Bad Company-In Concert: Merchants of Cool (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Menu Animation & Audio Biographies-Cast Notes-Track By Track Comments Discography Gallery-Photo Interviews-Cast Featurette-Behind The Scenes Featurette-Famous Friends Web Links DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	87:55 (Case: 140)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (23:45)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michael Drumm
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Paul Rodgers Simon Kirke David Colwell Jaz Lochrie
Case	Click
RPI	$34.95	Music	Paul Rodgers Mick Ralphs Neal Schon

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (1536Kb/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	No

    Paul Rodgers left the band in 1982 to pursue a successful solo career with backing musicians including current bassist Jaz Lochrie and guest guitarist Neal Schon. Bad Company were resurrected in 1986 by Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke, recruiting guitar stalwart Dave "Bucket" Colwell and Brian Howe on vocals. Although the band did reasonably well and released six albums till 1996, the lack of the on-stage charisma and distinctive vocals of Paul Rodgers led to clamours for the original band to re-unite, which they eventually did, in 1999. Since that time they have toured to capacity crowds, released the Original Bad Company Anthology and Paul Rodgers contributed to the "Volunteers for America" concert in aid of victims of September 11th.

    The appeal of Bad Company's music lies in the precise, controlled, power performance of  blues-rock songs, mostly penned by Paul Rodgers, but with a substantial contribution by Mick Ralphs. The strong 'cowboy' links of many of  the songs, together with simple, yet powerful and moving emotional undertones, are well received in the USA where they have always had a substantial following.

    The Bad Company-Merchants of Cool DVD was compiled from two concerts recorded at The Grove, Anaheim on 30th January 2002 and The Paramount Theatre, Denver on 22nd January 2002 and flits frequently between each recording, even within the same song. The line-up for this concert features Paul Rodgers (vocals, guitar, piano), Simon Kirke (drums), Dave Colwell (guitar) and Jaz Lochrie (bass) - Mick Ralphs and Boz Burrell retired from touring in 2000. The performance is very competent and the genial Paul Rodgers has never sounded better. It's always great to see a band who clearly enjoy performing live and Rodger's interplay with and control of the audience is masterful. I guess for someone who's intimately  familiar with the original recordings, the only real criticism is that the guitar sounds a little thin - although 'Bucket' gives the daunting task of playing lead and rhythm his best shot, there's no doubt that the sparkle and innovation of Mick Ralphs' lead is missed. I felt the performance really came to life when guest lead guitarists Slash and Neal Schon were featured on the old Free classic: Wishing Well. Nevertheless Rodger's acoustic rendition of Seagull is as moving as ever and Deal With The Preacher and Rock and Roll Fantasy fairly sizzle along. Featuring all the old classics, the 17 songs featured (and bonus track) certainly cover the favourites and seminal songs of Bad Company's nearly 30 year history and provide a good anthology and thoroughly enjoyable performance.

Video

    The transfer is of average quality and presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 but not 16x9 enhanced.

    This PAL transfer has the slightly soft feel of an NTSC to PAL conversion. Shadow detail is average and there are several instances of low level noise.

     The colours were a little on the dull side with the usual rock concert of blues/reds and, for a little variety, purple haze thrown in for good measure. Skin tones were well rendered. There was mild chroma noise evident in some of the red backdrops.

    Aliasing was unusually minimal for a rock concert with the frequent diagonals found on strings, mike stands and stage fronts. Edge enhancement was visible when the mainly dark-garbed performers were filmed against dark backdrops but wasn't intrusive. Macro-blocking was evident in the red background at 27:07.

   There were no subtitles.

   The disc is a DVD-9 (not DVD-5 as claimed on the slick) and RSDL-formatted with a quite noticeable layer change situated between Chapters 6 and 7 at 23:45.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on this DVD - Dolby Digital 5.1. Dolby Digital 2.0 and DTS 5.1 - I listened to all on my usual home theatre set up and a more basic stereo system. All three tracks are excellent and I was happy listening to any one of them. DTS tracks on more recent releases seem to have ceased the 3dB volume increase found on earlier recordings and so it's a little easier to compare the two rival 5.1 formats. On my system, the DTS encoding gave a slightly fuller, more spacious sound whereas the Dolby Digital version sounded a little harsher.

    I'd have to agree with much of the hype on this DVD, in that Paul Rodgers is one of the world's leading rock singers and his vocals are expressive and clear - I had no problem in discerning any of the song lyrics. There appeared to be no audio or dialogue sync problems.

    The surround channels were appropriately and sympathetically used, in a low key manner, to enhance the reverberation and ambience of the performance and were neither distracting nor used for gimmicky effects.

    The subwoofer plugged along for the whole performance delivering the bass guitar line - I couldn't hear any evidence of kick drum on the subwoofer - either it wasn't ported to the LFE channel or else Simon Kirke had a sore foot!

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Biography

    4 pages of biography notes.

Track-By-Track Commentary

    9 pages of notes on the songs' origin and history.

Discography

Photo Gallery

    24 pages of stills of the band presented in 1.33:1

Interviews

Famous Friends

    8 minutes of more hype from industry pals on the rise of Free and subsequent evolution into Bad Company.

Web Links

    URLs for Bad Company's, Paul Rodgers' and Sanctuary Records' web-sites.

Hidden Bonus Track

    (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) Rehearsal and performance of the Neal Schon song 'Saving Grace' - accessed by hitting the left cursor off the Web Links option.

    There is little information on the R1 release. The one review I could find claimed that this was 16x9 enhanced (which I would find hard to imagine) but otherwise the content appeared identical - if this is indeed the case then we've been short-changed (as have the R2 buyers).

    The video quality is a little ordinary, but quite watchable.

    The audio quality is superb, and all three audio tracks are worth a listen.

   The extras, although a little self-serving are of interest and well presented.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall