Rochester, NY (22-Oct-94)

DISC D620.su
SOUND Not quite centred but full, clean and pleasing.
IMAGE An extensively reconstructed right-centre balcony film. Between the patches, the predominant shot is face-on, head to heels D with other players remaining mostly unseen. Image quality (see screenshots) is less than sharp but okay. Be warned, though - each time the overhead spot pours its yellow light down on D, you’re liable to catch glimpses of a panda singing into the mike. Better than a hyena, I suppose, but mildly disconcerting all the same. (Hmmm - maybe I’d better up the medication.) Thanks to more fine salvage work from Cineman, as a film of BD you’d have to call this a success. Of BD and his band, though, sadly not. Tellingly (and this has happened to me before - see D523.su) the first four minutes of T Man and then all of Don’t Think Twice are played over stills rather than moving video and I enjoyed both of them all the more because of it. Not much of a recommendation to view, is it?
RUNNING TIME 94:10, complete show.
PERFORMANCE Good. After the opening electric set (Man In Me especially) had gone down middling well, a wonderful, wistful T Man made me think it was just the hors d’oeuvres. But then Des Row, sung in the same detached style, sounds merely subdued. Tricky business, this performing. Accomplished guitar-work from D here, though, (and not just here) and plenty of tasty harp tonight too. A convincing I’ll Remember You is followed by Maggie’s, a throwaway thrash that’s mostly an excuse for some rock star posturing, with the one as minimally entertaining as the other. After the intermission (here edited out) LARS and the show come to a premature end due to yet more (see D080.su) stage-invader malarky.
COMMENT Rochester was the sixteenth date of 33 on the US Fall Tour, fifth and last leg of the 1994 touring year. Show format at this time was to finish with a two (sometimes three) song encore (one or two electric plus one acoustic). Yet three times within the space of ten days - here at Rochester then again at Salisbury and Norfolk - the show ended early due to fans on stage during LARS jamming up the works. So now it’s a ’96 and ’94 US phenomenon. What is it with you Americans? If anyone can explain it to me, I’d be very glad to hear from them. (Makes seeing singing pandas seem positively normal, I‘d say.)
THANKS Ann S/K
STARS Visually dull but a sonic tonic. (For better from this tour, try D456.su.) Four.