Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie Review

California Crooner in a Heartbreak World

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 23, 2011

Like many fans, I was first introduced to the music of Chris Isaak by director David Lynch. A listener of diverse and impeccable taste, Lynch included selections from Isaak's first album, Silvertone, in the soundtrack for Blue Velvet, but it wasn't until Lynch featured an instrumental version of Isaak's "Wicked Game" in 1990's Palme d'Or winner, Wild at Heart, that ears really perked up. In a memorable scene where the camera tracked the passionately inseparable Sailor and Lula speeding down a highway, the song's quavery guitar line conveyed more than the dialogue. Major radio play and an influential pair of videos (one composed of scenes from the film, another featuring Isaak cavorting languorously on a beach with a gorgeous brunette), drove sales of the album, Heart-Shaped World, and cemented Isaak's reputation. When Stanley Kubrick used Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" in his final work, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), it was a rare instance of the master filmmaker following a trend in film music rather than starting one.

The recipient of all this attention is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who hails from Stockton, California and has called San Francisco home for most of his adult life. Though he often dabbles in other musical forms, Isaak is most comfortable with country-flavored rockabilly. Both musically and in conversation, he could easily be mistaken for a son of the South, if surfer-dude inflections didn't routinely give him away. Besides being a first-rate musician, Isaak is also blessed with boyishly handsome movie-star looks that time seems to be leaving untouched. When these concerts were taped, Isaak was 47 and 49, respectively, but you'd never know it. Dorian Gray called, and he wants his portrait back.

Probably because of his looks, Isaak has popped up regularly in movies and on TV, in roles of varying size. Jonathan Demme put him in Married to the Mob and The Silence of the Lambs; David Lynch cast him in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me; Tom Hanks used him in That Thing You Do! and From the Earth to the Moon; and Bernardo Bertolucci gave him his largest film role in Little Buddha. For several years Isaak and members of his band starred in The Chris Isaak Show on Showtime, which portrayed a fictionalized version of their life offstage and tried, with mixed success, to capture the understated sense of humor they bring to their performances.

The two concerts on this disc are part of the Soundstage series presented on PBS by Chicago's local station, WTTW, in partnership with HD Ready, LLC. Chris Isaak: Live in Concert is from the first season after WTTW revived Soundstage; it was first broadcast in August 2003 and released in 2005 by Koch Vision on a DVD that is now out of print. The concert now titled Greatest Hits Live in Concert (though it was not so titled at the time) was broadcast in September 2005 and released in 2009 by E1 Entertainment on a DVD that is now also out of print. Even with some degree of overlap between the two programs, Image's double feature Blu-ray is an excellent value.

Live in Concert

Isaak performs a 45-minute set dressed in a sparkly pink suit that allows him to make endless jokes at his own expense. With years of touring and live performance under his belt, he has the relaxed stance and easy rapport with an audience that lets him deliver routines and laugh lines he's probably used a thousand times with the same sense of spontaneity he gives to each song. (To gauge just how well he does it, watch him adapt some of the same bits in the second concert on the disc.) He's backed by his regular band: Rowland Salley (bass); Hershel Yatovitz (guitar); Kenney Dale Johnson (drums); Lenny Castro (percussion); and Brett Tuggle (keyboards).

The performance is tight, straightforward and no-nonsense. These are professional musicians delivering the goods, and even the patter between songs is part of the evening's rhythm, except for what at first appears to be an awkward plug for public television (which drummer Johnson immediately deflates). The musical selections are mostly familiar Isaak standards, and the crowd clearly appreciates the choices. It's an appropriately conservative program for Soundstage's inaugural season—except for that pink suit.

In addition to Isaak's set, the concert contains two songs by Raúl Malo, former lead singer of The Mavericks. Malo has a fine voice, but both his style and his arrangements (which, at least in this performance, recall Barry Manilow's orchestrations) mesh poorly as a follow-up to Isaak's set, and one gets the sense that Malo's appearance was a favor (whether by Isaak or someone at Soundstage) meant to assist his solo career, which was just getting started after the break-up of The Mavericks.

The complete song list follows:

1. American Boy
2. Wicked Game
3. Heart Shaped World
4. Go Walkin' Down There
5. Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing
6. Courthouse
7. Somebody's Crying
8. One Day
9. San Francisco Days
10. Forever Blue
11. Super Magic 2000

Raúl Malo

12. Let's Not Say Goodbye Anymore
13. Let It Be Me

Greatest Hits Live Concert

The title has presumably been chosen because the following year Isaak released a "Best of" album, but the album and the program on this disc are not identical and the title is a misnomer. Isaak was simply returning to Soundstage for another concert. Audience expectations demanded that he include certain mega-hits, but in fact only three songs are repeated from the previous concert ("Wicked Game", "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" and "American Boy"). Instead, backed by the core players in his band, but with the substitution of Rafael Padilla on percussion and Scott Plunkett on keyboards, Isaak offers a more varied program—but this time wearing a blue sparkling suit.

Perhaps the most significant difference is the acoustic middle portion that Isaak introduces by explaining that most of the band's rehearsal is done unamplified at his home. From there he launches into an energetic cover of the popular standard "Solitary Man" (best known in Johnny Cash's Grammy-winning version). Later, Isaak pauses to pay heartfelt tribute to a performer for whom he used to open, the late Roy Orbison, and then takes on the daunting task of performing one of Orbison's signature ballads, "Only the Lonely", on which he acquits himself well (though no one will ever match Orbison on that song). In the course of performing "Wrong to Love You", Isaak and the band make a neat transition back to electrical mode and ride out the set with renditions of "American Boy" and their own version of Bo Diddley's "Diddley Daddy".

The same ease and professionalism that characterized the first concert are on full display here, along with the customized white Gibson guitar (the only one of its kind) that Isaak periodically flips over to display the message on the reverse side: "Thanks A Lot". Being a professional musician on tour is all about rediscovering novelty in the same notes played and sung in the same sequence, night after night. This is a band that clearly knows how to do that.

And when you look and sound like Chris Isaak, who wouldn't enjoy themselves? Whether the suit is pink or blue.

The complete song list follows:

1. Dancin'
2. Let Me Down Easy
3. Wicked Game
4. Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing
5. Solitary Man
6. Western Stars
7. Can't Do A Thing (To Stop Me)
8. Only The Lonely
9. Wrong To Love You
10. American Boy
11. Notice The Ring
12. Diddley Daddy

Bonus Tracks

13. Goin' Nowhere
14. Blue Hotel
15. Think Of Tomorrow

Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

By the time director Joe Thomas and his technical crew shot Chris Isaak: Live in Concert, the seventh entry in the revived Soundstage series, they had their routine well established. What's more, the relatively sparse nature of Isaak's band (compared, say, to the massive assemblies required for Chicago and Michael McDonald) allowed the cameramen an ease of access and movement in capturing the performers on stage. This no doubt is part of the reason for the smoothness and lack of noise (unusual even by Soundstage standards) in the 1080i, AVC-encoded image on both concerts.

But another reason for the apparent "cleanliness" of the image on Live in Concert is the lighting. Most of the Soundstage performances at their usual Chicago locale bathe the audience in as much light as the performers, the better to capture fan reactions, but this session's lighting design placed the audience in a pool of lustrous dark blue. (I can't be sure of the reason, but a reasonable guess is that the pink suit that Isaak wore for the show didn't show well, unless everything else was dark; the rest of the band wears black.) Dimmer lighting softens the image just enough to minimize any aliasing or interlace artifacts without noticeably reducing detail.

The difference becomes clear (but only if you're looking for it) in Greatest Hits Live in Concert, which is performed at the same venue but with Soundstage's more typical lighting design, with the audience fully illuminated. (As noted above, Isaak wore a blue suit this time.) In the occasional pan over the crowd, you might catch a hint of aliasing. But this was two years later, and the skills of the technical personnel had advanced even further. The hi-def capture is first-rate.

Black levels and resolved detail are consistently good, and colors are rich and well-saturated. As with its Michael McDonald double feature, Image has wisely chosen to use a BD-50, which has eliminated any risk of compression artifacts.

Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 tracks for both concerts reflect HD Ready's usual approach to mixing concerts recorded for Soundstage. The viewer is placed in the position of an audience member with the sounds of cheering and applause directed to the surrounds, while the band and vocalists (which, in this case, is almost entirely Chris Isaak) remain spread across the front soundstage, with some degree of presence in the surrounds to create a sense of space and depth. Isaak's band being considerably smaller than many of the ensembles featured in other Soundstage programs, the mix was undoubtedly less of a challenge for the technical crew. It's certainly easier to pick out the individual instruments from the track, which is clean and clear with excellent fidelity. Isaak's vocal performances have been captured with care and reproduced in all their nuance, and this is essential for a singer who can bend his voice from the comedy of "Notice the Ring" to the melancholy of "Wicked Game" to the mock debauchery of "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing"—and even manage a passable echo of Roy Orbison on "Only the Lonely".

Soundstage and Image Entertainment continue to set a high standard in simulating the feel of a live performance in the home environment, as much as such an experience can be reproduced. A noteworthy feature on this disc is that even the bonus tracks on Greatest Hits Live in Concert feature a DTS-HD MA 5.1 option. Previous releases in this series offered only 2.0 on bonus tracks. This is an encouraging development and one I hope to see continued. Now all we need is a "Play All" feature on the bonus track menu.

(Note: A PCM 2.0 track is also available for all selections.)

Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Since I don't count the bonus tracks, none.

Chris Isaak: Live in Concert and Greatest Hits Live Concert Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As Image continues to work through the Soundstage catalogue, double feature discs like this one represent the best value. The technical quality has been consistently high; so the only question is one's preference regarding the artist. For any fan of Chris Isaak, the disc has my highest recommendation.