AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie Review

An all out high energy assault of "high voltage Rock and Roll"

Reviewed by Brandon A. DuHamel October 24, 2007

I’ve always been amongst the common crowd of AC/DC devotees who have preferred, nay, emphatically stated without question, that barring perhaps Back in Black, AC/DC was a far better band with original lead singer Bon Scott; their pre-Brian Johnson material was stronger, and Bon had a better voice on record and live.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which angle one takes) for AC/DC, unlike their Hard Rock colleagues Van Halen, one cannot dwell forever in the past and wonder to no end what it would be like were the band to reunite with Bon Scott, for on February 19, 1980, Bon Scott passed away to be forever immortalized in the hellish halls of Rock and Roll legend just as the band were garnering their first real bit of international success with the previous years’ release of what was at the time their biggest album to date, Highway to Hell.

The band continued on, and it was into this impossible situation that Brian Johnson took over as front man, joining them first in concert in Belgium on June 29th 1980 then on record with the release of Back in Black, a tribute to the late Bon Scott in July of the same year.

The opening moments of Live at Donington as Angus Young plays the main riff from "Thunderstruck"

So we arrive at Castle Donington, 11 years later with Brian Johnson still at the front of one of the greatest Hard Rock/Heavy Metal bands of all time and AC/DC headlining the 1991 Monsters of Rock Festival. From the opening riffs of “Thunderstruck”, when Angus Young steps into the spotlight nearing dusk onstage at Donington in his maroon colored schoolboy uniform, you know you’re in for one wild ride – a full frontal assault of high voltage Rock and Roll, with the explosive power of T.N.T. To this day I still find it a bit disorienting to hear Brian Johnson singing songs that should be sung by Bon, but Brian Johnson makes the songs his own and though I’ve never been a lover of his live vocal skills, his voice holds up well in this performance. By the time I was ¼ of the way in, I didn’t care so much that it wasn’t Bon Scott singing Bon Scott’s songs anymore; it was just AC/DC performing AC/DC's songs and it was a rollicking riot. Angus, as usual, was spot on, running around like Chuck Berry after 30 Espressos, and his guitar skills - well, they are what they are; it’s Angus after all, or An-GUS, An-GUS, as the crowd were chanting. Overall, the band were tight that night. They surely sounded like they’d been playing those songs for years – which they had been of course.

Visually, there was not much to the show apart from the lights and the firing cannons that end the show in a furious blaze during the band's parting song “For Those about to Rock (We Salute You)”, but there were the giant inflatable likenesses of “Rosie”, amongst other characters.

Above all, the set list was nearly perfect. For a band like AC/DC with such a huge back-catalog, it must be difficult to choose which songs to perform. I say it was nearly perfect for I would have chosen to drop a song such as “Heatseeker” in favor of “If You Want Blood” or “Problem Child”. The set list, however, was still sufficiently heavy on fan favorites and hits, and lightly sprinkled with then current tracks.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Filmed with Panavision cameras and lenses on 35mm film with 26 cameras, including one helicopter, AC/DC: Live at Donington is presented in high definition 1080p on this Blu-ray Disc release in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

The AVC/Mpeg-4 encoding which averages a bitrate of about 30Mbps on this Blu-ray release captures the full resolution of 35mm film perfectly and with all of the flashing lights and such I never once saw a compression artifact surface.

Because of the use of so many cameras from various distances and the differing levels of lighting throughout the performance the quality of the picture does vary, often times from one shot to the next, but this has more to do with the things I've mentioned than with the encoding. For example, in certain darker shots from more distant cameras, there is a higher level of grain present than in well-lit shots from cameras closer to or actually on the stage where little to no grain can be seen at all.

What truly harms the overall picture quality of this release, however, is the lack of care that was taken in transferring this film to high definition. The source was in obvious need of some repair; perhaps even some cleaning up in the digital realm to make it just right. For what is probably the whole second half of the disc, there are very visible scratches that appear frequently straight down the frames, often two or three at a time. This, in my opinion, is completely unacceptable for a high definition video release. After seeing the care with which a studio like Warner can take when transferring Elvis Presley films such as Viva Las Vegas and Jailhouse Rock to Blu-ray, or watching the flawless high definition transfer of Goldfinger on MGM HD in Mpeg-4, there is no excuse why a film that is only from 1991 should come to Blu-ray with these obvious flaws still in tact and they force me to knock the rating down for this release.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For this release, Sony-BMG and Columbia Music Video have provided three listening options: 48kHz/24bit PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps) and PCM 5.1 48kHz/24bit.

Listening to the 5.1 PCM mix on this Blu-ray release is an absolute aural treat - "high voltage rock and roll" indeed. This is one of the best mixed live Hard Rock shows I've heard a recording of in recent memory. Crowd noise is kept to a minimum during the performances and the music is not drowned in cavernous amounts of reverberation that turns everything into a muddled mess of sounds. Here, everything has the right amount of punch, and dynamics – what little dynamics there are in a maxed-out-to-11 Hard Rock concert, anyway – are preserved.

Of particular note are how well the thump of Chris Slade's drums and the raw overdrive of Angus Young's guitar are presented. One can hear all the feedback coming from those Marshall stacks, and the sizzle of the cymbals and whack of the snare from Slade's drums with amazing clarity.

Brian Johnson's vocals, are mixed in well and rarely get lost in the thunderous assault of sounds, and Cliff Williams' bass guitar lines are solidly placed and aided quite effectively, I would suppose, by the subwoofer.

If fault is to be found at all with this mix, it is that Malcom Young's guitar, placed mostly in the front left channel is often overwhelmed in the mix by his brother Angus' guitar, placed in the front right channel. I sympathize with Mike Fraser, the mix engineer here, for he had the unenviable task of having to mix two distinctly different model guitars – Malcom's early-60's Gretsh Firebird double-cutaway solid body double-humbucking guitar and Angus' '57 style Gibson SG double-humbucking guitar - with very similar tones, made even more similar by being run through Marshall amp heads no doubt. Still, it would have been nice to be able to hear Malcom's playing more distinctly.

Besides, I also wonder how much better this all would have sounded had this been done at a higher sampling rate, like 96kHz. I know audiophiles will debate the benefits of this until pigs spread their wings and fly off into the sunset to visit Bon Scott down where it's now frozen over, but having worked with audio on a daily basis at various sampling rates and bit depths, I have my own personal preference for a higher sampling rate – yet 48kHz can still be exceptional when done well, as this recording, mastering, and mix certainly are.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The supplements provided on this Blu-ray release are sparse, but in comparison to some other releases are actually worthwhile in one case at least. There is the obligatory commentary track, which is an interview/conversation of sorts with brothers Malcom and Angus Young in which they discuss the filming of the concert, amongst other things; the Iso-cam versions of select songs, where a camera follows around a single member of the band during the entire performance of the song (Angus: "Thunderstruck"; "Back in Black"; "Highway to Hell"/Brian: "Whole Lotta Rosie"/Malcom: "T.N.T."/Cliff: "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); and finally, what is in my opinion the best extra of all on this disc, an in-concert and full catalog interactive discography.

When the in-concert discography feature is turned on, during playback one can bring up a graphic that will show the album cover and complete track listing of the album for the current song the band is performing and one can also scroll through the entire AC/DC discography album by album in chronological order. The full catalog feature does not work during playback, but using it the entire discography can be viewed at once on screen and scrolled through to select each album and see its track listing.

It is my belief, since this disc loads a Java app before playing, that all these features (or at the very least the in-concert discography) utilize BD-J, thus showing once again how flexible Blu-ray and BD-J interactivity can be.

AC/DC: Live at Donington Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This may not be the most spectacular high definition video transfer to come along, but this release is definitely superior to DVD, and is all about the music and the performance, both of which are excellent on this Blu-ray Disc release. My advice would be to grab a pint, or a few pints of Victoria Bitter (assuming you are of the legal age in your particular jurisdiction, of course), purchase this Blu-ray Disc release, crank up the sound system, and prepare for a steady dose no nonsense Rock and Roll. If you're like I was when I was a teenager (okay, sometimes now, still) you can get your Gibson, plug it in and play along.