Nazareth-Homecoming: Greatest Hits Live in Glasgow

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-22 minute interview with band members
Rating
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	83:07 (Case: 85)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (50:29)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Aubrey Powell
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Dan McAfferty Pete Agnew Jimmy Murrison Ronny Leahy Lee Agnew
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Nazareth Joni Mitchell

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	Unknown	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Quite what it is about growing up in Glasgow that produces gutsy, gravel-voiced singers such as Jimmy Barnes, Alex Harvey and Dan McAfferty is something of a mystery - maybe it's the neat scotch, or maybe it's making yourself heard above the average Glasgow club crowd, but there's no doubt that it's a distinctive sound. Nazareth grew out of the cover band, The Shadettes and came into existence in 1968 with the four founder members: Pete Agnew on bass, Dan McAfferty vocals, Manny Charlton on guitar and Darrel Sweet as drummer. After 3 decades of ups and downs the band is now only half of what it used to be, due to the sad death of Darrel Sweet whilst on tour and the departure of Manny Charlton. For 20 years the band built up a legendary reputation for live performance and album production. Achieving 3 top 10 singles with Broken Down Angel, Joni Mitchell's This Flight Tonight and the Everley Brothers' Love Hurts the band faded away in the late 80s only to reform in the early 90s and continue mostly as a live and support band in the US to artists such as George Thorogood. Their last album release was Boogaloo in 1999. I'm not sure of the current status of the band - the official web-page is down so I hope this doesn't mean that they're currently defunct.

    This performance, filmed for TV, comes over as a thank you to the loyal party faithful in their home town of Glasgow and was shot at the Garage club. The line up comprised founder members McAfferty and Agnew who were joined by Jimmy Murrison on guitar, Ronny Leahy - "the best piano player in the band" and Lee Agnew (son of Pete) on drums. The good news is that McAfferty's voice has lost none of power (listen to the vocal intro on Dream On), Murrison plays a sparkling, yet supportive, lead/rhythm guitar reminiscent of the style of Zal Cleminson (ex-guitarist of Sensational Alex Harvey Band who played with the band in the 80s) and the Agnews and Leahy provide solid backing.

    There's no doubt that the key features of the band, McAfferty's vocals and the songs, remain the same but it's also apparent that some of the raw energy and chemistry of the original four has dissipated along the way. This was a good performance though, with McAfferty and Agnew's good nature and natural bonhomie very much to the fore and even without prior knowledge of the band and its repertoire, this set stands alone as a raw, honest, rock concert with moments of genuine energy and excitement. Beggars Day rocks and This Flight Tonight sounds as good here as I remember it nearly 30 years ago. Dan drags out the old bagpipes and voice tube on Hair Of The Dog which brings back memories of the 70s. The set closes with an impassioned version of Love Hurts leaving a contented, largely middle aged crowd with a good sprinkling of  Pete Agnew look-alikes (spot the fellow in the crowd sporting sensible earplugs at 55:41).

Video

    The filming, editing and video transfer of this concert and DVD are excellent.

    The transfer is in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The video is sharp, with good shadow detail but mild low level noise is apparent throughout. There is occasional oversaturation of the camera when a spotlight is caught full on.

    The colours of the imaginative set lighting are excellently presented with good rendering also of skin tones.

    There were no MPEG artefacts noted. There is minimal aliasing of the odd mike stand and guitar string, but this is much better than the average concert video and only noticeable on a large screen. As the feature was captured on video, there are no film artefacts.

    There are no subtitles which could cause a few comprehension difficulties if you are not fluent in Glaswegian.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted with a quite marked transition point at 50:29 located between songs.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Like the video transfer, this audio transfer is excellent.

    There are three audio tracks on offer, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo at 224 kbps, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround at full-rate 448 kbps and  DTS 5.1 surround. I listened to the DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks and checked out the stereo version of a few of the tracks I knew best. Unusually, the volume levels of the 5.1 tracks are encoded at an identical level making a DTS vs Dolby Digital comparison much easier than usual. The overall volume levels of the surround tracks are, however, encoded at an unusually low level - I had to crank up the volume up another 50% to attain my usual listening levels. This was one of the clearest examples that I have come across of the superior attack, definition, fullness and wow factor offered by DTS - just check out Murrison's guitar intro to Beggar's Day to see what I mean

    Dialogue, as is to be expected, was at times a little difficult to decipher in view of the thick Glasgow accents, but this is a cultural phenomenon and not a technical issue. There were no audio sync problems but there were a couple of microphone pops at 17:20 and 73:44 (but who cares).

    I really liked the audio mix for this concert. The sound came across as raw and honest, as do the band. There's no audio trickery here, What You See is What You Hear and the surrounds were used in a masterly way to increase the ambience without intrusive audience noise assaulting you from the rear (!).

    The subwoofer was again excellently mixed in to thump and pump out the bass throughout the set in an authoritative but tasteful manner.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu featured an animated backdrop of song titles and was presented at 1.78:1 with no audio backing (which makes a nice change from the usual rabble rousing found on most concert DVDs)

Playlist

    Selection list for the 16 songs on the DVD.

Interview with band members

    Interesting 21:32 interview with Pete and Dan on the band's origins and some of the traumas over the years. Also interviewed are the three latest additions to the band and their perspective on integrating into the Nazareth legend. Presented at 1.33:1 with stereo Dolby Digital 2.0 sound.

    And that's yer bloomin' lot! Not even a booklet or listing of band members on the slick (there's two spellings of Jimmy Muirrison/Murrison). Not even the date of recording of the concert. A discography of the band's prodigious output over the year would also have been helpful.

    The content of the R1 and R4 versions appears to be identical.

    If you think that Dan McAfferty is Nazareth then you're going to really like this DVD. If you think old rockers ought to fade away gracefully, then you may prefer to check out some contemporary stuff. If you like a good live set of rock music, on a technically excellent DVD, then you're going to ignore the lack of extras and pick up a copy.

    The video quality is excellent - I wish all concert videos were as good.

    The audio quality is superb with my preference going to the DTS track.

    The extras are just about non-existent which is a great shame for Nazareth fans and for those of us with an interest in a band that forms a significant part of rock history.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall