Lane, Ronnie - Band: Live At Rockpalast

The Real Ronnie Lane
With due respect to the Faces (Small & otherwise), it was after leaving his rock star career behind that Ronnie Lane's true identity emerged & blossomed. He was, at heart, a folkie and his post Faces output reflected this fact. Commercially, the remainder of his career was a disaster. Artistically, it gave us musical gems that become more brilliant with the passing years.
Everyone knows his career & life was cut cruelly short and this live performance is one of the last he gave before retreating from the music business (not counting his later performances in Austin, which were not really a 'music business' thing). Ronnie was a relaxed & genial performer which is well evident in this performance. It was previously available in both audio and video on ROCKET 69 but the video on that release is not DVD format but 'enhanced computer video' which, on my computer at least, shows up in a small box, not even half the size of my computer screen. Needless to say, having the show now...

God Bless Ronnie Lane
Small face Ronnie Lane was a giant among musicians and men and, unfortunately, a very underrated and under appreciated player here in the States whose life ended all too soon. Lady Luck never seemed to smile on Ronnie Lane. But he never let that break him. Not at all. He was a man of unwavering strength and dignity. This DVD is probably for fans of Ronnie rather than for people new to his brand of music. For those wanting to try out Ronnie Lane's music check out Small Faces, Faces and Ronnie Lane's solo CDs (although they are becoming harder to find). It is nice, however, to have a bit of Ronnie's recorded musical history in the home library and the band plays well, as does Ronnie. Ronnie is in top form and though it is not his best performance it is well worth a look and listen. Enjoy a pint or two while you watch and listen. If you want to know more about the man check out The Passing Show - The Life & Music of Ronnie Lane. It is a fabulous documentary about the musician's musician...

Great Music, bad dvd transfer
Anyone familiar with Ronnie Lane knows how terrific his solo albums were and may still deem this a worthwhile purchase but be warned that somebody really dropped the ball on the technical transfer from the master tape to DVD. It is jagged all along the edges of things and whenever somebody moves it really throws the objects out of focus. It is very hard to watch. Rather puzzling since none of the other DVD's in the series suffer from this and some of the more diehard fans may have a TV recorded version of this from years ago that has circulated amongst collectors and can see the effect to which I refer is not present on that recording. Perhaps if enough people complain they will fix it but I wouldn't get my hopes up. 5 stars for the music 3 for the DVD production

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Volker Kriegel & Friends - Live At Berlin Jazz Days'81

5 stars for the late great Jazz guitarist & for fans of Eberhard Weber and Euro-Jazz
Volker Kriegel (24 December 1943-15 June 2003) was a German jazz guitarist and composer born in Darmstadt, Germany, perhaps most noteworthy for his contributions to the European jazz rock genre and for his collaborations with the American vibraphonist Dave Pike. In 1975 he was a founding member of the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble.

Quite simply I was amazed at this stage of the game, 10 years after his passing, that there would ever be much more music seen here in the USA from Kriegel- most of his music is available simply as imports. In fact much of his music is actually out-of-print currently in Europe.
So to ever expect to see an official DVD release of this overlooked German jazz guitarist in this country was far too much to ever expect. But here it is all the same. And at a price that one simply cannot argue with.
As of right now (March 2013) there's not a whole bunch of info on the contents here, but I did notice it listed as having 2 discs, so I was very...





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