Customer Reviews

Return to Forever: Returns - Live at Montreux 2008

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To see and hear Chick et al back together in 2008 was a real treat, and this DVD captures the moment quite well. The title "Returns" is an apt description, much better than "reunion" as the latter term conjures up images of some old geezers cashing in on former glory. Now these guys do look like old geezers, but their playing is as fresh and vital as ever. A bit more mellow and mature, but no less exciting and no less mind-blowing in some sections, particularly Al and Stanley. My only complaint with the performance is that the spotlight solos are a little over the top and detract from "The Romantic Warrior".

The DVD includes all the songs that became part of the standard repertoire on the tour and plays like a complete concert. The bonus footage is a bit disappointing because it is all presented as a video collage: several smaller windows each showing a different camera angle with some funky dividers that are quite distracting. Otherwise the DVD looks and sounds great.

Very briefly, if you are looking for brilliant instrumental music, played and recorded brilliantly, get this. Miles Davis invented jazz-rock fusion, RTF has perfected it. Nothing else even comes close, IMHO.

I saw this band back in 74 or 75 and they were great back then. Well, they are even better now. Dimeola's fast licks on the old RTF songs were mesmerizing. One almost sits there in disbelief. Yet, Al can also play mellow as he gets into the acoustic guitar. Stanley Clarke is as much a master of the bass as Dimeola is on the guitar and shows it throughout the dvd with some nice long solos that were intriguing. I believe I liked the hard work he put into the stand up bass more than the electric bass, but both were excellent. Lenny White just did his job. His style seems quite a bit different to me than it was. He didn't play with a lot of flash, but then he didn't have to. Chick Corea never fails to please me on all those keyboards. I enjoy the sounds he squeezes out of them. And finally, as a unit, these guys were together. It was as if they had been together all these years and had only progressed in their musicianship. They have, of course, progressed in their musicianship. Go out and get this one! You won't regret it!

RTF is amazing live or on cd but this dvd captures the talent of the "fantastic four". Production is great. It's mind blowing. My top 5 DVD only behind Jeff Beck - live at Ronnie Scotts.

Fusion is a genre that like maybe only 3 people like. You, me and some other guy in Uruguay. Unless of course you are the guy from Uruguay. But for those of us in the know, fusion is a glorious, wonderful, creative, exciting, forward thinking genre that demands virtuosity and soul of the highest order from its musicians and composers. If you are reading this review, no one has to tell you about the stellar careers and musical accomplishments since RTF's heyday of bassist Stanley Clarke, guitarist Al DiMeola, drummer Lenny White, and composer/keyboardist Chick Corea. The question is, does the disc measure up to RTF's legacy? Well it does. Beautifully shot, with great sound, this "Live at Montreux" concert is a wonderful document of the reunion tour that summer. Often instrumental DVD's suffer from a lack of 'musical' shot direction; you know, an extended shot of the keyboardist, during the bass solo? Well, not on this DVD. It feels like a 5 camera shoot. And while it may not have caught the band on one of those "special" performance nights, it is a tight, worthy performance, full of fusion fire. Especially from DiMeola and Corea. It features solo spots from each player and a nice choice of tunes from the RTF catalog. And 30 years later, they found a way to be period specific with their tones yet sound updated and modern. Over all this disc is a value purchase as twice the price, as this style of music rare and ultra niched, and every player on the roster is a master. And the production is top notch, and the performance masterful. Miss the tour? Buy this DVD! Like RTF? Buy this DVD! Wanna reconnect with some fine fusion? Buy this DVD!

Saw this band in the late 70's also saw them here in Atlanta in 2008. If you call youself a true jazz fan,you got to have this DVD.I could really have done without the split screen at the end,very distracting! Otherwise the sound quality,video etc.was good.As far as i'm concerned,Chick,Stanley,Al and Lenny are at their very best on this tour. They truely are world class musicians.

I waited for years hoping to see RTF get together again. Although tickets were too pricey for me to see them performed at the Hard Rock in Orlando, this was the second best thing. Excellent sound and video. Can't wait to hear from the trio (Corea, Clarke & White)in the coming months.

Now, if only Al dimeola would do a retrospective concert playing his greatest hits from the Columbia years with guests like Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson,Jan Hammer etc.

I will contine to pray for that one!

ONE OF THE BEST FILMED CONCERT VIDEOS
BIGGEST COMPLAINT: Too many solos

This is the third and most famous Return to Forever lineup:
Al DiMeola
Lenny White
Stanley Clarke
Chick Corea

The concert from Montreaux is 100 minutes long. The track list is:
Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy
Vulcan Worlds
Sorceress
Song of the Pharoah Kings
No Mystery
Romantic Warrior
--Solos from each group member are interwoven into the compositions

The US tour bonus feature is 40 minutes long. It contains one track:
Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant
--plus it contains solos from each group member
--the videos are in an artsy split screen format

This is one of the best filmed concert videos I have seen. It is not as good as the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, but it is still much better than most. The camera focuses on the right musician at the right time. There are great camera angles picking up two or more musicians at a time. There is a limited use of zooming in and out and the camera will stay focused on a musician during a solo. The video quality is also very good. The bonus US tour footage is in split screen showing different angles.

The sound quality is excellent. It can be played in stereo, Dolby or DTS. It is excellent in all formats (but of course the surround sound formats are better).

The performance is good, but not fantastic. They do not always seem to be performing as a band and rarely play off of each other. It is as if they had not played together recently before this concert. About half of the DVD is dedicated to solos.

I like solos, and the solos here are pretty good. But, you can get this kind of thing on other albums by members of the group. I would have preferred more Return to Forever.

There are two things I don't like about most concert DVDs, including this one:
1. You have to go through the menu to play the concert (the Cream DVD is great, since it starts playing the concert as soon as you put the DVD in)
2. Default is stereo, and you have to go through the menu to choose surround sound (I don't know why they do this for concert videos. For most movie DVDs the default is surround sound).

My perspective on this is that I grew up listening to RTF and the rest of the fusion crowd. I had an older brother that got me into it when I was in junior high and not a friend in sight could tolerate what I was listening to. "Fusion" wasn't a bad word back then. Now, some 3 decades later, after getting disillusioned with how so many of the fusion masters got lured into crappy disco-flavoured stuff or the accessible pop-jazz fusion that became, ugh, smooth jazz, and then rediscovering the new fusion masters again - like Tribal Tech, Greg Howe, Uncle Moe's Space Ranch - and coming around to the joys of DVD music concerts on large flatscreens with 5.1 sound - I then wanted to relive those old junior and high school years.

But alas, I've been quite disappointed by what's available on DVD now, of the stuff I liked back then. They weren't making high def 5.1 recordings in the 70s, folks. So no time capsules you can open to transport you back there. I know others have had similar experiences to mine - you see people grousing about the Mahavishnu DVD that was recorded in that era, but wasn't the right band configuration, or was just audio and not video recording. Or you get something recorded when the fusion master is no longer that amazing star you thought they were (a la recent Billy Cobham or Jean-Luc Ponty fare). The new DVDs are okay, but it wasn't what you were trying to recapture. And hey, it's not like the musicians were stuck in a time capsule - they've grown and changed as artists. They don't want to rehash the same old stuff over and over again just because there's a new medium to record in.

But this. This is awesome! Holy cow! My face hurt after watching it the first time - I was grinning like a fool the whole way through. It really did take me back to those formative years. The playlist is fantastic. Romantic Warrior was my favourite of this line-up's 3 albums and they did it justice. The guys have all matured, of course, done their own thing for years. But you can see that they are just lovin' going back to this stuff. And it's like they've played together for years. In the scheme of things, this configuration only recorded three times and in about as many years. Yet they made such an impact on the fusion scene.

This date could have been just a ho-hum, we've go some old fans that will like that we're back together - and we'll pocket some more money. But just look at them (if you buy this, that is)! They're playing for each other, for the sheer joy of it. When have you ever seen a drum kit set up so that it is facing one of the other players (Chick, in this case), and not the audience. Heck, they almost never take their eyes off of each other. Al, who certainly doesn't object to audience adoration - just check out his very good Speak a Volcano DVD - almost doesn't seem to take in that the audience is there, he's so focused on the interaction with Lenny, Stanley, and Chick.

I think it must be something about Chick, that these efforts come across as so representative of why you liked the original performances. I followed the Elektric Band for a few albums after having seen them perform live shortly after they first formed. They started the decline into GRP cross-over mediocrity and I gave up on them after a while. But the 2004 Montreux Elektric Band DVD performance with the original band members is also - like this RTF one - absolutely top notch. Chick has also done the Rendezvous in New York DVD series - bringing various other bandmates together - and the couple of those I've got are also uniformly excellent.

So if you are looking to relive some old memories, revisit your early influences - this will do it. Clear out anyone in the family that will not be able to appreciate it, crank it up, and immerse yourself. If you're unfamiliar with RTF, or from a younger generation, this may be one of the finest examples of 70s fusion you will be able to lay your hands on in modern video and sound quality. So it's a timepiece, a classic. A marker in the history of music. Yet, other than Chick's glorious Rhodes (where have they been all these years), none of this sounds the least bit dated. It's as entrancing today as it was in those vinyl days. It will have your face hurting from grinning so hard! Guaranteed.

This DVD is nothing less than perfect. The four outstanding musicians are at their best twenty-five years after, in fact, I truly believe they are better now than at any time and this DVD proves it with an excellent live performance. The concert alone is fantastic, the bonus tracks recorded in Clearwater, Florida a day after I saw them live in South Florida, are four tracks allowing an extensive solo for each member and a classic from "Romantic Warrior" showing why they have mastered their respective instrument and I mean mastered! If a fan or you remember the time of "RTF", this is a must get! If a fan of any of the members, it's also a must. In fact, anyone who loves progressive jazz/rock/soul or good music in general, this DVD is a five star performance!