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(More customer reviews)I am a huge fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival so I'm grateful for the opportunity to rate this transaction and this product.
First, with regards to the seller, onlyrare, I give him the highest possible rating. My parcel arrived well ahead of schedule and in great shape so he gets kudos from me.
Second, as concerns the product itself, I'll do my best to offer the most detailed description since there seemed to be no such information when I was deciding whether or not to put in my order. I remember when the vinyl records came out for these live recordings. One of them came out in 1980 I believe and was initially misnamed by Fantasy Records as "The Royal Albert Hall Concert". A short time after they realized their error and renamed the album "The Concert". As a matter of trivia, would you believe Fantasy almost repeated the error because the liner notes to the disk refer to CD1 as "The Royal Albert Hall Concert", which is incorrect of course. The CD itself does not carry the misnomer, just in case that's of any importance to anyone. The DVD portion of this product sure enough offers footage from the excellent concert at the Royal Albert Hall, more on that later. CD 1 is actually from a performance by CCR on January 30th 1970 in Oakland, California. Some scenes from that performance also show up on the DVD.
CD 2 is a recording of CCR when they toured Europe as a trio in 1971 (minus Tom Fogerty) just before the band's breakup. One source I consulted claims the "Live in Europe" recording was not just one gig but possibly a couple of concert stops throughout the tour. John Fogerty might be able to set the record straight on that, but as I recall, he was very much against releasing the "Live in Europe" record. I guess I'd have to agree with him there, the trio sounds a little edgy for my taste. That may also have been the tour where drummer Doug Clifford came down with a severe fever but recovered in time to keep the tour going. Whether or not that's the case is not really important but when Nat Freedland of Billboard opined that CCR sounded better a trio, I sure don't think he was referring to that album. In the end, it's always in the eye (or in the ear) of the beholder, so it's up to you to make up your mind how you feel about the concert. I love all of CD 1 and parts of CD 2. The January 1970 concert (the actual contents of CD 1) was also part of a documentary produced by National General that was never aired officially, the result of much confusion and legal technicalities. Those who have shopped on ebay may have seen bits and pieces of this product on poor-quality VHS. Purportedly, this footage was transferred from a Japanese DVD. This might explain why every time I've seen the homemade VHS, there were Japanese overdubs throughout. This DVD does not have the overdubs so you can rest assured about that. This DVD does not carry all the material the "Japanese" version had, but what you give up in quantity you get back in quality since the VHS stuff was usually very low-grade. I mentioned before that there actually was material from the Royal Albert and thankfully, most of the concert scenes on this DVD are from that performance which I like very much. Just like the other content mentioned, this one is not absolutely new. I think it was originally prepared by a company called Paterson or Peterson Enterprises back in the 70s. The company which put all this material together tried very hard to trim off the parts that had to be removed and maybe patch some of the things that might have been damaged with time; so that in the Royal Albert Concert, if you look very carefully, there is a very short part (almost an eye blink) where John Fogerty suddenly switches from black leather to blue jeans. No big deal, at least they kept the wonderful audio to the start of the show where the opening notes to "Born on the Bayou" ring with their magical, elastic "boinnggg" effect. The video image was suppressed because I think that's where the other company had its name written before. As long as they kept the opening notes to the start of the song, along with the ambience of an electrified crowd, the rest is pure magic to me. The one thing I was hoping I would see from that concert was "Bad Moon Rising". I seem to remember viewing it somewhere and it was kind of cool because John Fogerty almost missed his cue to make it back to the microphone and start the vocals on the song. So it was more of an oddity than anything, but it isn't on this DVD.
On this disk, there are other audio-visual performances from the band as well. They include:
Down on the Corner (American Bandstand or Dick Clark Show?)
Bad Moon, Proud Mary (Johnny Cash Show)
Looking Out My Backdoor (National General or Mexican film crew present at the time?)
I Put a Spell on You (at the end of the song, somebody from the mixing room is unfortunately heard saying "That's nice")
Sweet Hitch Hiker
I Heard it through the Grapevine
and an interview with Ralph Gleason (circa 1971, National General)
I think we have to put things in their proper perspective here. Photography has been around roughly 160 years. Cinema/video, that's to say, "talkies" with colour, even less time. CCR did not stay together all that long and quality footage of their concert appearances are relatively scant. That's unlike other groups which received more publicity and attention, many times for antics unrelated to good music. Unlike two previous DVDs I purchased (and returned) on Creedence, I will say this one is certainly a keeper. If you have no "video evidence" of the greatness of this band, I encourage you to make this one a part of your collection, especially if you're a dedicated fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival/John Fogerty.
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CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL "THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL CONCERT / LIVE IN EUROPE (2 CD + DVD set)
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