go out and buy it already!...
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Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Denon DVD-2900, using Component output |
Display | NEC 125cm Widescreen Plasma. Calibrated with Digital Video Essentials (PAL). This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Rotel RSP-1068 Pre-amp/Processor. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
Amplification | Elektra Theatre 150 Watts x 6 channel Power Amplifier |
Speakers | Orpheus Aurora III mains, Orpheus Centaurus 1.0 centre, Velodyne CT150 sub and B&W DM303 rears |