Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie Review

Gary Moore kisses the sky.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 27, 2012

There probably isn’t a rock guitarist alive who hasn’t been influenced in some way by the legacy of Jimi Hendrix. It’s an all the more astonishing phenomenon when you consider that Hendrix shuffled off this mortal coil over 40 years ago. But Hendrix was such a trailblazer that his impact wasn’t lessened by his untimely demise, but was actually augmented by the attention that early death brought and the then immediate reevaluation it brought the guitarist’s achievements, a reevaluation which in turn burnished his reputation and has led subsequent generations to virtually deify a man who singlehandedly rewrote the vocabulary for rock guitar. The past several months or so have seen some really great Hendrix related Blu-rays come to market, including Jimi Hendrix: Jimi Plays Berkeley and Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child (two releases which joined The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at Monterey and Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock, which both appeared in 2008), and now comes this “homage” concert which finds the late Irish guitarist Gary Moore recreating several Hendrix classics. (Moore, like Hendrix, died at an unexpectedly relatively young age—not quite as young as Hendrix—from substance abuse issues, in this case alcohol rather than drugs.)

It was in fact a theatrical screening of Jimi Hendrix: Live at Monterey on October 25, 2007, in The Hippodrome Theater at Leicester Square, London, that served as the backdrop for this Gary Moore concert. (The film is referenced a couple of times by various people on stage as the concert progresses.) Moore was hired to follow the screening with a selection of Hendrix tunes, and what might have been a maudlin, obviously exploitative attempt to cash in on Hendrix’s brilliance instead becomes a rather riveting concert experience in and of itself. Moore’s guitar is as biting and propulsive as Hendrix’s (or at least close), and if his singing voice doesn’t quite have Hendrix’s Rock God gravitas, it’s pleasing enough.

There’s a reason that Moore may have been the perfect guitarist for this gig. Moore was in attendance on November 27, 1967 when Jimi Hendrix (celebrating his 25th birthday that day, no less) gave a concert at Queen’s College Belfast. Moore was 15 at the time. Imagine the impact Hendrix must have made on the young teen guitar hero aspirant, especially when he launched into what was then the fairly new “Foxey Lady”, which evidently made quite the impression on young Moore. While there’s no doubt that Moore had been a fan of Hendrix’s before this concert, there must have been some special bond forged that night that saw Moore become even more enamored of Jimi’s astonishing technique.

Moore is introduced by Keith Altham, a well known music journalist who was in attendance at the Monterey Pop Festival and who was the last writer to interview Hendrix. Altham calls Moore an “inspirational” choice to recreate Hendrix, but that could also be said of Moore’s initial backup band, including Primal Scream drummer Darrin Mooney and longtime Clapton session bassist Dave Bronze. However the highlight of the evening, at least for longtime Hendrix aficionados, is no doubt when former Hendrix bandmates Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell come onstage to perform with Moore. They had at that point just completed their Experience Hendrix tour of the United States and were obviously raring to go for the London audience. Perhaps surprisingly, they chose “Red House”, Hendrix’s kind of “slow burn” blues number, to perform first, but it turns out to be a thrillingly visceral choice that communicates Hendrix’s ability to build momentum slowly and steadily over longer forms. There is a sort of loosey-goosey, almost haphazard, feel to this part of the concert, however, perhaps due to the fact that the three only had the night before this concert to meet and run through the tunes.

Moore has a rather delicate tightrope to walk throughout the evening. On one hand he is recreating timeless classics from the Hendrix oeuvre and can obviously not stray too far from Hendrix’s original conceptions lest he alienate an audience that was there, after all, to see the real Hendrix in the Monterey Pop Festival film event. On the other hand, there’s an equal dilemma if one chooses to only be a musical Xerox machine, churning out more or less exact copies of the originals. Moore manages to balance these two conflicting elements extremely well, investing the tunes with his own personality while at the same time honoring the original sound and approach of Hendrix.

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi ends up being a kind of melancholy experience on a couple of levels now. The more primal one is of course thinking about the loss the music world suffered when Jimi died in 1970, leaving a gaping hole in contemporary music that really hasn’t been filled since. Layered on top of that is the realization that one man who does an at least adequate job of reminding us of the Hendrix legacy is now gone himself.

The set list for the evening is:

• Purple Haze
• Manic Depression
• Foxey Lady
• The Wind Cries Mary
• I Don’t Live Today
• My Angel
• Angel
• Fire
• Red House
• Stone Free
• Hey Joe
• Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. Unfortunately this is a kind of middling high definition presentation that only occasionally pops with good fine object detail. Things are hobbled by some less than adequate contrast, which makes this already dark concert often look muddy and murky, even in midrange shots (as many of the screencaps accompanying this review clearly show). Colors are generally accurate looking and one nice thing about this presentation is that posterizing is negligible despite the always prevalent cobalt blue lighting that seems to be a live concert necessity these days. There are some very slight but noticeable combing artifacts that crop up during quick motions like shots of the drummers or even Moore rapidly strumming his guitar.

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi has two excellent audio options available, a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these tracks bristle with energy and brilliant clarity, and they both offer extremely boisterous low end. It's especially good news that even with the prevalence of bass frequencies things never get muddy, sonically speaking, and Moore's voice is also easy to hear throughout the vocal tunes. His guitar rings out with precision and excellent fidelity. There's not a whale of a lot of dynamic range here, since a lot of these tunes are aggressive by their very nature.

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind included on this Blu-ray disc.

Gary Moore: Blues for Jimi Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Would you want to step into Jimi Hendrix's guitar master shoes for any reason, let alone an homage concert following a screening of one of Hendrix's most legendary performances? Kudos, then, to Moore for not shying away from this daunting challenge, and the fact is he does amazingly well in recreating several great Hendrix classics with an eye both toward performing them in recognizable versions while at the same time not being a slave to convention. Some may be slightly disappointed by the kind of sloppy playing when Hendrix's former bandmates Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox show up, but there's a visceral energy at work here which helps the concert overcome any occasional stumbles. This Blu-ray features less than stellar video quality, but the audio is spectacular. All things considered, this release comes Recommended.