Review of Hootie & The Blowfish: Summer Camp With Trucks

Introduction

Regular readers of my column may remember the "Better late than never" saga, which went on for about 6 weeks. One of the discs I was talking about in the column had quite a battle to get into my hands, and eventually made it after some delay and a free upgrade to UPS International Express. This was that disc. What a lot of fuss over a disc and a band that most of you have probably never heard of!

But I`m a big Hootie and the Blowfish fan, and we`ll probably never see this disc appearing in region 2, so I just had to have it. For those of you that don`t know, Hootie are an American band. They`re difficult to categorise, so I`ll hedge my bets by describing them as rootsy/bluesy/funky/folky/poppy/bluegrassy/rocky as that covers most eventualities. The closest comparison I can come up with is Counting Crows, but again that may not be a lot of help to you.

Video

A very curious video presentation. It`s a kind of non-anamorphic 14.2:9 transfer. I`ve not measured it, that`s just a guess based on the fact that it looks like 14:9 but when it`s zoomed to 14:9 you can still see a bit of black bar top and bottom.

And it`s not the highest quality video in the world, with a kind of washed out look in places. It`s not the most important part of the disc, and I`m not majorly shocked that this isn`t reference quality video, but it`s a shame that they didn`t try a bit harder.

Audio

A choice of a PCM stereo track or a full DD5.1 track. As usual, I chose the DD5.1 track, and as usual I wasn`t let down. It`s a pretty good mix, the instruments all come through loud and clear (very important with this band), and it sounds very good when played loud. All of the songs sound great in 5.1

Features

Yes, we`re even treated to some extras. The first "extra" is behind the scenes footage. The bulk of this comes in the first chapter, before the concert actually starts, and is worth watching. There are other bits and pieces interspersed during the concert, and this is annoying in one or two places, since it breaks up some of the songs (particularly during The Ballad of John & Yoko).

The other main extra is a 30 minute documentary "Off The Record" which covers the making of the third Blowfish album, "Musical Chairs". Whilst this is not full of earth-shattering revelations and amazing insight, it`s still worth watching for fans as there`s quite a bit of performance mixed into it. A worthwhile addition.

The other extra is a discography, accessible by some moving menus. This is nice but rather pointless to me. I don`t need a discography, I just have to look at my CD shelf as they are all there.

Conclusion

For fans this is a must buy. The video quality is far from perfect, but the audio quality (which, for me, is the most important factor on a music disc) is great. The songs are great, the performance is good, and you`re unlikely to ever see this in region 2.

And where else would you find a medley of "Love the One Your With", "Fight The Power" (yes, by Public Enemy) and "Three (The Magic Number)" (as performed by De La Soul). This sounds like a bizarre and eclectic collection of songs for a medley, but it kind of sums up the whole Hootie thing. They`ll have a go at anything, they cover different songs every night as well as going through their own 4 album repertoire.