Mark Seymour-Ballad of the One Eyed Man: Live at The Basement (2001)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Music	Featurette-Documentary Featurette-Throw Your Arms Around Me Featurette-The Ghost Of Vainglory Featurette-The Ballad Of The One Eyed Man (Acoustic)
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	68:56 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ross Wood
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Mark Seymour Cameron McKenzie Dave Beck Rod Davies Chris Bekker
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Mark Seymour

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.75:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.75:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Mark Seymour used to be part of Hunters and Collectors, an Australian rock band circa 1981-1998 and was its lead vocalist as well as guitar player. Since the band broke up, Mark has pursued a solo career. To date he has released two solo albums, King Without A Clue and One Eyed Man.

    This DVD is a recording of a concert given by Mark Seymour and his new band, The Human Tide, at the Basement nightclub/music venue, and released as part of the "Live at the Basement" DVD series. It was also broadcast on ABC TV at 11:00pm on 29 November 2001. Apparently a CD version of the concert is in the works.

    The band line-up includes:

• Mark Seymour (lead vocals, guitar)
• Cameron McKenzie (electric guitar)
• Rod Davies (acoustic guitar, keyboards, backing vocals)
• Dave Beck (drums)
• Chris Bekker (bass)

    So, how does Mark sound like on his own, given that the Hunters and Collectors were "Australia's ultimate alternative pub rock outfit, all democracy, strength in numbers, shout along choruses and ensemble grunt" (David Messer, Juice.Net)? As the title of the concert ("Ballad of the One Eyed Man") may indicate, this is a more introspective, folksy type of music but not without some rocking moments. The concert combines a bit of the old with songs from the new album as well as some new numbers yet to be released.

    The concert opens with an old Hunters and Collectors classic: "Holy Grail" but the rest of the concert is post-H&C, almost as if Mark is saying "I've moved on ..." Mark performs most of the songs from his new album One Eyed Man, although a few were left on the cutting room floor and not included on the DVD (so says someone who was present on the night). "Home Again" is from the first album King Without A Clue.

    Previously, Mark has often toured with just himself and his guitar and some of the performances in this concert ("In The Kitchen Of A Perfect Home", "Ready To Go", and "Parting Glass") brings back memories of those gigs.

    This concert should please Mark Seymour fans and may surprise the odd Hunters and Collectors fan who might be wanting to know just what Mark is doing these days.

Video

    Curiously, the concert is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio (measured to be around 1.73:1), letterboxed without 16x9 enhancement. The opening credits are in a separate DVD title from the concert proper and are around 0:36 in duration.

    This is an acceptable transfer, with high colour levels tending towards over-saturation because of the camera over-compensating for the low-lit conditions of the venue. Black levels are reasonable and detail levels are about average. The performance seem to have been captured directly onto video as I noticed video glitches every now and then (though not to the level of causing annoyance).

    There are some minor video transfer artefacts, including posterization (noticeable if you look really closely at Mark's black T-shirt), over-use of edge-enhancement resulting in minor ringing, and occasional pixelization particularly around guitar strings.

    From about Chapter 14 onwards the video frame is constantly interrupted by the silhouettes of bobbing heads of people walking in front of the camera as they leave and return to their tables.

    There are no subtitle tracks on this single layered single-sided disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track on this disc: English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kb/s).

    In contrast to the other titles in this DVD series that I have reviewed so far - which featured very high quality audio tracks - the audio track on this disc seems to be somewhat muted in volume levels and lacking body as well as upper high frequencies. I'm not sure what happened - a faulty master tape perhaps or incorrect settings on the Dolby Digital encoder?

    An easy way to notice the lack of quality in the audio track is to play the bonus songs contained within the featurette (which curiously enough comes with a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track) - the quality of the audio track for the bonus songs is far superior and sounds far more vibrant and dynamic when compared with the muffled sound of the main feature.

    The 5.1 audio mix appears to be a discrete mix rather than enhanced from a stereo track. The audio track does contain a reasonable amount of low level detail - I noticed in various places that I can almost pick up the sporadic chatter of audience conversations in the rear channels..

    Audio synchronisation appears to be pretty spot on.

    The subwoofer track has been utilised to provide a subtle but effective low extension to the music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There is only 1 real extra on this disc, even though the packaging implies that there are four (documentary plus three bonus songs). The three bonus songs (in reality songs from the concert play list that didn't make it into the main feature for one reason or another) are embedded in the featurette itself, but you can access them separately from the menu as chapter breaks are used within the featurette.

Menu

    The menus are full frame and static.

Featurette - Documentary, including Throw Your Arms Around Me, The Ghost Of Vainglory, and The Ballad Of The One Eyed Man (Acoustic) (27:33)

    This is mainly an edited interview with Mark Seymour, together with excerpts from the concert. It is presented in full screen (except for the concert excerpts which are in letterboxed widescreen) and surprisingly Dolby Digital 5.1. Mark talks about the break-up of Hunters and Collectors and his transition into a solo career, as well as some of his hobbies like cars and surfing. He also talks a little bit about his new band and his new album. The documentary includes three bonus songs which are really "off-cuts" from the concert that didn't make it into the main feature:

• Throw Your Arms Around Me
• The Ghost Of Vainglory
• The Ballad Of The One Eyed Man (Acoustic)

    As mentioned earlier, the quality of the audio track on this featurette is very high and noticeably superior to the main feature itself.

    This title is currently only released in Region 4, although it is not region encoded.

    Mark Seymour - 'Ballad of the One Eyed Man': Live At The Basement will please those who have followed the solo career of Mark ever since the demise of Hunters and Collectors.

    Unfortunately, the video transfer is not 16x9 enhanced though in widescreen and features a number of minor artefacts.

    The audio track sounds muffled and lacking in dynamics and high frequencies compared to other titles in this DVD series.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall