Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 5, 2024

Foghat managed to sell untold numbers of albums during their heyday, as evidenced by their numerous Gold (and one Platinum) Records, but the band is curiously underrecognized by many, and my hunch is younger listeners in particular would be hard pressed to identify any "signature tunes" by the aggregation. In that regard, the title of this release gives a major clue as to the one song by Foghat which may still ring audio "memory bells" for some, namely Slow Ride, but this 1999 concert offers a number of other tunes that managed to make some (if admittedly kind of minor) impact on charts on this side of the pond. This concert may be of some interest to Foghat fans one way or the other since it memorialized an energetic performance by leader "Lonesome" Dave Peverett before his untimely death in 2000. In terms of chart performance in the United States, one of the interesting little trivia tidbits in Foghat's discography is the fact that they actually charted twice with different versions of "I Just Want to Make Love to You", with another live version from 1977 actually cracking America's Top 40, unlike the first version, which "rose" to the lower echelons of the Top 100 in 1972, though it did considerably better in Australia. Kind of ironically, the bigger US hit didn't chart at all in Australia. The concert also offers versions of Foghat's other Top 40 tunes like "Drivin' Wheel" and "Stone Blue", as well as "Fool for the City", which just missed making the Top 40 in 1976.

The set list for this concert is:

1. Drivin' Wheel
2. Somebody's Been Sleepin' in My Bed
3. Stone Blue
4. It Hurts Me Too
5. Rock Your House
6. Sweet Home Chicago
7. Angel of Mercy
8. Fool for the City
9. I Just Want to Make Love to You
10. Slow Ride

Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Foghat: Slow Ride - Live in Concert is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cleopatra Entertainment and MVD Visual with an MPEG-2 encoded (you read that correctly) 1080i transfer in 1.35:1. I admittedly don't have any authoritative information in this regard, but this looks like an upscale, and as far as upscales go, it has a reasonably accurate looking palette as well as some probably questionable detail levels and video artifacts. In some of the blue lit material, macroblocking regularly occurs along with even some slight pixellation, and edges of objects can have wavering qualities. Roger Earl's drumsticks are just one thing that offer combing artifacts.

Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In a "reverse" idiom I'll call two steps backward (video quality) and one step forward (lossless audio), Foghat: Slow Ride - Live in Concert features a really nicely robust LPCM 2.0 track. I've been on record (no music technology pun intended) as saying how odd it is that Cleopatra, a label with at least some "music cred" for a certain demographic, so regularly offers concert Blu-rays with lossy audio, and so it's great to see a more vigorous audio account on this disc. There frankly may not be hugely wide imaging, but there's good spaciousness overall, and there's an especially fluid presentation of some of the slide guitar elements.

Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this Blu-ray disc. The disc boots to the Main Menu seen in screenshot 10. Packaging features a slipcover.

Foghat: Slow Ride Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is perhaps a bit of a curious release, in that I have to wonder what the market is for a 1999 concert by Foghat, even given the bittersweet aspect of it offering a rather late performance by Dave Peverett. That said, for those who are interested in the band, the setlist here offers a lot of their relatively better remembered tunes delivered in a very energetic and affable manner, and some of the guitar work in particular is excellent. Video quality is pretty iffy, but audio, while not offering a surround version, is nicely full bodied and very enjoyable, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.