Review of Paul McCartney: Paul Is Live In Concert

Introduction

Don`t be fooled by the case and blurb, "Paul Is Live In Concert on the new world tour", this new world tour took place 10 years ago in 1993, to promote that year`s Off The Ground album, which is one of the more average ones in the great man`s back catalogue.

So on the tracklist there are some of the duds from that album, such as C`mon People, Looking For Changes, Peace In The Neighbourhood and Biker Like An Icon, along with a collection of better tracks from across the years, including some lesser heard Wings stuff such as Let Me Roll It and the lesser known Beatles track Here There and Everywhere as well as an impromptu Kansas City which gets slipped into the set list.

There was also a CD release of this tour, in November 1993. The tracklist is very similar to the one up above.

Video

A full-frame transfer from 1993, which looks rather like you might expect a concert video from that time to look. However, it is not helped by the annoying sporadic use of grainy black and white footage of the main performance, which must have been done for a reason other than annoying me, but that`s the only reason I could find for it! The presentation itself is a mixture of band and crowd shots - nothing groundbreaking.

The audio is more important.

Audio

A DD5.1 soundtrack is on offer here, and it`s not bad. It`s largely a mix with the front 3 channels to the fore, but there`s something going on at the rears most of the time. My expectations have been raised by a series of fantastic music DVDs, so whenever an average one comes along it`s a bit of a let down. It`s still another DVD to file under the "play it loud" category though, and you might just be bopping around to some of those old Beatles numbers.

Features

Not really. There`s a bit of extra footage tacked on the end, including some footage of animal cruelty that some people may find disturbing, but it`s hardly an extra. There`s a biography and photo gallery, but these are nothing of note.

Conclusion

A reasonably well presented concert DVD. The picture isn`t marvellous, but that`s not the point of concert DVDs. The sound is all important, and this one sounds pretty good, probably better than the similar CD release Paul Is Live. The tracklist is a collection of highs (All My Loving, Let Me Roll It, Drive My Car, Lady Madonna, Kansas City) and lows (Looking For Changes, Peace In The Neighbourhood, in fact anything from Off The Ground).

If you`re looking for the essential McCartney live release, I would point you in the direction of 1990`s Tripping The Live Fantastic, as it has all of the best stuff on it. It`s only on CD at this time, but you never know - it might get a DVD release soon. Partner that with 2000`s Live at the Cavern Club DVD and you have the essential McCartney live collection.

This one`s really aimed at Off The Ground fans, and I wasn`t one of them. A reasonable concert on a pretty good DVD.