Holy Rants & Sacred Scribbles - Day
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
1:01AM - Steve Perry just became fully qualified for TRIPLE-Ascended Master...
...HE RESTORED SMITTY'S WHOLE DRUM SOLO!!! HE RESTORED SMITTY'S WHOLE DRUM SOLO!!! HE RESTORED SMITTY'S WHOLE DRUM SOLO!!! HE RESTORED SMITTY'S WHOLE DRUM SOLO!!! HE RESTORED SMITTY'S WHOLE DRUM SOLO!!!
(doing ecstatic happy dance)
(and he put back in Dead Or Alive, a song I **NEVER*** saw in the original MTV airs of this concert. Woah. Double-mother-'effin' WOAH)
Watching the Journey Escape Live In Houston DVD right now...OMFG. To give you an idea, I have this concert MEMORIZED. I videotaped it back in the mid-80s, using my parents' mono VCR, played it endlessly, dubbed it off onto subsequent vid-tapes and audio tapes; I have a crystal-clear CD of the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show from 1990 of this concert that's nearly worn through from my playing.
There's a few definite differences in the restored version, places where the video is different, the audio varies (one example: after Smitty's drum solo, in the original, Perry yells the usual "Steve Smith on Drums!"...here, it's muffled, and it sounds suspiciously like Perry re-dubbed that bit in the restoration process). There's some odd cuts away to the audience (looking at it, those *might* be areas where the original video was degraded or damaged and couldn't be saved). However, overall, the video is clean & sharp with few problems (considering how MTV probably had this thing stored, I'm amazed that it's still in this good shape!!), the sound is killer. Play this back in surround on as good of speakers as you can manage, because it will fuckin' blow you away.
Bits are longer, things are added back in that MTV edited out (Smitty's drum solo is the best example - ye gods, those drums are SINGING here). Woah. Wow. Pardon me while I just sit back in my chair and listen to my heart pound...
The extras are okay, nothing really special. The interview footage doesn't reveal anything new that hasn't been said in countless other interviews, though I'm sure we'll be seeing vid-caps of them all around the fan-sites shortly. I haven't gone through the 'rare pictures slideshow' yet. Easter eggs? Can't tell - I don't have the patience to search 'em out, if they exist. If you find 'em, post 'em (here or anywhere, but let us all know, okay?)
Oh...important factor: Price. Best Buy had it $17.99 (we got it for 9.50, thanks to Brett's workplace passing out BB gift cards yesterday, YES!!). and if you don't see it on the shelves -- ASK FOR IT, and make them look up their stock in their computer. The BB we went to didn't have it out, though the store's computer said it was in; we had to get the manager to go get it from the back.
Current mood:  enthralled
7:50PM - still going OMFG...
Note to self: Don't watch DVDs translated from old video on computer. Too high res. Watch on TV. Picture is soooooo much better.
Though it's projects like the Houston DVD that make you wonder why the band/Steve Perry don't put out yelps for help to the fans. That would've turned up people willing to loan (GIVE!) them tapes for the missing/degraded bits of both audio & video. Yup, the "Steve Smith on Drums" yell is way too obviously Mr.-Older-Perry re-dubbing it in...and real quick, how many folks would've been willing to give up their tapes to get the original yell? --waving hand madly--
(btw, same with Superjam. I know there's good copies, even 1st generation copies, of this floating around, despite what the Box Set claims about the tapes being mysteriously lost. Classic stuff has been recovered from common recordings before this -- I hereby vote to get THAT to be Journey's/Perry's next 'classic' project!)
A curious example of Changing History: the opening bit where Steve's giving the whole "you see this guy right here with this camera? we're making an album movie..."? The line was originally Steve going "...for M-Television and YOU ARE THERE...", and here, it's inexplicably re-dubbed to "...for MTV", though there seems to be no issue with the video or audio, since the original *video* is still there. C'mon, Steve, it was such a CUTE mistake...
Small nitpicky stuff, really. I still spent most of today watching the DVD again, and listening to the CD, and watching the DVD...
Gods. It takes so little to turn me back into a drooling -ite.
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