Customer Reviews

Joe Bonamassa - Live at Rockpalast

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm an older player who grew up on Clapton, Martin Barre and all those other pre-SRV (mostly British) blues rock players. I saw Joe's band open for Tull a few years back (they were wonderful! Who is this guy who has the audacity of performing A New Day Yesterday when opening for Tull!). I've been an avid collector of his work ever since. Just purchased this DVD yesterday and, on first viewing the picture and sound looks fine. My fav songs, "New Day..." and the Blind Faith number "Had to Cry Today" rock big time. it is gratifying to see younger players take up the flame of this fine tradition of playing. If all you young players want to catch a small glimpse of blues rock as it was played in the golden age, played by a fine musician your own age, skip the boring SRV wannabes and check out Joe's DVD! It will be a great learning experience.

This is one jaw-dropper of a DVD! Joe is on fire! His shows his versatility in his amazing ability, what with Yes covers, SRV-style blues covers, Eric Sardinas-style electric Dobro...great playing and GREAT TONE! His guitar tone itself is jaw-dropping. His bassist and drummer are as tight as wallpaper on a wall. And the overall sound quality is TOP NOTCH. Best concert DVD of the year. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Fantastic live show with Joe in top form, featuring the old line up of Kenny Kramme and Eric Czar. It's terrific from beginning to end, but to me it's worth the price just for his slide work in The River and Burning Hell. Great testament to Joe's genre-bending combo of rock and the blues. Heavy blues never sounded so good. I had no sound or technical issues with my DVD. Get it, you'll be glad you did.

A fantastic show from Joe and his rhythm section...too bad you don't get to watch the band's performance.

Camera angles change every couple of seconds, regardless of what the musicians are doing. Zooms and quick pans won't let you focus on anything. I swear whoever directed this thing has attention deficit disorder. "Here's a shot of Joe...no, it's a REALLY tight shot of his guitar..no, wait look at the bass player's little finger...oops, don't look at that, look at these candles...no, here's a shot up Joe's left nostril...but wait, look at the hi hat...no, the audience...no, not that..."

Geeze, let me watch the BAND will ya? Back up a little so I can see something and HOLD STILL for more than a second or two! What are ya...a six year old on Red Bull? This performance deserves smarter production.

I gotta tell ya, I bought the new DVD and I am somewhat dissapointed.. While the show is great, the editing is horrendous. Who is responsible for that? It jumps around worse than an MTV video..

Why does it have to be so busy? Shot from all angles except for upside down from what I could see. It is very difficult to watch for any length of time in my opinion.. Joe would be doing a grea solo and they are showing either the audience or Eric playing the bass or the drummer while Joe is blisterig the guitar. That happened on more than one occassion.. I thought it might just be me, but when I played the DVD for some friends they said the same thing without my commenting my thoughts first..

The first DVD was the same way, so I was hoping that the second one would be different, but I think it might be worse.. What a shame that a great show would be ruined in the editing room or by the camera crew.

Maybe I am too old(52) for the new style of video taping a concert. What is wrong with just showing the band with subtle camera angles and fade shots that don't detract from the band itself?

Check out the way Scorcese shot "The Last Waltz" or watch Tommy Castro's new DVD... now those shows are great to watch... Just show me the band, I don't need to see how fancy the editing equipment is or how creative the video editor can be.

Sincerely,
Marc Rutrough
Street Team Member

Joe is great so let's get that out of the way. It's the idiots and incompetent boobs that call themselves directors(?) that ruin the greatness of performances such as these. Who in their right mind would say, "I know I can make Joe's performance even better" or worse they feel they have to leave their mark. . . . and by the way they certainly do. It didn't take long for me to sigh and say "Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!" only one or two minutes into the video. Concert DVD lovers know what happenes next. A montage of shots from every conceivable angle, (yes and even a couple upside-down) with not one lasting more than 3 seconds (I am not exargerating), shots from behind pillars and from the back of the room over the heads of the audience. Well it is true that when I attend a concert I shake my head constantly, blink my eyes 1,000 times a minute, jump up and down, look around at everything and everyone exceprt the artist I came to see so in that regard maybe I should have rated this 5 star. I jest of course. I don't plan on watching this DVD again the only thing it will be good for is to use as a CD of a live performance.

I often wonder if the artists performing in these shows have any input into the editing or if they even view the final products.

If you're a diehard Bonamassa fan then perhaps you need this to fill out your collection but I believe that others would be better served by picking up Joe's Royal Albert Hall 2 DVD set. It's awesome.

Unfortunately there are far too many concert DVDs on the market such as this where the directors, or editors, or both feel they are superior to the talents they are assigned to document. OK, I make exceptions for vids from the 60s & 70s because they just couldn't help themselves but this is the 21st Century now. My suggestion is to take all these egomanical idiots and commit them to the Ludevico Medical Center and submit them to the same treatment as Alex de Large in the book/film Clockwork Orange. Sit them in a chair unable to move or shut their eyes and force them to vid every unwatchable concert video ever made.

I apologize for not commenting more on the music quality of the DVD. As I said earlier Joe is great, but just as you were expecting a music review and got something different so I was deceived when I thought I was buying a concert video and received this "other" thing.

I believe that rating a concert video I should take into account all aspects of the production not only the performance of the artist so that is the reason for a 2 star rating. Certainly if I were to rate only his playing in the video it would be 5 stars.

Great DVD with Joe playing and singing as the genius he is.

Only thing that bothered me about the DVD (and this is true of many concert DVD's) is I really wish the camera would quit jumping around from view to view every couple of seconds. Stay on a view for awhile and then maybe slowly pan or fade to a different view. But this constant, frequent, and rapid changing of views is something I honestly dislike.

Despite my objection to camera views, I highly recomend this DVD to anyone interested in one of the best and most original guitar players around.

I bought this DVD after reading the reviews on AMAZON. Great concert , the band is so good. My problem is with whoever engineered this DVD. There is too much zooming in & out ,weird camera angles .Repeated pans to the back of the venue where all you can see is the bald spots on many of the crowds heads. Then when he zooms in on to the band , it is on Joes face for long solo shots . Mate the guitar is played with his hands & if I was at the concert thats where I would be looking . It should be simple It's a live concert , pretend your eyes are the camera ,If you come up with whats on this dvd you have to be on drugs . I want to see & hear the band not a lot of wanking with camera tricks .

I've lost count on how many times I've seen the band preform. I received my DVD in the mail and quickly opened it up and threw it in the DVD player. The show is as I've seen it many times live, always great. I turned it up loud and I noticed after a while the volume gets softer and goes back up again ever so slowly. Just at the end of Blues Deluxe my DVD skipped to the next track. I'm not sure if it was an imperfection on the DVD or if it was my player. I'm going to play it in another DVD player to make sure. During the Yes medley it skipped forward to the next track again. I hope its not the disk and just my player needs a cleaning. Regardless, all Bonamassa fans should own this disk. If you're not a Bonamassa fan yet you will be when you watch this DVD.

But the music is incredible. Joe is the man on the guitar, but the camera spent just as much time on the bass player and drummer as they did on Joe. I didn't spend money to watch the backup players. Don't get me wrong, the backup guys were awesome too, it's just that I didn't pay to see them. Overall, Joe puts on a great show, and I'm anxious to see him in October when he come to Atlanta. I bought this DVD to get a preview of what I might get to see, and I'm excited. I would just say he needs to find new producers for future DVDs. It was hard to watch.