Average White Band-Tonight: Average White Band in Concert (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Menu Animation & Audio Biographies-Cast-18 pages of text by Alan Tilles Discography-Static picks of CD slicks Interviews-Cast-35 minutes with all band members
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	100:50
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (69:34)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Mark Haney
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Alan Gorrie Onnie McIntyre Eliot Lewis Fred Vigdor Adam Deitch
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Average White Band Various

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English dts 6.1 ES Matrix (1536Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Average White Band is a five-piece band comprising founder members Alan Gorrie (lead vocals, bass, keyboard) and Onnie McIntyre (guitar, vocals), later joined by Eliot Lewis (keyboard, bass, lead vocals), Fred Vigdor (sax, keyboards, vocals) and Brian Dunne (drum). Their music is summed up neatly as funk, though the band describe themselves as a soul and blues band. Technically impressive, with a jazzy innovation, it's hard to pick a melody from most of their music and it certainly lacks some of the melody of its soulful roots. There's no doubt that this is principally a band to see live and dance to - or else put on the DVD and turn up the volume! 

    The Tonight: Average White Band in Concert DVD is a live recording of the band filmed at House of Blues, Los Angeles on June 17, 2000. Unfortunately, 'creative' DVD authoring has spoilt the flow of live music by interspersing snippets of interviews with band members between tracks. As the full length band interviews are presented as extras, their inclusion within the main feature is nothing short of disruptive. A CD, Face To Face, also featuring AWB live was recorded at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium and released a year earlier in 1999.

Video

    The feature is well shot on video and is of average and satisfactory quality for modern day concert recordings.

    The aspect ratio for the transfer is 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    The video has a slightly soft feel betraying its NTSC origins but is satisfactorily sharp for the feature. Shadow detail is limited but this is appropriate as we don't really wish to see the full resolution of the 'ninja-style' cameramen angling after their best shots. There is no significant low-level noise.

    Colours were satisfactorily rendered and there was minimal chroma noise and no discernible colour bleed.

    There were no visible MPEG artefacts. Mild aliasing was present on the usual culprits; cymbals, keyboards, and mike stands, but was not intrusive. Obviously, there were no film artefacts.

    There were no subtitles.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted with the transition point well located between Chapters 10 and 11 at 69:34.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There were three audio tracks, a default Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, a DTS ES matrix mix and a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround mix. The quality of all three tracks was excellent. There is little to choose between the DTS and Dolby Digital surround tracks - a previous criticism of DTS was that it was usually encoded about 3dB louder than the comparable Dolby Digital offering but in recent times I've noted a reversal of this trend and this disc follows this form. When compensated for, both tracks sound very similar. Perhaps the DTS has a slightly fuller sound but the dynamic range of the Dolby Digital track was superior. The surprise here was how good the Dolby Prologic track was - the surrounds are well utilised and give a very atmospheric rendering of the performance. However, lacking the dynamic range of the other two formats the sound is a little on the thin side.

    Dialogue was clearly rendered and everything was appropriately synched.

    Surrounds were well utilised to increase ambience without distraction and the matrixed ES channel of DTS was mostly audience applause.

    The subwoofer was well used to augment the lower registers, including Alan Gorrie's five-string bass and the kick drum.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Discography

Biography

Interviews

    The R1 and R4 releases appear to have identical content.

    The video quality was good.

    All three audio tracks were superb with my pick going to the Dolby Digital 5.1 track.

    The extras were reasonable, although a little more information in the discography would have been good. This is, however, all well covered on their website: http://www.averagewhiteband.com.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall