|
How do you make an old car new? By refurbishing it and
adding accessories. Which explains the appeal of The New
Cars featuring guitarist Elliott Easton and keyboardist
Gregg Hawkes fronted by Todd Rundgren and with former Utopia
(Rundgren’s band from the 70’s and 80’s) member on bass
guitar subbing for the late Ben Orr. Sometimes though there’s
an appeal to an old vintage car with its seats restored,
finish all shiny like new. Sadly this old concert of The
Cars in their prime from 1980 proves that some older bands
just never develop the appeal of other older bands. I caught
The Cars twice in 1978 and in 1980 for both their tours
to support their debut and their underrated classic album
“Panorama”. Honestly they were never exciting on stage standing
stock still, hardly interacting with the audience. While
the band’s playing was always top notch (particularly when
guitarist Easton cut loose with an extended solo which was
pretty rare as their songs were very structured) they just
didn’t have a lot of stage presence nor did they ignite
the songs on stage. The reality is simple—The Cars were
a perfect pop song machine that worked best on record. The
band lacked the spark that made other bands such as Talking
Heads, Roxy Music (with the exception of their 1982 tour
to support “Avalon” where the band appeared to be sleep
walking through all their performances) and U2 whose careers
intersected with theirs unpredictable, challenging and memorable.
---
This concert features vintage footage of the band throughout
their career performing material from their first album
through to their disappointing “Door to Door”. Since this
DVD is comprise of footage over time the concert doesn’t
have any natural momentum as you might see with an entire
concert performance. Each performance has a title with the
song title and year it was performed.
We get 15 songs performed in full: “My Best Friend’s
Girl” “I’m In Touch With Your World” (featuring an audio
interview laid over the music by the band) “Let’s Go” “Gimme
Some Slack” “Up and Down” “Just What I Needed” “Don’t Cha
Stop” “Moving In Stereo” “Through To You” (again with an
audio interview and various footage accompanying it) “Candy
O” “You Might Think” “Drive” “Night Spots” “Tonight She
Comes” “Magic” “Shake It Up” “Good Times Roll”
There is footage of various soundchecks, footage of
the band, etc. interspersed between the performance footage.
Personally I would have preferred to have the performances
segmenting from one to the other even though they are over
a long span of time there would have been the potential
for the concert footage momentum to build to critical mass
by any of the encore footage. By the way this is also oddly
sequence with a encore presented at the beginning of the
video. ---
Image & Sound:
As expected with vintage footage ranging from nearly
third years ago to twenty the image quality varies quite
a bit. Images tend to be a bit fuzzy and soft depending
upon the lighting conditions and condition of the videotape.
There’s plenty of video noise to go around. I actually have
videotapes of about the same age of performances that look
better than this (including dramatic projects I shot at
UCLA recorded on professional equipment). There is also
a problem with drop outs, tracking errors and issues that
one might expect with older vintage videotape. Audio sounds
pretty poor much of the time with the upper range clipped
and a lack of definition in both the 5.1 and PCM stereo
tracks included. If you’re a fan and you never saw them
live you will probably enjoy the show but just be prepared
for the worst in terms of quality. ---
|
