Review of REO Speedwagon: Live Plus

Introduction

Arena rock band Reo Speedwagon are best known for their "High Infidelity" album from 1980/81 which spawned the singles "Keep on Loving You", "Don`t Let Him Go" and "Take It On The Run" and the famous single "Can`t Fight This Feeling" from 1984. The 1988 "Hits" compilation contains all of the most familiar tracks, and is a good summary of the band`s heyday.

This "Live Plus" DVD features a concert recording from 2000 which features 13 of the bands most popular tracks.

Video

Like the previous Sanctuary release that I watched, my test pressing of the disc featured NTSC video (complete with Federal warning screen), but presumably the retail Region 2 release will feature PAL video.

Visually, this is alike umpteen other music DVDs, with the band strutting their stuff on-stage, with an fairly unexciting show which just features some lights.

The picture quality used to present this is average - nothing wrong, but nothing exciting either.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in a choice of Dolby Digital 2.0 or Dolby Digital 5.1.

I listened to some tracks with both soundtracks to make a comparison and the Dolby Digital 5.1 version is far superior, adding extra depth to the music, and crucially putting some life in the very flat vocals on the 2.0 track. In addition, plenty of crowd noise can be heard from the rear channels.

The overall sound quality is not bad, some of the vocals are a little muffled and weak at times, a complaint I`ve heard about the CD version of this concert.

Features

Extras consist of a "REO Home Game"; a discography; a biography; web links and interviews.

The game is a series of multiple questions and held my interest for a just a few seconds. The only other extra of note is the interviews, which on first inspection offer a lot of promise with a number of topics available from the menu. However, these topics just jump to different points in the same 20 minute interview, so watching it from the start is the best bet. The interview itself is relatively interesting.

Conclusion

I must confess that I own a copy of "Hi Infidelity" on both vinyl and CD and I also have "Hits" on CD - I like both albums, which contain some classic tunes. Whilst this concert disc is certainly above average, and has reasonable video and sound, I prefer the "original" recordings on the two CDs that I have, as the vocals are better, and I would suspect that whilst fans of the band (myself included) will enjoy watching them on DVD, the CDs will still be played more often.

Obviously the NTSC video of the test disc is also a concern.