Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie Review

Someone's not takin' care of business.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 26, 2012

With the recent end of the school year and the impending departure for China by my youngest son, my wife and I decided to take our boys out to a local upscale restaurant for a celebratory dinner. We had made reservations and we actually ended up getting seated by the restaurant’s owner, who must have misheard the hostess’ mention of our surname, because he asked me if I was related to Randy Bachman, mentioning that we were probably too young to remember Bachman – Turner Overdrive. I perhaps shocked the guy by singing a little snippet of “Takin’ Care of Business”, failing to mention that even if I weren’t old enough to remember the band, I’m well schooled in trivia not just due to a natural inclination to remember useless facts, but also because my wife worked as a news anchor at several classic rock stations through the years, stations I used to joke should share a slogan stating “Songs you’ve heard just a few too many times”. Bachman – Turner Overdrive was a regular on playlists throughout the seventies, but they’re one of those bands that seems to be remembered for a relative handful of songs and are now more often than not thought of as a vestige of a bygone era, a relic better relegated to oldies stations. Like a lot of one time supergroups, Bachman – Turner Overdrive had its share of ups and downs, with a series of disbandings and reunions, until a final final disbandment a few years ago, which of course turned out not to be quite as final as all that. Dropping the “Overdrive” moniker and concentrating on the frontman duo of Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, Bachman & Turner reunited in 2010 to record a well received album and to tour once again, both in support of the album as well as to cover a career’s worth of hits.

They may be a little older, a little (well, a lot) grayer, and a bit paunchier (at least in the case of Bachman), but the two headliners prove they still have what it takes in the opening number, “Let it Ride”, and they continue to provide an affable show thereafter. What’s kind of interesting from a hindsight perspective is how similar Bachman and Turner sound to the pre-Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers a lot of the time, albeit with more of a hard edged guitar sound. That’s especially noticeable in Bachman’s rhythm guitar, several riffs of which would have seemed right at home in an early Doobie record. Bachman and Turner are also quite different vocally. Randy tends to have a sweeter, almost casual, sound, and he tends to lapse into “speak singing” more than a time or two, while Fred has a growly, hard rock sound, especially when he’s spitting out lines in his upper register.

This is a no frills concert with about the only stagecraft involving some lit girders that bathe the stage in a light blue haze some of the time, perhaps pointing up the band’s “blue collar” ethos. The concert does start out with a kind of amusing albeit very brief animated sequence that has Bachman and Turner driving eighteen wheelers toward each other, with a resultant head on collision creating a huge cacophony that ultimately spells “Bachman & Turner” out of the bits of debris. The band makes no bones about appealing to the supposed “redneck” trucker class, though it’s kind of funny to see nattily dressed 50- and 60-somethings in the audience “rocking out” to their heroes of yore.

The set here is nicely varied between newer tunes and some evergreens, including “American Woman”, which Bachman co-wrote with his Canadian compatriot, The Guess Who’s Burton Cummings, and which became a monster hit for that group in 1970. Bachman and Turner give it a creditable reading, with Randy’s fluid guitar making for some nice counterpoint to Fred’s raspy vocalizing. Bachman – Turner Overdrive’s two signature hits, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” and “Takin’ Care of Business”, are also covered in a concert that obviously brings a lot of pleasant memories back to a largely graying audience.

Bachman & Turner Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC features the following songs:

• 01. Let It Ride
• 02. Rock is My Life
• 03. Not Fragile
• 04. Hey You
• 05. Hold Back the Water
• 06. Waiting Game
• 07. Moonlight Rider
• 08. Lookin’ Out For #1
• 09. Stayed Awake All Night
• 10. American Woman
• 11. Four Wheel Drive
• 12. Slave to the Rhythm
• 13. Blue Collar
• 14. That’s What It Is
• 15. Sledgehammer
• 16. Rollin’ Along
• 17. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
• 18. Shakin’ All Over
• 19. Roll On Down the Highway
• 20. Takin’ Care of Business

Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bachman and Turner may be "old school", which may account for the fact that this Blu-ray, presented courtesy of Eagle Vision Entertainment in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and 1080i, is encoded via the relatively ancient MPEG-2 codec. The results here are not horrible, but hardly reference quality. The overall image is kind of mushy soft a lot of the time, and the high definition presentation is hampered quite a bit by persistent posterizing, especially when the girders are lit up fully in blue or some of the stage lights bathe the players in bright red. (Posterizing also affects some passing shots of the audience.) Close-ups reveal at least acceptable levels of fine object detail, though things rarely pop as clearly as in the best concert videos (strangely, quite a few of them released by either Eagle Vision itself or its sibling Eagle Rock Entertainment). Maybe the "old school" look of this presentation is intentional, but it's hardly going to recommend this release to those who want their Blu-ray concerts to actually give them the vicarious experience of "being there".

Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ummm, guys? It's not the seventies anymore. There's this thing called lossless audio. You might want to look into it; your music would sound a lot more boisterous if your Blu-ray label released your concerts with it. Of course, I jest (kind of), as Bachman and Turner probably had nothing to do with Eagle Rock's inexplicable decision to release Bachman & Turner Live at the Roseland Ballroom, NYC with only two paltry Dolby Digital options, in 5.1 and 2.0 (and rather stunningly only at 448 kbps at that). The insert of the keepcase states there's an LPCM 2.0 track available on this release, but I for one sure couldn't find any way to access it. That said, as odd as it sounds (no pun intended), the Dolby Digital 2.0 mix here is actually preferable to the 5.1 mix. The 5.1 mix is really oddly mixed and the low end seems more than a bit lacking. The 2.0 mix, while obviously pretty narrow, has some real punch, especially in the low end. Fidelity is fine as far as these things go, but the decision not to include lossless audio on this release is a real head scratcher and could well spell "no sale" for more discriminating audiophiles.

Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc. There isn't even an Audio Setup menu (perhaps by design, considering the lack of lossless audio), or a Pop Up Menu. The only choices on the Main Menu are submenus accessing the first ten songs or the second ten songs. Old school indeed.

Bachman & Turner: Live at the Roseland Ballroom Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bachman – Turner Overdrive was one of the seminal bands of the seventies, and the good news is that Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are still in fine fettle despite somewhat advancing years. The bad news is they are not very well served by this Blu-ray release, one that features less than stellar video and a really boneheaded decision not to include lossless audio (despite what the keepcase insert may state). Diehard fans may well want to check this out in any case, but Randy and Fred had better tell whoever put together this release that they had better take care of business a bit better in the future.