The Pixies-Live at the Paradise in Boston (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Additional Footage-Previously Unseen Pixies Early Show In Oct' 86 Boston Trailer-The Pixies - Acoustic, Live in Newport
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	92:22 (Case: 106)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (66:24)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michael B Borofsky
Studio Distributor	Eagle Eye Media Rajon Vision	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Barely a blot on the musical landscape when they were originally together, Pixies' cult following snowballed over the course of the decade since they split up - so much so that their mainstream recognition today is probably a lot greater than many major mainstream artists of their day. Kurt Cobain played more than a small part in this growth in popularity when he famously decried Smells Like Teen Spirit as a shameless Pixies knock-off.
 

    More than a decade later, the burnt bridges that led to the original demise of the Pixies were mended. Keen to cash in on the success they had achieved through years of avoiding each other, the band reformed and launched their appropriately titled Pixies Sell Out tour. This concert was recorded as part of that tour, though not at a regular stadium show.

    This show was recorded at a small club, The Paradise, in Boston, holding only a couple of hundred fans and set up specially for this DVD recording. As a result, everything is far more brightly lit than you will find on most live concert DVDs and the whole affair is a lot more intimate than most concert recordings (rock concert recordings, at any rate).

    Opening with La La Love You, a song never performed live by the Pixies during their original formation, the band tear through 29 of their notoriously short tracks in the space of around 100 minutes. The set played is quite comprehensive but there are a couple of notable songs missing in the set list, particularly Here Comes Your Man and Dig For Fire. Some of the tracks not played in this set are featured on the companion Acoustic: Live in Newport DVD that is being released at the same time as this disc.

    There are some great moments in this show from the very beginning, when the band makes a mess of the opening number and decide to start again from scratch, through to Joey Santiago's insane guitar effects solo during Vamos - when he literally plonks the guitar on a stand in front of a speaker to generate feedback and twiddles effects knobs for a period.

    The show starts off as a fairly tame affair and builds to a great mess of rock by about the half-way point, a level it maintains through to the end. There is plenty of energy in the whole show and plenty of interaction between the band members and the audience - in between, and occasionally during, songs.

    The quality of performance and range of songs featured in the set mean this disc is likely to appeal to casual fans as well as any die-hards out there.

Video

    The video is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is generally quite sharp, but occasionally the focus is imperfect - as you'd have to expect when recording a live show. There is a degree of low level noise visible in the black and maroon backdrop behind the stage, but it is consistent throughout the show and is generally not distracting. There is not a lot of shadow detail visible, particularly if you look at the speakers and amps to the side of the stage, but this is not an issue as the band members are very well lit throughout the show.

    The colour is quite consistent and natural for most of the show, although occasionally the bright spotlights saturate parts of the image (e.g. a white spotlight washes the colour out of Black Francis' clothes at 77:44).

    This is an RSDL disc and the layer break occurs at 66:24, in between the songs Allison and Sad Punk.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Three audio tracks are available, Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kbps), Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kbps) and DTS (768Kbps).

    The audio/visual sync is very good.

    All three audio tracks are very good quality for the type of track they are. The dynamic range of each is excellent. The clarity of the DTS track, in particular, is excellent and deserves special mention. There are three small dropouts in the DTS audio in the last few minutes of the show (at 83:28, 87:15 and 89:07, each brief enough that they are easy to miss or ignore but noticeable if you are listening carefully.

    The surround channels are well used in the 5.1 tracks. The music is distributed well across all the channels and the crowd noise is largely pressed to the surround channels. This gives a more authentic live feel - band out front, audience behind.

    The LFE track does not do a great deal and is fairly quiet. It mostly picks up the bottom end of the kick drum and the very bottom end of the bass guitar. The resulting subwoofer output is adequate, although a little disappointing, and does not do much to enhance the sound.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    As well as a modest package of extras on the disc, this package comes with a three page fold-out booklet with pictures and an introduction from Matt Ashare, the music editor of the Boston Phoenix.

Main Menu Introduction, Main Menu Audio & Animation

    A fairly standard menu animation with the live version of U-Mass playing in the background.

Pixies at TT The Bear's in Boston, 31 October 1986

    One of The Pixies first shows captured on a camcorder on 31/10/1986 (the video even has the camera time-stamp!), presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. A few of the cuts between songs give the impression that a few songs had been cut out, although it is quite plausible that they were cut due to the quality of the video. Regardless of how complete the show is, this extra gives you a pretty good idea of what you would have got out of a Pixies show when they first formed.

    The video quality is quite bad, as you'd probably expect from a home movie shot in a dark room 20 years earlier, but it is certainly watchable. There does not appear to have been much attempt at cleaning up the video.

    The sound quality is reasonable given the source. It is fairly muddy and suffers from a few tape tracking errors (though not nearly as much as the video), but it is quite listenable - particularly to anyone that has ever listened to one of the dozens of bootlegs of the old Pixies shows that have been doing the rounds since the late 1980s.

    The track list for this show is:

1. The Holiday Song
2. I'm Amazed
3. Rock a My Soul
4. Broken Face
5. I've Been Tired
6. Caribou
7. Isla De Encata
8. Nimrod's Son
9. Ed is Dead
10. Build High
11. Boom Chickaboom
12. Down to the Well

Trailer

    A trailer for the companion DVD release The Pixies - Acoustic, Live in Newport, featuring The Pixies first ever acoustic show at the Newport Folk Festival in 2005, is provided.

    The Region 1 version of this release is identical to the local release, except for the usual NTSC/PAL difference.

    A great live show from The Pixies featuring a diverse set that will appeal to both casual and die-hard fans.

    The video quality is very good for a live show.

    The audio quality is very good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall