Soundstage Presents: Rob Thomas - Live at Red Rocks
E1 Entertainment

PBS’s Soundstage has featured so many great live performers over the years and must have a ton of amazing archives still to be mined.  Rob Thomas, despite hits with Matchbox Twenty, solo and such, is just so…second-string.   Shot during his his Something to Be Tour at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, ­ known for legendary concerts like U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky, Thomas turns in a professional but ultimately dull set. There’s the Matchbox stuff, of course, his hit with Santana, “Smooth,” given a subtle acoustic treatment that’s kind of cool…but a cover of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” isn’t even bar-band good, really.  Ultimately, a couple of decades from now, Thomas will be one of those era footnotes, y’know?

B.B. King – Live At Montreux 1993
Eagle Rock
Blu-ray

Now we’re talkin’.  Captured in a 1993 show at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Riley “Blues Boy” King is in fine form, ever the master.  It’s what’s been his typical revue for decades and it works, featuring numbers on this outing that include “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Caldonia,” “Rock Me Baby” and, yes, “The Thrill is Gone.”  The disc also includes bonus numbers from a 2006 Montreux appearance: “Why I Sing the Blues,” “When Love Comes to Town” and “Guess Who.”  It was one of my nephews, then 20 when I took him to see B.B. earlier this decade, who summed it nicely: “Man, he is the coolest.”

The Moody Blues
Live at the Isle of Wight 1970
Eagle Rock
DVD and CD

Brit prog-pop from an era when The Moody Blues were soaring on the chart and creatively. Like Eagle’s Rock Jethro Tull Isle of Wight Festival set from the same year (issued a few years ago on DVD and CD), this one’s another historic gem. The performance came in the summer of 1970, just following the release of the band’s album A Question Of Balance.  It was England’s Woodstock at the time — a half-million people gathered for music.  While skilled, the group isn’t the utterly polished machine it would become in the ’70s (and ’80s), and that’s a good thing.  Stand-outs include an ever-glorious “Tuesday Afternoon,” “Never Comes the Day,” “The Sunset,” “Question,” the inevitable “Nights in White Satin” and a lively encore of “Rise My Seesaw.” Also notable are interviews with various surviving band members still around today, which leads off the release.

Diana Krall
Live in Rio
Eagle Rock
DVD and Blu-ray

Diana Krall and bossa nova jazz stylings go well together (though Eliane Elias is certainly sexier when it comes to the form). So this set, shot in bossa central, Rio de Janeiro, in November 2008, should’ve been winning, right?  Well, it’s nice and all — Krall accompanied by her band and an orchestra and filled with fine renditions of standards — but somehow, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. As many fans have noted, Krall’s Paris concert release from the Olympia some years back is a far more smoldering show.

Return to Forever
Returns – Live at Montreux 2008
Eagle Rock
DVD and Blu -ray

Having covered the CD version of this concert not too long ago, the DVD and Blu-ray offers the visual end of it. Of course, jazz, generally — unless you’re dealing with a vocalist — isn’t more of an aural than visual experience. So, despite this being the historic reunion of the key 1970s Return To Forever line-up, one is only drawn in if utterly fascinated watching keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke, guitarist Al DiMeola and drummer Lenny White at work.  This release features the Montreux appearance in July 2008, plus bonus material from a show in Clearwater, Florida a little later the same month.  The set-list includes “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy” and “Romantic Warrior” among the group’s best-known material from its wave of popularity in the day, along with lots of solo spots (a bit indulgent perhaps, but…).   For Jazz-Rock/Fusion fans, definitely.

Soundstage Presents: Umphrey’s McGee – Live
Koch

The Chicago-based jammy band delivers what makes ‘em tick on this release.  The songs include “Ocean Billy,” “Got Your Milk Right Here,” “Believe the Lie,” “Morning Song,” and other fan faves.  In addition to the high-powered 13-song main set, there are two bonus tunes, including “Made to Measure” from the band’s most recent studio set, Mantis.   While the band is not in their usual element (because it was shot for the PBS concert series, there’s a bit of self-conciousness at work), overall, the style that’s made Umphrey’s something of a cult item eeks through.

Bruce Springsteen
Road Trip – 40 Years of the Boss
Music Video Dist.

This two-disc set brings together a pair of previously released items, Bruce Springsteen: Becoming the Boss and Bruce Springsteen: Under Review 1978-1982, issued by Britain’s Chrome Dreams. So what you get sort of chronicles Springsteen on the road and in the studio, especially his performances of the ’70s through the early ’80s when he was building that rep as the greatest rock ‘n’ roll show on the planet, thank you. But don’t expect sheer concert footage delights or the stuff of legend much, and certainly not the mega-hit years and beyond up to today. Interviews with probing music critics assessing his various albums and songs are interesting enough in a PBS/A&E kind of way, but this is hardly a four-star documentary-plus-concert release. In fact, the music snippets are few and short, since this is unauthorized, sanctioned, etc.  The first disc, more of a so-so biography, isn’t as good as the second disc with the critical talk.

Depeche Mode – The Dark Progression
Music Video Dist.

This Depeche Mode overview isn’t the historic document the band deserves (in fact, finding a way to combine various docs for albums helmed by Anton Corbin over the years might be a way to go for a compilation documentary of sorts).  But still, this unauthorized look at the band isn’t utterly haphazard either. The disc includes interviews with former DM producers/collaborators such as Gareth Jones and Dave Bascombe, as well as comments from fellow ’80s travelers like Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby, and OMD’s Andy McCluskey, plus music critics/journalists chiming in to look at the band’s evolution.   There are also interviews with the band from its early years (ah, how young and innocent they look) and concert footage here and there, including its break-out to big-time Music for the Masses era. There’s a lot of focus on Martin Gore’s songwriting duties after the initial deparature of Vince Clarke early in the band’s career, plus the now-gone Alan Wilder gets his due, though Dave Gahan’s evolution as a sex-symbol frontman doesn’t quite get the scrutiny needed. Still, overall, a solid look at DM.

Dee Dee Ramone – History On My Arms
Mvd Visual
DVD/CD

Lech Kowalski’s 2003 documentary on the troubled founding bassist of The Ramones (who was the right-wing angry guy in contrast to singer Joey Ramone’s innocent leftist child-man) is compelling and even disturbing at times. It’s a stark portrait of the musician born Douglas Glenn Colvin who left the band in 1989, recorded rap for a time as Dee Dee King and died in 2002.   For The Ramones, he wrote songs that include “Commando” and “Rockaway Beach.”  Of course, he was the “one-two-three-four” guy for songs’ launches.  The release also includes a CD of his music. The contrast between the present-day scenes and archival footage is a tale in itself of decline and disturbing drug excess and addiction.