Concerts

Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)

The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock & roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD.

The film deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it's still a stunning achievement. Abundant footage taken among the massive crowd ("half a million strong") expresses the human heart of the event, from skinny-dipping hippies to accidental overdoses, to unpredictable weather, midconcert childbirth, and the thoughtful (or just plain rambling) reflections of the festive participants. Then, of course, there is the music--a nonstop parade of rock & roll from the greatest performers of the period, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Canned Heat, The Who, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and many more. Watching this ambitious film, as the saying goes, is the next best thing to being there--it's a time-travel journey to that once-in-a-lifetime event. --Jeff Shannon

3 days. 3-million people. And memories to last a lifetime.Year: 1970Director: Michael WadleighStarring: Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, The Who, Crosby, Stills & Nash, much more

Fleetwood Mac - The Dance

With each passing year bringing another high-profile rock reunion, prompted as often by balloon mortgage payments as any real artistic hunger, old fans could be excused for greeting 1997's announcement that the big Mac was back with skepticism: at their commercial zenith, Fleetwood Mac had offered superb transatlantic pop-rock with the added spice of a remarkable back-story, but the band's long decline and underwhelming later personnel shifts didn't bode well.

Such guarded expectations make the musical punch of The Dance all the more impressive, and enable the meticulously produced concert special to genuinely surprise. The band's musicianship--the one constant between the original, late '60s English blues band and its platinum '70s lineup featuring guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks--is in peak form, buttressed by a discreet auxiliary of additional musicians. Even with the hired guns, though, it's the rock-solid rhythm section of founders Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, and Buckingham's impassioned playing that strike sparks. Always a dynamic guitarist, Buckingham brings feverish intensity to both group classics and solo turns such as "Go Insane."

Both familiar hits and new songs (including the solid "Temporary One" and "Bleed to Love Her") further confirm that this isn't a rote exercise--the band sounds fully engaged. Buckingham, Nicks, and the elegant Christine McVie retain their vocal charm (although Nicks has clearly lost her upper register). And the sense of old wounds healed, and older affections acknowledged, gives true poignancy to the set's high mark, a brilliant live version of "Silver Springs," a truly haunting Rumours-era B-side that proves deeply moving. --Sam Sutherland

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Live From Austin, Texas

Few guitarists ever mastered the Fender Stratocaster like the late, great Texas bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan, and this priceless digital video disc collects both of the sizzling appearances that Vaughan and his solid band, Double Trouble, made on the PBS concert series Austin City Limits. Combined to form the most popular program in the show's distinguished history, the concerts were taped in 1983 and 1989; both provide a valuable portrait of Vaughan's astounding artistic development. The performances serve as bookends to Vaughan's brilliant career with Double Trouble, showing (in the words of producer Terry Lickona) a striking contrast between "zero self-confidence" and "pure magic," but in both cases you can see a master at work. Songs include "Pride and Joy," "Texas Flood," "Voodoo Chile," "Cold Shot," and "Riviera Paradise." This great-sounding DVD also includes the posthumous music video "Little Wing," featuring clips of Double Trouble and archival footage of blues greats from the 1920s to the mid-1990s. If you're even a part-time blues fan, Stevie Ray Vaughan: Live from Austin, Texas is a must-have disc. --Jeff Shannon

Neil Diamond - Greatest Hits Live

John Denver - The Wildlife Concert

Self-professed "singer of the American West" John Denver shines in this heartfelt, 1995 live concert to benefit the Wildlife Conservation Society. Favorite songs such as "Rocky Mountain High," "Wild Montana Skies," and "Fly Away" are moving and gain fresh perspective from brief comments by Denver. Lesser-known songs like "Eagles and Horses" and "You Say the Battle Is Over" celebrate the spirit of animals and nature while underlining the importance of preservation. Succinct interview clips express Denver's commitment to nature: exploring man's basic hunger for the wild, the dichotomy between the uncultivated and the city, and the power of the individual to effect preservation and change. Striking though brief footage of wild animals like horses, eagles, penguins, and elephants in their natural habitats serve as bookends to the presentation. The Wildlife Concert is a reflective and moving musical celebration of the American West. --Tami Horiuchi

Joe Bonamassa - Live at Rockpalast

The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - Criterion Collection

To cite Gimme Shelter as the greatest rock documentary ever filmed is to damn it with faint praise. This 1970 release benefits from a horrifying serendipity in the timing of the shoot, which brought filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin aboard as the Rolling Stones' tumultuous 1969 American tour neared its end. By following the band to the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco for a fatally mismanaged free concert, the Maysles and Zwerin wound up shooting what's been accurately dubbed rock's equivalent to the Zapruder film. The cameras caught the ominous undercurrents of violence palpable even before the first chords were strummed, and were still rolling when a concertgoer was stabbed to death by the Hell's Angels that served as the festival's pool cue-wielding security force.

By the time Gimme Shelter reached theater screens, Altamont was a fixed symbol for the death of the 1960s' spirit of optimism. The Maysles and Zwerin used that knowledge to shape their film: their chronicle begins in the editing room as they cut footage of the Stones' Madison Square Garden performance of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and from there moves toward Altamont with a kind of dreadful grace. The songs become prophecies and laments for broken faith ("Wild Horses"), misplaced devotion ("Love in Vain"), and social collapse ("Street Fighting Man" and, of course, "Sympathy for the Devil"). Along the way, we glimpse the folly of the machinations behind the festival, the insularity of life on the concert trail, and the superstars' own shell-shocked loss of innocence.

Gimme Shelter looks into an abyss, partly self-created, from which the Rolling Stones would retreat--but unlike its subject, the filmmakers don't blink. --Sam Sutherland

Called "the greatest rock film ever made," this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When 300,000 members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hell's Angels at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway, direct cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin immortalized on film the bloody slash that transformed a decade's dreams into disillusionment.

James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theatre

Sensitive singer-songwriter, soft-rock poster boy, boomer troubadour: James Taylor has outlived the stereotypes offered by fans and critics alike by simply staying his musical course and continuing to refine his familiar, deceptively mellifluous style. This 1998 concert displays Taylor's craftsmanship and easy rapport with both his band and his audience to satisfying effect, offering a repertoire that draws from his entire career while providing a generous selection of songs from his Grammy-winning 1997 set, Hourglass. Fans will love it, of course, but even jaded listeners can find fresh feeling and formidable expertise here.

By now, Taylor's skill at low-key love songs is a given, making him an archetypal "sensitive New Age guy" on the strength of his canny mix of emotional vulnerability, romantic imagery, and understated delivery. Less obviously, Taylor has gradually transformed the shadows of disillusionment audible in his earliest songs into a nuanced acknowledgment of his own age. "Line 'Em Up," from Hourglass, typifies his skill at limning disarmingly lucid, frankly philosophical vignettes, here woven around a recollection of Richard Nixon's last hurrah, while "Jump Up Behind Me" affords a testament to self-determination ultimately as serious in theme as it is buoyant in its musical framework. Throughout, Taylor's stage band proves a thoroughbred, its accompaniment rock solid and delicately detailed, and perfectly matched to a crack backing chorus.

Among the first video concerts produced with DVD in mind, Live at the Beacon Theatre has been in heavy rotation in home demonstration suites ever since its release, an achievement understandable after hearing the crystalline 5.1 mix engineered by Frank Filipetti, who shared a Grammy as coproducer on Hourglass and snagged a second award for his engineering of that album. --Sam Sutherland

Sade - Live Concert Home Video

This impressive record of Sade's 1994 live peformances reminds us of just how much her distinctive sound combines languorously emotional pop with lightweight but musically fulfilling cocktail jazz. As fine as the voice is, we can never forget that Sade's backing band are sidemen rather than mere accompanists, and in several of the 18 numbers here we get solos of real virtuosity. The selection of songs includes many of Sade's hits--"Cherry Pie," "Smooth Operator," "Your Love Is King"--and some less well-known songs from the albums, such as "Red Eye" and "Jezebel." --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

Yanni - Live at the Acropolis