Bad Company - Merchants Of Cool
Performance 
Production
|
Bad Company - Merchants Of Cool
Performance |
|
Bad Company could be considered a British rock "supergroup", considering that all four of the founding members were already well respected musicians in established and successful British rock bands. Former Free vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke joined forces with Mott The Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs and King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell to form Bad Company in 1973. The band signed on with Led Zeppelin's Swan Song record label and immediately established themselves as a major force on the blues-rock scene. Their first album, appropriately titled, Bad Company achieved instant chart success with the help of multiple hit singles including "Bad Company", "Can't Get Enough", "Movin' On", and "Ready For Love". They followed with a string of hit albums throughout the 70's, and then called it quits after the release of the album Rough Diamonds in 1979. Rodgers continued to stay fairly active releasing the 1983 solo album, Cut Loose, followed by two mid-80's albums with The Firm, the band he formed with ex-Led Zeppelin axe-master Jimmy Page. These and other projects that Rodgers has undertaken have not come close to the success and recognition he had achieved with Free and Bad Company. In 1986, Ralphs and Kirke got tired of sitting around watching their fame and fortune dwindle, so they recruited former Ted Nugent vocalist Brian Howe and went on to record four new Bad Company albums. They saw moderate success but nothing near the level of the band's heyday with Rodgers at the helm. In 1998, they finally wised up and reunited the original Bad Company line-up to do some tours and to record a few new tracks for The Original Bad Company Anthology. In 2000, Ralphs and Burrell retired from touring and Rodgers and Kirke enlisted Rodgers' old bandmate Jaz Lochrie, on bass, and Dave Colwell who had played guitar with the band during the Brian Howe days. Merchants of Cool is a combination of two concerts recorded at The Grove, in Anaheim, on January 30 2002, and The Paramount Theatre, in Denver, on January 22, 2002. The two shows were seamlessly edited together to provide the feel of one continuous performance, even though some of the individual songs even bounce back and forth between both night's performances. The concert begins with the band taking the stage as thunder and lightning effects signal the intro to "Burnin' Sky". The band sounds tight, and precise, and Rodgers' vocals immediately tell you that he has not lost a step. That is actually somewhat of an understatement, as the man they call "the voice"'s vocals actually sound better and stronger than ever, if that is possible. They continued to perform faithful renditions of hit after hit, such as "Can't Get Enough", "Good Lovin' Gone Bad", and "Feel Like Makin' Love", which really hammered home how popular these guys actually were, as every single song performed on this DVD has been heard on the radio a hundreds of times. One of the excellent highlights from the show was Rodgers' solo acoustic guitar performance of his ballad Seagull, which lead into an outstanding version of "Ready For Love". They did an admirable job taking on the Free classic "All Right Now", and then brought the house down with a ripping version of Free's "Wishing Well", which featured guest appearances by Slash and Neal Schon. Although their appearance rocked, it would have been much more affective to have them appear on separate songs, such as using Slash on "All Right Now". For the encore, and final four songs, Rodgers moved over to the piano and hammered out the famous opening chords to "Bad Company", the song that started it all. They closed the show with "Shooting Star". My main disappointment with this concert is that most of the songs were almost exact reproductions of the studio version. There was little improvisation, the most notable exception being a short Beatles medley during "Deal With The Preacher", and there were no altered song arrangements. I would like to have seen a few heavier "live" versions of songs performed with a little extra distortion on the guitar, and an extended solo or two. The crisp and powerful guitar tone that made "Rock And Roll Fantasy" so great sounded rather dull here, and made this song a disappointment overall. Part of the problem was the weak guitar mix. The concert was mixed with the drums out in front, and the guitar mixed way in the background. Bad Company was famous for Ralph's bright, and crunchy guitar tone and it just didn't come through here. I don't fault Colwell's excellent guitar playing, he just wasn't given a chance with this mix. Overall, the audio quality was excellent, with the exception of the guitar mix being too weak for my taste. With both the DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, the rear surrounds were used fairly aggressively to echo all of the instruments from the front. The bass was deep and the subwoofer was used extensively. The video quality needed some improvement. Many of the shots were blurry and out of focus, and the picture was not particularly sharp. The colors often appeared washed out. The light show was not exactly impressive, and during several shots there were spotlights at the back of the stage pointing directly into the camera. The camera work was very good, other than the previously mentioned mistakes. The director used occasional split-screen images to affectively show the same song being performed on each different night. The live performance was followed by a video segment of the new Bad Company song "Joe Fabulous". This is an excellent song that makes it interesting to think what would come from a new album worth of Bad Company originals. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - May 2004 |
|
Technical Details |
|
|
Audio Transfer |
Video Transfer |
|
Set List |
Performers |
|
Running Time: 84 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - May 2002 |