The Performance
Ever since The Black Crowes released their debut album Shake Your Money Maker, named after the Elmore James blues classic, in 1990, they have pretty much stayed on the musical path they started down when they first formed as Mr. Crowes Garden in 1984. Their style is retro, evoking the 70's southern rock and blues rock heroes they continue to emulate to this day. Their most obvious influences have always been bands such as the Faces, The Allman Brothers, The Rolling Stones and even Creedence Clearwater Revival to an extent.
The Crowes' most popular period would come in the first half of the 1990's with the release of their first three albums, the aforementioned Shake Your Money Maker, which would yield the hits "She Talks to Angels," "Jealous Again," and the Otis Redding cover" hard to Handle," its 1992 follow-up The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, which had the lesser successful Top 100 singles "Remedy" and "Thorn in My Pride" and 1994's Amorica, which would not spawn a hit single, but would go on to attain Gold status and become both a fan favorite and known for its controversial cover.
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After this initial period, the band, led by the brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, would continue to release albums to varying degrees of success, but they would never again obtain the level of popularity they had in the period stretching from 1990 to 1995. Finally, the band announced they were going on hiatus in 2002, and singer Chris Robinson would release two solo projects during this period. In 2005, the band reunited for a live tour, and the second of two shows at The Fillmore during this tour would be filmed and later released as
Freak 'N' Roll into the Fog.
In 2008, The Crowes released their seventh studio album, Warpaint, to critical acclaim on their own independent label. Reinvigorated with the sounds of traditional southern rock, gospel, country and soul, Warpaint found the band playing with a new confidence and appreciation for the genre they had so tightly held to even as musical trends had shifted in the twenty-five years since the band formed. It is this album that band performs here on this live concert disc performance at the Wiltern in L.A. from March 20th, 2008.
The band was surely as lively and rocking as ever and so were the crowd. The highlight performances from the evening were the opening number and the album's first single "Goodbye Daughter's of the Revolution," the gospel inflected "God's Got It," and the band's cover of The Rolling Stone's Exile on Main St. classic "Torn and Frayed." If you're expecting any Back Crowes classics, however, you're out of luck. This is strictly Warpaint material, but the old stuff goes surprisingly unmissed in this entertaining performance.
The Picture
Warpaint Live's picture quality is only average. The 1.78:1 1080i AVC/MPEG-4 encoding suffers from a high amount of video noise, some obvious motion artifacts, and heavy doses of contrast clipping. Detail often softens and there is some posterization present as well. This won't be winning any awards for reference quality any time soon.
The Sound
To go along with the disappointing picture are some disappointing sound options as well. Both the LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 options suffer from low frequencies that are far too boomy, vocals that are buried in the mix, and grungy sounding high frequencies. The balance is just off, regardless of which you choose. The DTS-HD MA is also mastered at a much higher volume level, so much so that when I switched between the two, it was quite jarring.There is also a Dolby Digital 5.1 option available
The Extras
Disappointingly, there isn't a solitary extra offered up on this disc.
Final Thoughts
Like AC/DC, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Stones and other rockers, The Black Crowes keep on chooglin' and Warpaint: Live proves they can keep doing it with pleasing results for as long as they please, despite the less-than-perfect Blu-ray release.
Where to Buy
Product Details
- Performers: The Black Crowes
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Audio/Laguages: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, LPCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1
- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rating: NR (Not Rated)
- Studio: Eagle Rock Ent
- Blu-ray Disc Release Date: July 14, 2009
