Blood Brothers: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Introduction Menu Audio Music Video-Murder Incorporated Music Video-Secret Garden
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	89:49
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (46:10)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ernie Fritz
Studio Distributor	Thrill Hill Sony Music	Starring	Bruce Springsteen Roy Bittan Clarence Clemmons Danny Federici Nils Lofgren Patti Scialfa Garry Tallent Max Weinberg Steve Van Zandt
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$29.95	Music	Bruce Springsteen

   One of the interesting aspects of a DVD programme like this is how much it highlights the lack of quality in popular music of the last ten years. During the 1970s and 1980s, there were a plethora of bands turning out music that will endure for the ages, but when it comes to pinpointing those select few that made an indelible mark that shall never be erased from the annals of popular music, there are very few candidates. I would suggest that amongst that select few will be The Boss - Bruce Springsteen. This programme explains precisely why, for this programme is a documentary about the making of his album Greatest Hits in 1995. What was so special about Greatest Hits was the fact that it was the first time in eleven years that he and The E Street Band played together. Amazingly, the gathering was organised in the space of three days.

   Those three days saw one of the greatest bands of all time gather at The Hit Factory in New York to record a few new songs for inclusion on Greatest Hits. The measure of the respect that these people hold for one other can be deduced from the fact that despite eleven years having passed, a simple telephone call was enough to assemble Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa (okay no surprise here as she is Mrs Bruce Springsteen), Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg and Steve Van Zandt (yes, he of The Sopranos fame) for about a week of recording. The last time they had recorded together was for the Born In The U.S.A. album if I recall correctly (which of course sold in enough numbers to solve the national debt problem of a Third World nation), so for Nils Lofgren this was an especially important time as he finally got to record with the band.

   Of course, going into such a hastily-arranged recording session meant that they were a tad rusty and had to get back up to speed. Since they are great musicians, that process did not take long and soon they were into the swing of things and we are treated to a look at some of the great musicians of popular music doing something that they excel at. This programme shows how they go about the process of refining a raw Bruce Springsteen song into something that is almost unique in its ability to tell a story. We also get taken inside the filming of the music video for one of the new songs produced for the album, Murder Incorporated, at a small nightclub in New York.

   Bruce Springsteen was responsible for the some of the greatest albums of the rock and roll era and most were done with The E Street Band. The likes of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River and Born In The U.S.A. amongst others are unlikely to ever be emulated and thus it is a rare treat indeed to be able to see not only the man and the band, but also how they came together to make great music. If you have an interest in great rock and roll music, then this is a programme to delight in.

Video

    The programme might delight, but you will have to suffer a little to enjoy the delights. This is not exactly an exemplary piece of mastering.

    The transfer is presented in a Full Frame format (1.33:1) that is not 16x9 enhanced.

    I made the unfortunate decision to pause this programme a little way in, and it highlighted the immediate problem with this transfer. It suffers quite horrendously from macro-blocking such that there is at virtually no time a smooth picture at all. This really is at times very poor mastering and the sheer consistency of the pixelization, which is very obvious seemingly whenever you pause the programme, is quite disappointing. The natural result of this poor mastering is that the transfer is never what you would consider sharp and always seems to have a diffuse look to it. Detail is obviously quite lacking at times, especially in the background, and shadow detail can be quite average. You could hardly consider this a clear transfer either and whilst grain is not a really major problem, there is no doubt that it is present during largish chunks of the programme. There also appear to be some problems with low level noise in the transfer.

    Colour-wise, this is also not a major success but then again that was never going to be the case. We are after all taking about the relatively drab confines of a recording studio for the bulk of the programme. Whilst not being blessed with a whole heap of bright, vibrant colours the overall feel is quite decent and the colours are quite well-saturated. Tonal depth is hurt somewhat by the noise problems but there is generally nothing remiss in the overall depth. Oversaturation is not an issue here and colour bleed is similarly non-existent. Whilst I would have preferred something a little better in the colours, overall this is quite reasonable.

    Apart from the severe blockiness in the transfer, there did not appear to be any other significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. Well, at least apart from a couple of rather grotesque pan shots (around 4:57 and again at 39:55) which have a distinct loss of resolution due to motion blur and shimmer quite appallingly to boot. The most noticeable issue with film-to-video artefacts is some moiré artefacting in the microphones of all things (good examples being at around the 18:30 mark and extensively between 42:30 and 43:00). It might not be the most obvious examples we will ever see, but they do tend to be just a little too noticeable and appear to be accompanied by some minor cross-colouration. There was nothing much in the way of film artefacts in the transfer.

    The amazing thing is that all these problems occur in a 90 minute show spread over two layers of an RSDL-formatted DVD. The layer change itself is placed in one of the black "chapter" breaks at 46:10, which makes it excellently placed and completely non-disruptive to the flow of the programme. Given the space that the above formatting allows, it is particularly remarkable that we are still seeing signs of over-compression in the transfer, despite the fact that the transfer rate remains well above 9 Mbps for much of the programme.

    It should be noted that the English lyric subtitles default to on.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Mind you, we should be thankful for small mercies as this is one of the better Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks to have come from Sony Music recently. It is a small mercy, though, as it is still by no means a terrific example of the art.

    There are two soundtracks on the DVD, namely an English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 soundtrack and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. I listened to the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, but did sample the English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 soundtrack.

    The dialogue and music comes up well in the transfer and there are no real problems with the clarity and understanding here. There are no problems with audio sync in the transfer.

    The main issue with the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (which as you well know from previous reviews is an area of concern on Sony Music DVDs) is that it sounds more like a Dolby Digital 3.˝ soundtrack. There certainly seems to be little action if any in the rear surround channels here, but that is to be expected I suppose given the studio nature of most of the programme. However, I was certainly expecting more of a contribution form the bass channel than we got here. It is not completely absent but there are times when you sort of feel that it has gone missing-in-action. Thankfully, the front surround channels are very well-handled in the mix and we get plenty of presence across the soundscape even if it is more frontal than perhaps it should have been. There are no obvious glitches in the soundtrack and overall it is quite reasonable.

    The uncompressed Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 soundtrack is a much better effort, as is quite usual for these soundtracks. Very clear, open sound that really lets everything out. As is typical for this sort of soundtrack, it is very reminiscent of a compact disc recording with just enough presence that if you crank this up a little, it still sounds real good. Mind you, cranking it up a little (well, okay, a lot) does highlight some rather minor hiss at times that I am guessing is tape hiss. Overall though, no complaints at all with the Linear PCM soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Well I must say I love the discography and the biographies - not. Despite the available space on the DVD, the only extras are in fact two music videos tacked onto the end of the main programme. They are actually included in the overall timing of the main programme: the programme itself lasts about 79 minutes with the two music videos making up the additional 10 minutes.

Menu

    Well there is a decent main menu introduction, but thereafter not much to worry about in the menus. They are quite nicely put together and have some reasonable audio and animation enhancement.

Music Video - Murder Incorporated

    Presented in the same format as the main programme, this is actually the music video that we see being recorded during the main programme. A good song but the video takes a bit of getting used to, as it is quite dark at times and, due to the confined space in the nightclub, has a very confined field of vision.

Music Video - Secret Garden

    Also presented in the same format as the main programme, this is a much better looking effort as befits a very good song. Certainly the better of the two in every respect.

    As far as we have been able to ascertain, this is identical to the Region 1 release.

    Blood Brothers - Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band is an excellent look at a very special week or so of recording by one of the greatest bands of the rock and roll era. It has however been let down by a fairly ordinary video transfer and an audio transfer that continues to expose some weaknesses in the art as far as Sony Music DVDs is concerned. On the content alone this is well worth adding to the collection, but the transfer consigns it to the rental-only category.

    Of note however is that the DVD is supplied in one of those awful soft Brackley cases. Now I could have lived with that, but the slick itself is about two millimetres too wide for the case, with the result that it crinkles up in the case. Not a great advertisement for the product. Lousy case, oversized slick, ordinary video transfer - is there a pattern emerging here?

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall