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(More customer reviews)There's a telling moment just seconds into the DVD, right before the first live performance on "Grace-Around The World". It's January 17, 1995: Jeff and his band are arranged in the background of the opening shot, poised to begin the song "Grace" after the BBC announcer in the foreground reads a bit of copy about Jeff into the camera. The announcer fills the lower right foreground while Jeff is at the far left in the background, standing relatively still, like the other band members. A few sentences into the introduction, the BBC announcer inevitably mentions Jeff's biological father, the late Tim Buckley. Look at Jeff in the background at the edge of the screen when she does this and you'll see his sudden overhead, emphatic, two-middle-fingers-held-high salute. What better way to illustrate Jeff's discomfort with his genetic legacy and his insistence on being viewed independently from the father he never really knew than this unmistakable gesture!
This CD/DVD release captures much of the wide-ranging and powerful musical ability of Jeff and his band live as it happened, generally around the first half or so of a nearly 18 month odyssey promoting the Grace disc all over the place. European TV appearances dominate this collection; it appears that networks in places like Germany and England were more likely to give extensive airtime to a new artist like Jeff. This material is priceless for its ability to convey the depth of feeling of Jeff's music and the extraordinary tightness of the band. Since he never really performed before cameras again after the "Grace" tours, this and the Jeff Buckley - Live in Chicago DVD (the performance of "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" is the same as on that DVD) are really the only usually-well-lighted, mostly "studio quality" visual evidence available of Jeff and his band in action. Some of the material shows how songs had begun to be extended or toughened up as compared to the studio versions recorded in 1993/1994. "Eternal Life" from March of '95 is already in its "road version" form: the performance is that of a hard rock/nearly punk song that is considerably faster and louder than the "Grace" version. "Mojo Pin" from February of `95 sports an extended, extemporaneous solo intro using his voice and some delay guitar effects that Jeff had begun to tack onto the front of the song in live performances (another example of this is the so-called "Chocolate Version" of the song found on The Grace EPs).
Fans of Jeff can't go wrong with this release. Those not sure of Jeff's importance or meaning this far from his demise should seek this out to judge for themselves what this material conveys on the subject of Jeff's legacy. It's hard to imagine viewing (or listening to the CD portion of) this and being unmoved or remaining unconvinced of Jeff's bountiful gifts.
The only downside to this set is that it is very likely to cause the viewer or listener to experience a renewed wave of grief reflecting the magnitude of Jeff's loss: The Grace songs (and two here that were not on the "Grace" disc including an instrumental version of the song "Vancouver" in the bonus section, a vocal version of which show up on the posthumous release Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk)) point to a bright future that we've known for over twelve years now will never come to be. There's a palpable sense of an unfulfilled promise here--the promise of a long life and a career featuring lots of future Jeff Buckley songs and stellar performances---a promise that was wiped out in one frivolous moment on the evening of May 29, 1997 in Wolf River Harbor, near the Mississippi river in Memphis. The irony of that event is that Jeff's zest for spontaneous, caution-be-damned, life-affirming experiences led directly to his drowning. Wherever he is now, he'd likely be pleased to know that people still seek to re-live and re-experience the fleeting moments preserved on video/audio tape that he left us in the final years of his life.
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Nearly fifteen years ago, the world was introduced to a young singer/songwriter from New York named Jeff Buckley. His debut album Grace became one of the most acclaimed and influential albums of his generation. To promote the album, Jeff and his band embarked a seemingly un-ending tour - taking them all over the globe from 1994 to 1996.Because the album had no "hit single", Jeff was constantly tinkering with his setlists - both on stage and on TV. He therefore performed almost every track from Grace at least once in his many appearances on local broadcasts around the globe. Now, for the fi rst time, the very best of those performances have been tracked down and compiled into the definitive audio/visual document of the Grace world tour.
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